Monday, November 19, 2012

A roadblock

Oh my FUCKING GOD. I CAN'T DO this.

The tears are streaming down as I write this. I've just come back to bed from the living room where she lies sleeping. I can't do this. I'm breathing in shallow gasps, mouth-breathing, my nose a snurffly muddle of concrete mixed with excess tears. It's just too much. Too much. It's TOO MUCH I want to shout, but I don't, too many people asleep around me. I scream a little inside, then choke it back down. Get a grip, girl. Breathe. Say something. Say anything. Don't fall off the bed or anything stupid like that.

There, some levity seems to help. And then I reread what I've written and I see her sleeping there, lying on the bed she's chosen for herself, her room, her space. Lying there so still. So beautiful. So full of thought and love and life and I can't see the page anymore oh crap there we go again HOLD YOURSELF TOGETHER DAMMIT.

They say E loosens the tears. Fucking bullshit; if it's loosened anything it's my tongue, I can swear like a sailor if want, now. No, okay, that was just an excuse to cuss. They're looser. Sure. But really, who the hell wouldn't be a wreck like this? I can't do this. It's going to kill me. It's going to tear my heart out and leave me nothing to live with. What use authenticity if it's nought but authentic grief? Crazy-talk, maybe. I don't know or care, it's nearly midnight and I stop judging at 22:30. 

I can't do this.

I can "transition". Not a problem. I can face the world and be me proudly and happily. Bring on the slurs, bring on the rejection, public: see if I give a damn (I might), see if I listen (I won't). I can delay this transition. I can take it slowly, I can take it easy on the woman beside me, take it easy on the family and friends. I'm good at all that, I'm good with all that.

I can't keep hiding from her. I can't hide from my daughter.

Oh boy, absurdist interlude time. The fire alarm just now goes off in the wing of the apartment complex adjacent to ours. Fearing that whatever idiotic trash fire or burnt late-dinner set things off might spread to our wing, I hurry out to the front hall where the apartment's klaxon is mounted, pry the bloody thing loose, and disconnect it from the system. Thus is our sleep protected, thus our dreams held safe. Or, well, thus others' sleep is safeguarded. I'm sitting in the dark over here, still a wreck, but quieter now. Ah, finally, the fire department has stood-down the alarm.

Oh, right. I was a wreck. I'm exhausted, now, but I still remember the key points. My little girl, crying in the corner of the closet, telling me she's "jealous of my love". Her less-and-less veiled jabs, these past weeks, asking me why I don't speak to her, why I'm not sharing my heart with her. I've told myself it's because it's a complex thing, an adult thing, but that's really just the same half-lie I'm telling her. I'm not sharing because I've promised to wait. I've promised, despite all my instincts.

But she knows. She knows. And it hurts and scares her that there's something I won't tell her. It scares her more than any of the things I'll have to say, even the separation, even the changes to come for my body, and I can see what it's doing to her. There's never been a thing like this that clearly is affecting me but that I will not share. I'm afraid it may be breaking her little heart and that carves mine into ribbons.

The next two days, I will collect her early from school and take the afternoon off. Wednesday, i will have several multi-hour periods, mid-day, to talk with her. I have to let her back in. She is afraid that I don't love her, afraid that I'm rejecting her. I can't--I won't-- leave that fear unaddressed.

Wish me luck. And wish me hope for all this. Sometimes I have trouble seeing the way through.

1 comment:

Gwen said...

My thoughts are with you, Rachel. You can do this. Call or message me if you want some advice.

-Gwen