I cannot do this anymore.

 

I cannot do this again.

It has cost me too much. 

I have nothing left. 

When will this end?

When will this end? When will the day arrive when, instead of the constancy of painful unmet promise,  I finally receive that which has been promised? Promised again, and again, and never ever within my grasp, never in my arms. I hurt. I hurt with the wanting, with the effort of reaching, and with the loss of days and weeks and years of my life, always believing I will receive what you told me I would. I hurt. I hurt with the longing, with the aching gap of the unfulfilled. I ache with the pain of the disappointment that is coming, again, as all the other disappointments have, scheduled with military precision in the sorry, undone, unpaid, unrewarded, unrelenting farce of my foolish, generous hope. I have paid and paid again for your lies, and yet I am here, still, waiting, as if there is any agency left for me to do otherwise. I ache with the shape of all that is missing, the absence that I feel with every fibre of my self. I ache with knowing the fullness of this loss, guarded by the silence of your feigned ignorance. This is what you have done. This is what you have done to me, while you parade around in your fulsome, rewarded lives. And you, who promised you would be there for me, you have done this to me more than anyone else, and that too, is a loss that I live every day. So I ask again, when will this end? When will the day arrive when I finally get something? 

 

I ache. 

Interminable

How can this be? How can this be that, after all this time, I am confronted by the same interminable struggle? How can this be the case, when I have done so much, for so many? How is it that this thing is always just out of reach, so that I will be unable to grasp that which should be in reach? Where has the fundamental failure of planning, of implementation occurred? And why has everything cost me so, so much, so many times over, and over and over again? How can this be that I am trapped in this maze of mirrors, where the reflection is that which I have done, that was difficult, tedious, stressful, unpleasant, and yet, here it is again, in front and behind me in an infinite distortion that occupies every possible line of my sight? I don't understand why my effort doesn't merit reward, or even the simple satisfaction of fruition, completion. I don't understand why I have not been paid. I don't understand why $1000 by next week is so incomprehensibly impossible for me to find, to have, to pay, when the assumption made by others is that I should have it to pay, as they do, as surely I must appear to them to be able. So why is there this yawning gap between the way things look, between the unstated assumptions that drive the requirements that are placed upon me, and the hard reality of the grinding imperatives that drive me to be sitting here at 5:00am on an impossible deadline that looks no more assured of success than every other thing that was promised, and not delivered? How can you allow this to be? 

And now

And now, I have climbed out of my bed cave. I have eaten breakfast (albeit in the afternoon), taken my medication, showered, washed my hair, tweezed my eyebrows. I have opened the window, and there are fresh sheets to sleep in when I fall into bed again. Tonight we will eat roasted chicken and vegetables and drink wine, and we will talk about the week to come, and not the week that has been. Life resumes. I will be sad for a while yet - and angry at La Narcisse - but the truth is - this sadness and anger have been with me for a long time. They are not new. This death is simply the continuation of an old repeating loss. I have survived it for all this time, I can survive it some more. 

And now, I have a family who love me, and a home that is safe, and friends that seek me out because I matter to them. That is the life I have built for myself, on a foundation of love and respect. That is my story, the story written by me, not for me. This is where my consolation lies, not out there in a place where my questions will never be fully answered, and where any of the answers will only lead to more, aching questions. In our darkest times, the people who truly care for us do not push us away, they draw us nearer to them. They hold us tight so that we know how utterly precious we are to them. And now, I find myself being held close by the people who love me. 

 

Story

 

Once upon a time, there lived a girl. 

She had a mother. 

Her mother died. 

The end. 

So heavy

so heavy I fell through the earth