Go Ahead And Judge Me.

In the middle of cleaning my living room, I had some thoughts. I abruptly remembered I had homework to do, went back in time to sort out if I had covered all of the food groups in my daughters dinner, discovered that I can no longer find the ankle brace my jazz dance instructor lent me which I A) need for class and B) just don't want to lose because it's not fucking mine. I didn't have time to be cleaning, I was totally bombarded by having to as well as the fact that I haven't since early December, and the walls are literally closing in on me-- it's a small fucking apartment. There are a few people in my world who can understand this, but not many: Cleaning the things I have to clean is just too emotional for me, and not cleaning only makes it worse. It's like having a fear of the dentist while the cavity becomes an abscess (side note: I am terrified of the dentist and generally have not liked to go until pain from toothaches has brought me to the emergency room).

I stopped, lay down in the middle of the floor on a big pile of papers in sweatpants and nothing else (You know what? Go on and fucking judge me: The moral of the story here is that I was cleaning my living room at all. No eyeliner, no support on my double D mommy boobs, no airbrushing over the scared and tired face of a 31 year old woman who has cared for herself exclusively essentially her entire life, and minded to the task of others thinking well of her all the while-- that shit'll break you out and give you some crows feet, yo) and cried myself to sleep. I wasn't sad, I wasn't even really frustrated-- I was just full. There was a kind of surface tension, like the skin on a too taut balloon when it starts to pucker from old air a few days later, and I could feel it straining across my throat. I had been trying for hours to decide which childhood homework efforts needed to be saved and which of her hours of learning and growing could be tossed in the recycling, if I still needed this Abraham Lincoln bust I bought my ex at the dollar tree 8 years ago or if the fact that he had left in in our house when he left not a month after I did to be with the love of his life was reason enough to discard it myself. I tried to find a place for my vitamins that wouldn't get in the way of the tea or the peanut butter and longed for a moment to be the kind of woman who could add on when she ran out of space instead of having to discard this much of her life, no more or less. And just as in my overcrowded apartment something had to go from me, bloodletting of sorts--if I'd had leeches, I would have used leeches and that would have worked every bit as well.

But I didn't have leeches. And so, the crying.

I slept for about 10 minutes, then I got my ass up and blogged this because it's better than walking around carrying it, and now it's back to picking apart the little bits and pieces of my life, separating the emotional from the practical, because that's what there's room for on so many levels I can't even begin to blog it.

And now, on to the bathroom. I don't know that I've ever cried in sweatpants in my bathtub before... we'll see how it goes.