Sittin' on the dock of the bay in Candy Corn on the Cob (October 2019)

Only not. Because I don’t know where the waterfront is around here. We’ve never been there, you see. Today, I am exploring north of my “boundary” of WinCo in Frederickson, off on the horribly maligned Perimeter Road. It turns out there’s a super nice, somewhat upscale strip mall out here, and it has a coffeeshop. So I’m actually sitting in there. Coffeeshop life, it’s what you do in uni, right? Maybe. It’s expensive and I feel terrible, but I can be here for a couple hours, plow through a rough draft of a ghost story I made up about my grandmother, and pop it into all the appropriate baskets On Time.

I missed Spanish class today and I’m feeling guilty. I meant to go. I love the class, even. But today sleep happened, and a lot of it, and I snoozed right through it all. Woke up when class would have been 15 minutes in, undressed, in bed. Decided I might as well go whole hog and snooze it all away. Did so. Then, later, I crawled out, dressed, and here I am, somewhat ambivalent about getting down to work. I’ve been off it all weekend, which sucks, because weekends are my prep days for this shit. I only do it well because I have that time on the weekends to PRE do it all. I used to cook meals ahead while I did my work at home, but now I can’t stand to be there, which is really troubling me. The kids have noticed.

How do you explain to your children that your life is cracking like an egg? All the shit that used to be sealed away inside is getting out, and while it’s amazing and wonderful and fabulous outside of that shell, you can’t ever put it all back together and go back inside. But that’s what they want. Spouse is cleaning nothing. He’s not even doing dishes right now. He’s “sick” again. “Sick” means that I am supposed to take over for him and do ALL the things, but I don’t want to so I leave. I…just don’t want to play that bullshit game. I don’t have any sympathy left. Even my pity for him is exhausted. We’re at war, but it is a civil war. Civil in that we rarely scream and shout and nobody’s getting hit. Actually, he doesn’t even touch me. Seriously, he can invite me to the couch for a movie and he doesn’t even rub my feet, which are next to him on the sofa. I would rub his feet, just because I enjoy touching people.

But he won’t rub mine. (They’re up there so the cat can lay on my legs, mostly.) His dad has a lymphoma, non-Hodgkin’s, and he’s terrified of that, so I take a look at his back most months (he’s got a shit ton of moles.) None look abnormal. But he doesn’t look at my back. It’s very one sided. I don’t like that about him. Everything’s one way. You remember to bring him a thing? He will not bring you one. Not unless you specifically send him for it. Even then, sometimes, you also have to cough up the payment. I guess we’re okay there, we’re somewhat sharing money. Somewhat. As in, I’m not sure he made my car payment, but there’s food for the kids and I have gas for the car. And the wifi works at home. And so do the lights and water. We need a budget again, which means we need to talk money, and that goes sour super fast. I hate that.

I came here to write that ghost story. I should do that. That’s today’s major goal. I have about four hours to do it in. This should be a ton of time, but creativity is a bitchy whore and she doesn’t always do what you want, even if you pay her. Sometimes, she does what you need, though, even when you didn’t know what that was. I have to trust that she knows what I need today. Is it feeling abandoned and lost in a ritzy coffeeshop fifteen miles from home? Maybe. Is it the promise of going to Target after? Could be. I need to pick up kitty litter and a treat for Lu, who went to school today (unlike her twin, who claimed stomachache but is boisterous and fine now. UTI, maybe? I’ll take her in for a pee test. Could also be period warmup, we’re all crampy, angsty bitches with unhappy tummies before and during, and she’s just about due.)

Motherhood is a strange state. You love, but sometimes it is an angry love. Selfish. Sometimes the only reason I love them is that I know they’re mine. I catch flashes of myself in them. It’s startling. I also see bits of him in them, and…sometimes I don’t like them there. I wish I’d known some of this stuff was waiting for me way back when I was desperate for a baby, after Kyrie died. I mean, I wouldn’t trade Adia for a bachelor’s degree, I wouldn’t. But…I also would. If I’d done what I meant to do in 2004, I’d have Adia, but not the twins, and I’d be done with school and living down in Salem. I probably would have gone to Willamette University, and I would have lived with the ‘rents. And I’d probably be a nurse, not a social worker.

It could have been happy. Are the twins worth the years I spent in a suburban cage, waiting for my life to begin? Is anything? Is it abuse to keep a woman trapped in a house with her children for more than a decade, waiting on your whim to take her here or there when absolutely necessary? I used to pride myself - pride! - on having at least three compelling reasons to go anywhere. Now I drive to Wal-Mart just to walk. Or for a pen. Or a dollar notebook. Or to get a price I could get off their app or website. I go for no reason at all. I drove past it twice on the way here, and it’s clear the other side of town from here. It was delightful.

The eggshell is really broken now. If I could put it back together, I could save my marriage, but I don’t want to go back in there, and I sure don’t want him to “swap” with me and be a dependent baba mooching around the house, denting couches forever. (We get a couch, and within six months, it smells like a dump and is totally sprung. He doesn’t bathe enough and he doesn’t ever get off the couch. he sleeps there. eats there. sits there. His entire universe is arranged at his fingertips on a bookshelf and a footstool.)

I do not want a man, or a life, where everything can be arranged that close. I want to GO.

2021 can’t come soon enough, and at the same time, I am so terrified to graduate. Because once I have my degrees in hand, I have to move on, and I don’t know how the world works alone. I’ve never lived alone. But at the same time, I’ve never had a real partner, either. Boy 1 was gay and I was there to convince his mom he wasn’t, but he was, and that wasn’t real. Boy 2 is a disaster and I want my life back (but I like the kids.) There will not be a boy 3. I’m done with guys, I think.

But alone is frightening, nonetheless.