Fear and Loathing

Shame is an insidious monster. Rearing its head--perhaps unbidden, but always lethal. Paralyzing. Suffocating.

Sometimes life serves up everything you ever doubted about yourself in super-size helpings all at once. I'm not a good mother. I don't know my kids. I lose my temper too easily. I'm difficult. I'm lazy. I'm afraid. I'm a fraud. I'm sad. I'm tired. I'm not enough. I never will be.

I want to throw up, but instead I chew my nails to the quick...my cuticles until they bleed. I grind my teeth and hold my breath and fantasize about worst-case scenarios while the voice inside my head that repeats everything negative I've ever heard hurled in my direction just won't shut up.

I know it's not real. I know it's only temporary. I know the sun will come out tomorrow (somewhere on earth, if not here).

But right now I'm just so tired. So tired. And I want to hide away in the dark. Alone. For a long time.

And I know I won't.

But I allow myself this evening of self-pity. Just this one. In my very own, run-of-the-mill, melodramatic way. Bleh.

Love. Sorry. Fuck.

This is Savannah's answer to Eat Love Pray

These are, to me, the three most important words in the English Language--a fact that I discovered after a couple emotionally-charged hours of fighting. Fighting with my daughter, my financial situation, the shooting pain in my ass, Liberty Towing in Layton, Utah (BOYCOTT! VANDALIZE! CURSE!)and my stupid, uncontrollable, vulgar, patronizing mouth that never quite knows when to say when.

After a few hours of tearing out my emotional guts and rearranging them in different ways that might be artistic or at the very least sympathetic, I found myself once again draped across my eldest daughter's bed offering her a Reese's peanut butter cup, a pathetic smile and yet another open-chest display of love and contrition at not being her perfect (or mine) idea of "mother."

She was reading(with dripping disdain that makes me proud) an assigned book: "Eat Pray Love." As I waxed on

and on

and on

repeating platitudes and explanations and declarations that she has most likely heard a million times, ignored almost a million times and would probably rather stab herself in the eye than hear again--I noticed that everything I wanted to say boiled down to these three words: Love. Sorry. Fuck.

That basically sums it up. If we could not speak any other words for the rest of time I think we could survive with just those three. Especially since Fuck is such a versatile word--useful and appropriate for nearly every occasion.

Of course, I blurted out this revelation to her. Savannah immediately looked down at the book in her hand and said, "That's what this should be called. It would be so much better."

And thus, we said goodnite with smiles (somewhat crooked and raw) upon our faces.