Now

So I just don't know. I think I would like to have a place to have a voice, but I just feel so shut down. I have become to afraid to commit my voice to something that is tangible. I have become so afraid of having what I say be used against me. I know this sounds so victim like. On the other hand, I have become this way. The plan then has to be for me to just say something, anything, everyday. Just the way I have started doing the bike everyday. How come it is so easy for me to do what needs to be done when it isn't something that is just for me? Sometimes I feel that my whole existence is only to be on call to serve everyone else. My job is me meeting the needs of others, to make other peoples lives better and easier and to make them more productive, to serve to help. It is great that at least there I get paid for it. And I don't want it to sound like I resent my job at all. I love my job. I love being of service. I just don't like only being of service in every aspect of my life. At home, no one talks to me unless it is for their needs to be met. No one ever asks me how my day was, unless it is a lead in to how bad theirs was. And if I should reach out and want to talk, they don't listen. The eyes glaze over, they keep looking at the clock. This sounds so whinny. I just want someone to listen and hear me. I just want to have something. This was my choice. I know that. It just gets so hard sometimes to have no one to talk to. No one hold my hand. No one. I thought I was doing the right thing. I stayed in a relationship for the kid. I made my bed and I am trying to lie in it and most days I manage without much discomfort. I just fear that I have made the totally wrong choices. That I have fucked everything up. And now it is to late to do any thing about it. All I can do now is ride it out and hope that I haven't done any damage that can't be undone or overcome. But maybe I have.

Anyway, back to my having to just do it. I used to write, poetry, short stories. I used to have a voice I could write stuff down. And I need to find it again. Even if it is only here.

So, I am going to try to come here, ever day. And just talk for a couple minutes a day. Even if it is only about polotics or the wheather.

Maybe I have ruined my child, ruined myself, and maybe even him. Maybe he would have done something with his life if I had left when I had a chance. Now there are so many entanglements. The greatest of which is financial. I have no way to afford to stay here. I can't even afford a one bedroom apt on my own in this area. Then there is the child. Despite what she says, she cares about him. I will once again have made the man go away. It will be my fault, she will be hurt. I stay in the prayer that his even minor presence is some sense of stability. And I think on some level I have given her that. But there is the greater bad which is having an adult around who isn't around. Who hides in their room and worships the TV and a bottle. I put my existence on hold. I am here. I am always here. I try to be at the disposal of my child. Available if she wants. Not that she cares, and she shouldn't really. It should be something she takes for granted on some level. Just not to the point, I think, that I have no other being.

I have ceased to be an actual person. I have been celibate for 4 years. Not by choice (though I have not gone out and had affairs and I have stayed with him for the whole time, so that part is by choice, but see above for the reason behind that), he sent me out of the bedroom and has never asked me back. My crimes are trying to initiate and snoring. I have no friends to speak to, I am to "busy" being available to the child. And even if I did somehow manage to have friends, could I ever let anyone see the mess that is my non-life.

We go round and round in circles. Somehow, it is mean of me to not just shut up about the truth. Somehow, my opinion has less weight than his does. He doesn't respect me. He likes to spout out his self help bullshit while he wallows in a bottle and a TV. He wants to critisize how I am doing things, he doesn't know what the "right" way is. Oh wait, he isn't trying to say he is right, just that he has a different opinion, and oh, by the way my opinion is not "wrong" its just that his is more correct. By virtue of his being a male, or that he was privlaged enough to go to college. Not sure which of those it is, but his certainly has more weight than mine.

How do I do this for one more year? and thats all it is. Just a little over a year more. I promised myself that she should get to graduate from the same school she has attended for the majority of her high school career. I want her to have that, she has expressed that she wants the stability of not moving. After high school if she wants to leave with me then she is welcome to come. But I have to figure out how to make it this last year. I want to run away so bad some days I can't think of anything else. I cruise craigs list and dream of what my life might be like when I can leave him. How do I just do this. I am trying, and my greatest fear is that it is all wrong and her and I will have nothing left, on an emotional level, when this is over.

So I think I am done for now. She is again an hour late calling to check in. It really isn't that much to ask for. A phone call to let the mom know what is going on.