Had To Cry Today

(for those who don’t know, my husband has inoperable lung cancer, stage 3 1/2… and we need roof because its full of mold, and he thinks we can do it but we can’t but we must – so its up to me to beg, borrow or steal before all 3 of us die of black mold…I wrote about it here last week)

I despise me weak, but I so often am. I suppose, my honesty about when I am endears me to people. You know, people who, like the watchers of reality TV cannot imagine themselves bleeding publicly. I’m the live bloody accident you cannot look away from, a curiosity in the human condition. Reality unscripted. But trust me, I hold back more than you can imagine.

But other times, I just tell the stories I CAN tell, otherwise I could not breathe.

In some ways, you are my lifeline. But in reality you are nothing, for I would write even if there was not an eye left to view it. Its how I survive,

I had to cry today; no! I didn’t have to, it was drawn out for the oddest reasons, and reached into my most vulnerable places, places I never write about. In fact, until I’m done typing, I don’t know if I’ll even go there now.

The neo-con friend of my husband Mike called to talk to him. Then he asked for me. Far from our painful last exchange, he was really nice. Painfully nice. And has been through enough to ask the right questions… the questions few dare to ask, the questions I wish my beloveds would ask, and fuck me – having no one else but this man who hates everything I stand for I answered him….

Because I have had no one else ask.

I get why.

But to have to rely on the kindness, the pity of someone who hates me, rather than someone who loves me, to ask the hard question, to let  me vent?

It fucked me up worse than a beating. And I have been beaten physically, as a kid and an adult. I don’t say that lightly.

When the treatment stops in two weeks, so does the money. His big plan is that his Christmas bonus, holiday pay will take us to income tax return before we get three months behind – and we are golden to February.

There is still nothing, and I mean NOTHING in my freezer, though I manage every day to come up with a meal. A meal he rarely eats. Yes, of course, I will tap donations and work as much as I can and we won’t go hungry while I draw breath…. but he has no fucking idea how much this roof project will cost.

There are so many levels I cannot say. The violent, turbulent relationship that preceded this point, how we walk on eggshells more now. The moments when he is kind and loving to Jake, and they cuddle on the couch, however rare that my son so longs for, clings to,,, and how I have to protect him in between. Cancer can make anyone cranky.

So, tonight?  An adversary, hell, lets be honest. I love the man, but HATE him too, for his callousness, his politics, and his scathingness… is the one who made me say how I really am. He asked what few want to hear. He let me say what I have been waiting months to say to somebody, anybody… any friend who could finally ask.

What happens if.

I couldn’t stop the tears from rising.

They rose.

I said I didn’t want to cry today.

I was told by my family to not, then.

I pulled out my practiced walls and laid the mental bricks, and walled it up. I’m right as rain again.

I just smiled and told my kid, “I’m having a girlie moment,” and opened another Amber Bock to kill the pain. In the end? I’ll be wasted in a few minutes, lightweight that I am, no one will understand this, and I will wake up Atlas again, with the big fucking rock at the bottom of the big fucking hill, and put my scrawny fucking shoulder on it and push. Its what Diane does.

I don’t even know what to think. I hate being vulnerable. I wall.

He cut right through it. Anyone but him, anyone. Where are my beloveds?

Oh. Sorry. Fuck. I am NOT in any way denouncing the two of you who have been there for me. Its not your fault I sugar coat,. or bitch about inane things. Nor the lots of people who say often “I’m here for you…”

How do you cold call someone and explain your true fears? How do you when the people you presume closest to you don’t want to hear? Does anyone but me get the bigger picture here of our next 10 years?

Yeah.

I cried today for minute. I have always been forced to be old beyond my years.

I walled.

No one gets back in.

Done being vulnerable,,,I refuse to be blindsided again.

Are you my FRIEND? Will you listen or ask when … oh fuck it, No, I need no friends, I’m taking care of my boys.Take care of everyone but me…. Its what I do. Yay fucking sacrificial me. I’ve always been the disposable one… for the good of them, the tough one, who made it ok for everyone else…livable…until even my gift for it couldn’t stop my Mom’s insanity. Nor his, hereditary one. Now I have another to save from himself.

Some days? I’d rather be dead than replay this childhood scenario. I’m fucking SICK of it.

A fucking NEO-CON touched my heart.

The only way to win is to feel nothing, and I’ve had lifetime of that, a lifetime learning that the people I thought the world of, thought nothing of me….

From my parents….to…