Dark Ramblings

The overwhelm is everywhere, you just have to look around. It's the dishes in the sink. It's the dresser drawers hanging open, bras and socks spilling out. It's the dead roses in the vintage white pitcher. It's the plants dying, the cat box that needs scooping, the trash on the floor that requires too much effort to bend and pick up.

It's the dirty house, the dirty car, the dirty garage, the dirty feet, the dirty secrets.

It's the brain that refuses to work. Except to manufacture terrifying thoughts and images in living color that could win awards.

It's the wrinkled, haggard face that stares back at me from the mirror.

It's surgery; your daughter's illness; family dynamics; trauma. It's a country gone mad, a planet that's dying, so much suffering you have no idea where to put it. It's evil, it's terror, it's despair; it's sobbing in the shower and in the pillow while you lie in the fetal position.

Waiting for my daughter to come out of her appointment with the rheumatologist wondering if it will be lupus, I realize there is no one to reach out to; not one person in the whole world to text and say I'm waiting and I'm scared. I'm scared it will be lupus and I'm scared it won't be lupus. (Lupus would at least explain things.) Can you please keep me company? Can you hear what this last year has been like? Do you know what it's like to watch her walk to the car, how her body almost refuses to move, how long it takes to traverse the short distance to the curb, the strain I see painted all over her beautiful face?

I'm long past the polite posts, the pretty pictures, the hopefully clever prose, the inspiring tales. I don't know how to live with all this brokenness, how to live without someone, anyone, to share it with.

I pick up my phone and find a video of my grand baby, my other daughter's precious little girl, and watch it over and over and over. Tears stream as I watch her climb the play structure, narrating as she does, announce that the first slide is too "liddle" for her, then slide down the big slide, land on her bum on the ground, dust herself off and get back up for more.

My daughter makes it to the car. It's not lupus. Not yet anyway. But the doctor will monitor her because some of the symptoms are there, and because it's true she's lost her life.