missing

I am so tired, so terribly tired. I can't see, the world is a blur, the numbers on the dashboard seem to have lost any meaning. I just want to get home. Home. I skip the journey, the highway, the back roads; boring exposition, who cares? Home, where I can take off my shoes and get a drink and just sit and relax.

Home. I made it home, unlocked the door. Walked through the house, to the kitchen where I put away the leftover food. To the bathroom, my nice, clean bathroom. It was all fine, until I washed my hands and glanced in the mirror. I should know by now that mirrors aren't my friends. Suddenly home isn't home anymore. I'm a mother without children - this is just a box full of useless crap. I feel the emptiness in the air, the hollow pain in my chest. I'm no one, I'm nothing, my babies aren't here, without them, what good is being home? What good am I, a stupid woman in a box full of crap?

My eyes are drawn back to the mirror, to that stupid woman reflected there. With her tired look, and her crumpling face. The sobs rise like bile, vomiting out noise. Tears redden my face. In the movies they cry - they look lost and sad: I cry - I look deranged and broken. Maybe because I am broken. Perhaps because I've done everything wrong, chosen the wrong branch in the road, the wrong path through the trees. Because all I can feel right now is the frantic hollowness where my heart should be. The acute absence of my life, my boys, my babies.

My brain dwells on Noah, my funny genius. His dopey jokes, and crazy noises. Those brown eyes that see more than he can understand. Always looking, that one. His brush cut for summer, crooked smile and a tan I could never get. My oldest son, my little alien, who scared me half the way to grey as he grew inside me. I cry harder.

I break away from the mirror, anxious to leave the bright light and walk into Zach's room. My baby, so thin and tall now. Poor thing was sick two nights ago, last night. I rocked him for almost an hour, held him and told him it would be ok. Running back and forth to the bathroom, cleaning him up, making him rinse out his mouth every time he threw up. Laying next to me, my holding his hand until his breathing got regular, till his pain let up and he could sleep. Sleeping that light sleep that mothers do, listening for every whimper, alert to each movement. I rock back and forth, keening in abject sorrow.

Exhaustion makes everything so much more difficult, is that it? If I wasn't exhausted, it wouldn't hit me this hard. I wouldn't be crashing through the house like some drunken wildebeest, crying like a banshee. I wouldn't be doubting my sanity, every choice that I've made to get me where I am. All of those corny sayings that you see when you are a new parent, you don't understand them for years and years.

Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone

Tonight I understand that, tonight I feel my heart missing. I know my boys are safe, at home with their dad. Not this home, not with me. I wish I could die when I wasn't near them, so I didn't have to feel this horrendous ache. There is no medicine for this, no balm or cure. Only this tightness in my throat, the crushing feeling behind my eyes. All the while, thinking these things, sobbing with abandon, gasping for air between horrible whimpering sounds. I despise being this weak, curse my stupid pathetic will, not being able to find the logic or composure to stop. Everything is fine, they are safe, I am safe. They love me, and know that I love them too. Yet I cannot stop this damned hysterical crying.

It's all my fault, that's it. I left looking for happiness, sure in the knowledge that if was getting all my love and validation from my children, then I'd be crushed when they grew up. Stupid of me, because now I get to be crushed EVERY time we are apart. I did find love, and it is wonderful, but it can't make up for this feeling now. The feeling of being smashed by the tide on the rocky cliffs, battered and broken. So my brain has decided that it was lose/lose this whole time: stay in a marriage where the only affection was from the children, or leave the children for affection, missing them so much that it's nearly impossible to appreciate that affection.

I'm so tired. I want to die. I want my Mommy. I want this damn pain to stop. I want my babies. I want to stop crying. I'm tired.

At least I'm home, right?