Puerarchy

I turn to my blog because I know better than to turn to you with my unfiltered, raw thoughts—thoughts I probably won’t even believe or agree with tomorrow.

One day.

At 74, you get one day to throw a pity party, watch Charlton Heston movies back to back, and wander around the house quiet, sullen, and not eating. I concede that. But the pity party has to end tomorrow.

You know, if I tried to throw a tantrum all day, you’d read me the riot act. You’d tell me to act like an adult. Bitch, I’m half your age—take your own advice. I’m too nice.

Everyone who has ever said they were in love with me eventually treated me as a burden. I’m so sick of it, because you are actually getting the best version of me anyone has ever seen. I hold down a job. I don’t fight you. I don’t demean you. I do laundry and change the sheets every week. I make dinner almost every night. I clean. Yet it is still not enough. It has never been enough. It wasn’t enough for my first husband, who I did even less for, and it isn’t enough for you.

I’m so sick of the double standard—how the men in my life get to be ~ depressed ~ get to wallow in their own shit for a day or two or a week or a month, but me? Oh, jeez, if I shed one tear over something hurtful said to me, it must be my time of the month, because God forbid I have a stupid, measly, fucking human emotion like hurt.

You don’t love me like you used to. Then again, I don’t love you like I used to. I don’t know which is worse: people who give up, or people who won’t.

Oh, by tomorrow, after I’ve written it all out, taken a shower, slept, and started a new day, I’ll be all sympathetic. We all get down. We all are flawed. We are all human. We are all trying our best.

I probably will apologize again, even though I apologized multiple times today, and for what exactly, I couldn’t say.

Tomorrow morning, you’ll feel foolish. You’ll see how you went to bed at 4:30 p.m. and threw away a whole day we could have had together. You’ll see how I made dog food, did laundry, changed the sheets, cleaned the kitchen floor, and watered the garden while you were feeling sorry for yourself—for what?

And I’ll be grateful you made me mad enough to get that much done in one day.

It will continue—some grand pattern, some horrific tango—in which you feel more inferior and, each time you show it, I prove it.

Tomorrow, I will see you pilling the cat and crooning sweet things to her, and I’ll remember why I stay. I will think one bad day is nothing against months of good ones. I will realize that, deep down inside, I wanted to be a little shit all day too—I just channeled it into a shitty blog and stupid chores. I’ll see you sleeping with the innocent face of a baby. I’ll recall that you were not even eighteen when they handed you a gun and made you kill someone. I’ll catch the flicker of a boyish grin as you describe a motorcycle you once owned. Use the garage door I broke and you fixed.

I’ll somehow find a way. And so will you.