The Weight

Entry 1.     5:36 p.m.

It's sixty days tomorrow. A slow-rolling smog, grief and loss, now obscure almost any light. My head  weighs 1000 lbs. Everything takes effort. I would compare it to attempting to sprint through partially crystallized honey. Every effort requires exertion, and you never know when you will get cut by the sharp edges.

I am tired, listless, hopeless. I have given up so much, for so little. I have struggled so long, and with little to show for it. The effort wasn't pointless or useless, and the dividends of the peace of mind of my children is real, but I--I am an empty vessel and feel terrible all the time.  

The big dog ate my wallet the other night. She is a force of nature. She chewed up my debit card in the process. While we have credit cards, I have never activated mine, I don't use them.  So, I went on the hunt for Jenny's debit card. Always forward thinking, after she died I put it somewhere so as not to lose it.  If only I could remember where. I went through a container holding all of her cards that she kept, thinking I would find it there. I didn't. I did find key cards to hotel's she frequented with el pinchè motherfucker. I can't say I loved that.

Her things are all around. I need to get them out, but it is painful erasing a life, our life together. I am not lamenting, I am not stretched on her grave. While I miss her desperately, my sorrow for her passing is surpassed by my relief she is no longer suffering.  No, I am grieving the lie we

lived, the lie built around me like the buildings surrounding that little old lady's house in Ballard, until I couldn't but notice. I am trying to understand the cruelty of Jenny ignoring the girls for so long, that only became evident to me when she fell ill. While the girls are just fine, thank you very much, the loss of the relationship with their mother is something they have felt for a long time, and a pain they will struggle with until they die. That it wasn't fixable is what fills me with woe, that I didn't fix it, however ridiculous that sounds. 

I am grieving the loss of my identity, I who never thought I could be so betrayed and so clueless. I, who thought I was loved. I, who thought she was the best mother in the world. I who was fooled over and again, right up until the end. Every day or two brought another revelation, and when she was dying and we unlocked her phone, the whole of the secrets contained in it kept me shocked and reeling for days, weeks. I have put it away now. I don't need to know anymore. She loathed me, she worshiped el pinche. She lied with abandon about me, denigrated me even more so. 

And so this is what I am wrestling with, or not actually dealing with at all, maybe. It just sits here, this reality, incurable, indelible. And I miss her so much I ache, despite everything.