Down the Rabbit Hole

Electronic Butterflies and Dayquil

The Mother's Day weekend was less than a riveting success. Battling a bad cold and trying to keep my ill-temper at bay, I approached the holiday with the same low expectations as usual. My relationship with my mother is complicated at best and being forced to acknowledged our strained ties, only serves to make us both more uncomfortable. Adding to the strain was learning news that my husband's young and very newly married niece is expecting. It really does seem as if the entire world is pregnant, but us, with our apparent and yet to be diagnosed complications. I never wanted to feel as if our life, our success and our happiness depended on us having a family. It just seems that lately, considering the possibility of being unable to concieve, has plunged us both into a dark place, a morose cave where regret and blame hang like bats waiting to drop down on black-viened wings. I've found that I am dwelling on past decisions and using my mistakes torment myself. My spirits have been in a steady decline for weeks now, my lack of energy is apparent in every messy room of a home that needs attention. My lack of patience is evidenced in every snappish comment or flash of annoyance I subject him too. My fading faith is limiting my ability to foster hope and recognize joy. I can see it in him too, the creeping stain of frustration and shame. I didn't want this life for us. I don't want this life. I think of my mother and her always present and underlying opinions, and I want to rebel against them. I see the Mother's Day gifts for my cousin and sister-in-law, the cards emblazoned in my mother's flowing script, and I am impossibly angry and fearful and sad all at the same time. I feel as if he and I need to regroup and refocus and most of all, reconnect. Our life should be about what we have, not what we don't yet have. I do the one thing that keeps me grounded, I write. I write despite the fact that publication continues to allude me, as does the discipline required to seriously pursue it. Each time I tell him that a piece has won, no matter how much the win pleases me, he always has the same reaction. If it doesn't translate into monetary earnings, it is little more than a glorified hobby. Perhaps he is right. I doubt he has read anything I've written for some time, despite the fact that I feel I have gotten much better than I was in the twilight of dating ,when it seemed he would consume all my words without prompting. Not that it should matter, certainly, there are things I am working on now that it would be better, in our current state, that he not ingest. I continue to work on Seth's memoir, realizing at each working session, how raw parts of my soul are still. I think, it is perhaps the very best I have in me and I fear it will never be something I can share with him. This morning, reacting to my father's inquiry about mother's day, I was shocked to hear my own response, a reply that was filled with such venom that it confirmed the darkness still lurking beneath my skin. My soul, my spirit is still anchored in my pain of the past. I believe this memoir is, in part, a way to free myself from that darkness once and for all.