Love, Justine

WOMEN’S CENTER

January 29th, 2018

Day 210

Monday

12:30pm

I really hope we don’t have to go to the gym today. Usually that’s at 1pm. I had therapy this morning with my regular therapist, then at 1:45pm I go to Crossroads to see my second therapist. 

Fun.

Great. 

Time for gym.

Of course.

4pm

Well, we went to the computer lab instead of the gym, but I forgot to look up this new medication that my rheumatologist put me on–Sulfasalazine. I get bloodwork to get on it tomorrow–it can make your blood counts low, so I have to get bloodwork every three weeks while I’m on it. 

Today is my mother’s birthday–I doubt that I’ll wish her a happy one. The 26th was Dubya’s, 36th birthday. I’m six months older than him.

The old country song “Legends” just came on the radio and reminded me of him. We were kind of legendary in our day–we loved each other so much. I guess that’s why it ruined him when I left him. I was like he turned into an instant asshole. Not that it was all that instant–it took him quite a while to divorce me. But my mother had her claws in him by then, and there was no turning back after that. His friends were also in his ear about what a junkie and a slut I was, too, so there was that. And it isn’t as if he didn’t ask me to come back, but I just couldn’t.

Luckily he and the babysitter were there to take care of Tiger. And then, after a while, the woman he is married to now too. I am still thinking a lot about what Tiger said to me about them–that they don’t even like each other, but they got married anyway. 

Shame. 

I always thought that if someone made him happy again, that he would be nicer to me.

In other news, Superman didn’t come yesterday because he was sick, so it was just King, which was fine. I wonder if they’ll make up the time like they’re supposed to.

King and I played some games and painted pictures–it was nice. He even painted his name on his picture, which was a first. He came bearing a folder of 15 or 20 of he and Superman’s finest works, so that was nice. I fed him too much chocolate, and he got paint on his button-down shirt, but I didn’t care, even when my Dad complained that he wouldn’t eat his supper. 

Whatever, bitches. 

I’ll do what I want with my own kids, thank you very much.

Now I’m riding back from Wellsboro from my second therapy appointment of the day. I usually just repeat what I said in the first one in the second one, not that I mind. 

It’s still nice to get out of the Center.

It was a nice day today too–somewhere around 40 degrees. I don’t know if we’ll be able to go to a meeting tonight, but I hope so. There’s a weather advisory for snow, we’ll see. Of course we still have to go to work when there’s a weather advisory, but we can’t go to meetings.

Stupid.

10pm

We did end up going to a meeting, and good thing. I made Red cry today without meaning to, and tensions were running pretty high at the Center. The meeting was good, except for this one creeper dude who weirds everybody out. 

I called the twins earlier. Superman has strep throat, and King doesn’t. They both went to the doctor today. All they had to say about it was that they got popsicles. 

My parents must have gotten a new phone set, because they both were able to talk to me at the same time, which was nice. Superman said to me again, “Mommy, even I miss you.”

I love that.

Nickolai’s new word is “pussy-footing.” She doesn’t know what it means, but she says it all of the time anyway–it’s pretty funny. 

Time for lights out.

January 30th, 2018

Tuesday

Day 211 

12pm

I had nightmares last night that the boys were dead. This happens whenever I feel helpless. The dreams wake me up in a drenching cold sweat, and I have to change my shirt and flip my comforter to the other side. Then I try and try to go back to sleep, but I am scared that the dreams will come back, so I can’t. I feel small and alone and helpless to stop the PTSD monster from creeping in and overtaking my brain with its poisonous fangs and bloody claws. It terrifies me, and I think of the times when the boys were small, and I would feel like I had to guard their doorway while they were asleep so that The Something, of The Nothing, would Get Them. Would take them away from me.

No sleep.

Sleep was dangerous. 

“Little slices of death,” Edgar Allen Poe called sleep.

I think he was onto something.

My little slices of death include pictures straight out of Hell, with little babies missing skin, crying with bloody bandages on. 

Little white caskets that carried every parent’s worst nightmare sitting at the front of the church. 

So far away, but too close at the same time.

All I can hear is my ragged breath and my heart pounding in my ears as my feet carry me against my will toward the little white box that will be my child’s forever home.

I approach the casket and it is my Kaylee, my perfect little angel, dressed from head to toe in white to hide the sores. 

Little white shoes, white tights, and a white dress, the only one she would ever wear. 

No white gowns for graduation or a wedding, only a tiny white three-month old sized dress for her final show.

Even in death with her eyes glued closed and her mouth set in a perfect line, she is strikingly beautiful. 

I reach out to touch her soft face, but she is changing now, morphing into Superman, and then King appears beside him, lying in the same casket. 

I panic, trying desperately in vain to remember what is nightmare and what is reality. 

Which of my children are alive and which are dead?!

I somehow can’t remember, and I can feel the panic rising from my belly to my chest and my throat is closing with it, and I can’t breathe.

I can’t remember how Superman and King died!

Did I miss it somehow??

Was I not there?

Or…is this another dream…yes…it has to be…my sick, stupid mind is playing a nasty trick on me again. 

The dream dissipates as I concentrate hard, harder than I ever have, to open, open my eyes. 

Open open open please help me God open, OPEN my eyes!

I wake up cold and wet, breathing hard, with goosebumps from head to to, staring at the clock on my bedside table. 

It’s right on time, 3am.

The witching hour.

The time of night, every night, that Ethan would awake me with his hoarse, weak voice begging me, crying for more pain medication. 

Welcome to my nightmare. 

It’s 3am again.

2:30pm 

Enough of that. 

Mr. Big won’t let me call my psychiatrist to get more Prazosin, my nightmare medication. 

He says there’s no chemical solution to a spiritual problem.

Jerk.