A Heinous Beast

I'm not sure why I'm writing this morning: perhaps it's an insomnia induced stupor; maybe I don't feel like focusing on my work yet, or maybe this will never make it to publish. In any case...my head is bleary and achy and my joints are on fire: I'm tired and having a high-level pain day...um...yay...not.


4am...my eyes popped open like a rolling shade. I thought it may have been my 5:45 wake up time and I had successfully slept through the night. Not so. I looked to my side and Anya nestled deep into my ribs, but no toes in my nose or knees in my throat. I listened for the ridiculously loud neighbors in hopes that their rustling and bickering woke me. But alas no. Awake. I tossed around and snuggled and cuddled and messed with the covers and the pillows: no sleep for me this night. Sometime after 5 I dozed off...5:50...alarm...thwap.

I know why I can't sleep. I feel stress and fear nibbling and chomping at my brain. The house, my job, feeling like we are both single parents passing at odd hours with a cordial hello and goodbye, the laundry, changing over Anya’s next size clothes, my aging body, my car, the lack of a means to function financially: the circling vultures sqwak and scream while the clock pendulum swings back and forth. Is it a sink hole, quicksand, the earth's edge, a black hole? I don't really care what analogy or metaphor gets used - the reality of this awful place and feelings keep even the vampires out.

I want to begin a tirade on modern society and the destruction of the family and community and the corruption of what we call capitalism and democracy in this modern society. But that pales in comparison to what aches in me today. I want to beg for miracles for those I love who are facing the pain and agony of illnesses that our modern world mass produces. I cry thinking of my dear friends suffering like my father did...their plight tears open old wounds and I hurt for them like I did my father. I have no strength left. I hear my father whimper when he thought no one was near, "Why? Why me?" And trail off into sobs. I think of my friends now as the mothers we have become and my heart aches as they look into their child's eyes, holding strong. I cannot comprehend their strength. I am proud to call them my friends and those I look up to.

The empath in me hopes that no one faces the world alone, without hope and love. That when the night seems darkest we know that we live, adventure and laugh together. That even though some moments we feel and face alone that we are still joined together by the passing of our breaths. I'm not the praying kind, but if there is some great omnipotent being, I want to have faith that it is not a cruel being, thriving on our suffering and pain. Yet it is so easy to blame some unknown for our misery; it must offer us comfort as a justification or grand plan to our plight. Or we develop platitudes and clichés to make sense of it all. Having watched my father suffer day by day, hour to hour my venom towards all the fluffies is immeasurable.

I know that no amount of words or hugs makes it better. I know that the pain is so deep that it is untouchable. I know that the fear conquers the most rational being. I know it makes no sense.