Black Eye.

6 years ago, I thought I was happy.  I thought I was living a wonderfully enviable life, and nothing could take me out of there and put me on the other side.  But suddenly, there I was, looking through dirty glass, at my family, at my life, at my future, and I was just watching.  

And that's a horrible feeling.

A year ago, my life was very different, again.  A year ago I thought I knew the path my life would follow, and I felt better.  I felt like the Joanna I thought I always could be.  I felt alive and safe and scared and happy.  I was sure I was happy; because I trusted.  I trusted and I was happy.

When you trust fully, with your complete self, and honestly seems like a given, not a maybe, or a wish, it's the most freeing feeling...  it is the happiest feeling.  It is beautiful.  I wish everyone felt this all the time. I wish it were the truth of life, and humanity, and love.  

There is no doubt or worry when it comes to trusting love.  It is the safest, warmest... it's home.  It's home.  You are finally home.

Oh my goodness, how could anything be more perfect?

It can't be.

And it isn't perfect at all... because it's not real.  There is no safety in love.  If you trust fully, you lose everything.  You lose everything.  

No.  No.  No!

It can't be real.  If you believe in it all, if you have believed in it, then when anyone, even your own self, tries to tell you it is not real, you can't believe it. Why would you want to?  Who wants to be unhappy and disappointed, or devastated and wasted by truth?  So you keep trying to prove your own view of the truth to yourself... and you refuse to see reality.

 How long does it take to believe it?  What if you don't want to believe any of it, except the good things.  What if you want to just keep looping back in time, over, and over, and over to that place where everything was beautiful, and you felt safe.  What if you'd rather live with a false sense of happiness, and keep pretending in the truth you used to know than accept that life can't be that happy and that perfect.

Well, then you become like me.  I have been shocked--and I mean fucking blown away--any time reality crept up on me and even dared to whisper:  "It's a lie."  

When I look at the calendar and see PMDD written a few days away, I don't think, "Alright, it's going to get ugly."  I just feel what I'm feeling at the moment, which is usually fairly normal, and I am not at all prepared to feel too tired to move... to think... too tired to care about anything.  I am never prepared to feel nothing.  Apathy is terrifying.  And when you are feeling so much, even when it's sadness or anger, the idea of apathy seems so distant... and unwanted.  

"I don't care,"  I say that a lot.  I really don't.  When I feel the numbness and emptiness I truly don't care about anything lately... I have to reach deep inside myself to feel anything at all.  And trust me, I wonder how I can be a good mother when I am like this:  but I fight it.  I fight it and I make all the right faces, and do the best I can.  I'm sure there are worse mothers than a mother with PMDD.  

At no point am I thinking about myself, and what I want or need.  I'm thinking about what I should be doing and I need to be doing to make my children feel loved and happy.  And when I can't deliver, I am devastated.  I'm devastated every month.  And I want to tell you it's not fair, and I don't deserve this, but I can't say either of those things. Because people suffer from all kinds of problems... and I'm just one person.  

When we first found out we were having twins, someone told me, "God only gives you what you can handle," and they were thinking we were the perfect couple to handle the craziness of twin babies.  We could do it, and so we were blessed with two healthy babies at once.  And I wonder if I am supposed to be handling all this PMDD stuff the same way.  I should be able to handle it.  I have, so far, haven't I?  I'm still alive.  I'm alive, even when I often don't want to be.  So that's at least handling the worst of it, yeah?  

And I also wonder if I should be able to handle my life, as it is now, and how it has gone along, and all the hills and valleys and light and darkness, and somehow come out of it with a... what?  What am I supposed to do with excruciating pain and disappointment?  What am I supposed to do with dreams deferred?  I guess that's what I'll find out.  

And, I don't need help.  Not from anyone.  My life got so much harder by "helping."  Some  kinds of help leaves deep, ugly scars, I'll always see, and never forget.  

To my helpers:  What did God think you could handle?  Knowing you're a sick, twisted person? Dying alone?  I'm sad for you...  Because I think I'll be alright... and I'm not so sure you ever will.

Listen