Sinking

Struggling isn't the right word. I don't know that there are words to properly describe what I am feeling. My illness has me down. The pain had gotten better, but now it's worse. I've turned to taking hour long baths in boiling hot water to ease the exploding pain.

I'm anxious and fatigued. The days are blending together and I find myself relying on my calendar to tell me when and where I need to be. I just can't focus.

Friday, we took Meghan to tour a preschool. She'll be starting in August. We liked the school a lot and plan to put our application in the second registration opens on Tuesday. But that word, like a dark cloud, August, looms over me. I know it's not the same, I know it's only a few hours a day, but it feels like a sentence. In August, I lose my baby girl. In August, I will be all alone.

I haven't been alone in over five years. I haven't gone places by myself, ever. I feel more capable of doing now, but there's that overwhelming alone, alone, alone, repeating in my head. To say that I don't know what I'll do with myself is an understatement. Just a mile from the apartment where we used to live. A cozy, happy family of four. Before. I've fought parking in front our old place and sobbing, each time I've been in town on my own. But with 3 hours, 5 days a week, will I be able to withhold? What good would it do?

When I think of that time, hiding in that hotel for a week too scared to go back there, I don't think of waking up in the night screaming or how we planned our suicides before resolving to make it work for her, I think of how when people visited, I laughed and joked. I let my shield of humor hide my pain. For years after, my guilt stole that laugh, leaving a hollow, faked shell behind. I think of the candle lighting and how I couldn't go. I think of the news stories, both on tv and in the paper, vowing to never Google myself and how I fear people doing just that. And I think of Meghan. How small she was, such an easy baby. I think of how she saved us. Unknowingly, we gave her the middle name of Joy. Foreshadowing? And now, August, my Joy is leaving me. Tell me your niceties, call it what you will, but it's how I feel.

Let the countdown begin.