The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

Colours.

It isn't fair, to feel blue on an orange and red day. The wind is warm and soft, and I took it the wrong way the whole time I was walking with my wee person, irritated by it as well as the incessant questions she was asking while she held my hand and relaxed her body so that I'd have to drag her. She is so pure, right now, so complete. There is no fracture in her ego, no fissure in her optimism. Things are as they should be in her, and I appreciate how wonderful the world around her seems. It's just that I have been feeling a little unworthy of her love these last couple days, like every mistake I make with her, every wasted opportunity is something she should use to hate me. It's silly, I know, but it feels real. I know that people think I'm weird for the way I live, with my preference for my house over shopping or socializing. The fact that I get so worked up over any kind of festivity, that I find it hard to drive more than ten miles away from my house. I have invisible barriers that seem monumental to me, but are hairline cracks in the sidewalk to everyone else.

If M. dies, from any list of causes, I will be alone. I will have to look after this little girl, while trying to balance a decent life of my own, and I can barely even stand to think about it. My love for him is separate from my dependency on him, but the fact that I think I can't live without him disturbs me. I understand my grandmother now. Whereas she used to be known as selfish and weak for the way she reacted when my biological grandfather died, I now view her as a women too frail to fight against her torment. I do not resent her for it. I feel horrible that she went through it, and I am proud of her for finding the guts to overcome it. A year in bed, I'm told, with stacks of paperback novels and a bank account that rapidly depleted of its insurance money. She didn't care about life much, even though she had two kids to consider. My aunt was sixteen and my mother was twelve, but they weren't helpless, not like she thought she was.

My mother resents my grandmother for 'checking out' back then. She doesn't understand it, not that she should. Twelve is way too young to be left to make your own decisions, and most of my mother's were bad: quit school the day after she turned sixteen, involved with shady characters, questioned by police twice, frequently involved in physical altercations, ran away from home...and the list goes on. My mother says that if my grandmother had cared, she'd have been a better mother. Not that I disagree, but I am able to see the other side of the argument, and it scares me that I can.

I'm not anticipating M's dying anytime soon. He's in good shape, he eats well, doesn't have any disgusting and potentially harmful habits. All that aside, though, he is mortal, and people die in strange and interesting ways daily. I think about the loneliness of it, the long nights in which I will have forgotten how it felt to be loved and protected and will instead wish for a way out. I will be wracked with worry and guilt over what my daughter is missing in having me as her sole parent, what with my imaginary limitations that are remarkably resilient to my attempts to overcome them. The world out there is beautiful from in here, but when I'm out there, the colour drains out of the leaves on the trees, the blades of grass under my feet. The breeze becomes a taunt, the rising sun becomes a threat. I am not agoraphobic by the general definition, but I have my moments where I pose as one, rather convincingly I might add. I love to explore, love to get out there, when I'm with someone I feel safe with. Once it's just me, I am a moving target, but for what I have no clue.

This emotional malaise is tiring. I hate who I am at this moment. I look in the mirror and I see the beginnings of the end in every line, every ditch of the skin. I am a woman on the verge of nothing. I hate my clothes and my face, both equally and for the same thing: they are both losing their newness, both losing colour, full of age and the truth about what they're made of is revealed. I hate that I am only comfortable when sitting and losing myself in something that has very little to do with my real life. I hate that I need to lie down from the strain of living a sedentary life which is mostly in my head. I hate that there is a world out there that seems too big for me to be a part of. I think of busy, metropolitan streets and I feel like curling into a ball.

How can he love me? How is that even possible? A woman who prefers to sit or lay rather than be. A woman who has all the right ideas, but never reveals them to anyone who might care to hear them. A woman so fixated on what is wrong with her, that he is beginning to believe her.

I don't want this. I don't want this loser way of thinking. I don't want a half full glass over a half empty one. I want a cup that runneth over, dammit.

If I didn't have this, I don't know what I'd do. What did I do before I realized I could purge my thoughts with a keyboard? What was the life before this?

I used to laugh, and I used to laugh loud and it never occurred to me then that I should be grateful for the opportunity.

I want that version of me back. This one has faded and pilled, and there are holes all over.