The Mask of the Mother

While I sit here at three in the morning with tears running down my cheeks, making my eyes all puffy and my nose more plugged than a beaver damn I can’t help but think back to the beginning of everything that’s happened so far. Why would I think that? I’m sure you’re wondering because nothing horrible has happened to me lately. Well nothing out of the ordinary, for me anyway, has been going on. My life goes on pretty much the same every day. I go to sleep every night, well almost every night, and get up every morning in the same room I’ve been in for the last ten or so years. I’m not young anymore but I’m not old yet either. I guess I’m what you’d call middle aged. That sounds awful when you really think about it, I mean who says that you’ve reached half your age when nobody really knows just how long your going to live? Anywho, tonight is one of those nights I’m currently not experiencing the almost every night sleep cycle. I woke up crying again. I hate it when I do that.
I jolt out of a sleep with tears running down my face and dots of liquid on my pillow. All the while, for every second I’m awake another tidbit of the dream that was sad enough to make me cry myself away from slumber is vanishing. Within minutes the only concrete pieces I can pull together are the ones that tell me I’d been left utterly alone. Everyone I care for was gone, they’d either left me by their own choice or been taken away by an unseen force. I think that’s why I have that awful dream, its unfortunately a frequent nocturnal visitor. I’m not only terrified of being alone I’m terrified that everyone around me will get sick and tired of my health and run away screaming at the horror my world can be. I know things are much harder with me around. I don’t want them to be but it is. That’s all there is to it, now if I could just convince myself of that I’d be nice.
I know I’m rambling, this is my head you know, and if you must be reminded it is three in the morning and the tears are just starting to dry up. But ugh the nose will take a bit longer to recover. As for the eyes and other parts of me that are swollen and blah well they’ll take their own time to fix themselves as they always do. Now back to the thoughts again, I’ll try not to ramble but there are no guarantees, the things that are wrong with me are so unsettling annoying its awful. I mean when people look at me I look just like everyone else. I don’t look sick. I don’t look unhealthy. I seem to be functioning well. And yet my entire life revolves around a body that’s literally out to make my life miserable. Because of this, this fucking horrible body I’m stuck wearing a mask of cheer, taking the ol’ grin and bear it expression literally every single day. It’s a mask that takes longer and has more layers some days than those people who wear a makeup mask for HD television. And oddly enough mine doesn’t take one brush stroke, sponge, wand, or lining pencil. My goes on by shear force of will and nothing else. Besides my mask has to be there for hours upon hours and not slip or sag too much. A slipping mask makes for others concern and ruined time and I HATE THAT more than anything else. I hate for my body to rule not only me but everyone else too.
What in the hell is wrong with me? Why would my sagging public mask ruin anything for anyone? That’s just silly Veronica. You really don’t have to look happy all day every day. Yes, I know that’s true. However, even though I know its true that doesn’t stop me from trying to suck it up when I feel bad just so I don’t ruin everyone else’s fun. Does anyone realize the absolute frustration you feel when everyone around you is joking around, laughing, being silly, and just generally having a good time and you’re the only one who’s stomach feels like a war is going on inside of it. The kind of war where somehow both sides are either loosing or at least taking heavy losses. Or you’re too tired, for no reason that even you can come up with, to walk all the way around the mini golf course with everybody else. And let’s not forget that time you and your friends worked ya’lls asses off scheduling and swapping and buying everything so that the seven of you, or was it nine hmmm I seem to have lost count of the full number of children we had at that time, so that all of us could be together at that adorable beach house for four glorious days of fun and sun together. Yeah that one went so well. On the very first day, just nine hours after arriving you had to be taken to the closest hospital by ambulance before the doctors had to keep you there for a grand total of five days. Which of course made you miss all the fun and the experience with your kids. An experience that had no price and no way to recapture. Because those days are long over and won’t ever be here again.
Ah the tears are returning. I shouldn’t drudge these memories up when I feel as down as I do right now. I know I can’t help it. I know my family and my friends know I can’t help it. But, DAMNIT its just not right. Its not right for my kids, my husband, my family, my friends, and I guess since I’m the only one left its not right for me either. I don’t do well when I’m in the smog of bad dreams and missed memories. Yet I must go on if I’m to get anything out. At least that’s what I’ve been instructed.
What crazy person would want me to drudge the bottom of my pond, or possibly cesspool, of missed out on memories of old you may ask? Well, you see in this case there are actually three, no make that four persons who advised and or told me to keep a journal. My psychologist Dr. Gennevive Plagunal, she was the first one to suggest it. My psychotherapist Kermit Grindle Psy.D he was only second because his visit was the day after the other one. In addition to those two my pain doctor Dr Lesli Selnkey and my physical torture person who calls himself a physical therapist Todd Lemol DPT or doctor of physical therapy. I know they all wanted journals for different reasons. The first two want me to keep the damn thing because they would like me to see if I can write it all down, meaning of course what’s bothering me, and then find ways to cope with the issues at hand. Uh huh because writing it down is gonna fix it…..sure it is. And of course, my pain doctor wants me to know what parts of me hurt more, what level of pain, and what I was doing and blah blah blah. While the torturous man wants me to write down in the exercises I’m (cough cough) doing at least once everyday (yeah sure I am) are making things worse or better. So, here I am, at now four fifteen in the morning writing down stuff, to myself that I already know, so that I don’t have to go back to sleep and have that dream of aloneness again. Yeah this won’t stop the dream and it won’t make it better when it comes back, but at least if I’m writing in here I can’t actually be sleeping and dreaming, so there is that.