Yesterday was the last day of the school year. The last day of half-days for SuperChic. The last day of elementary school for Rapunzel.

I remember those days. As the clock tick-tick-ticked it’s way to Summer vacation I would get more and more anxious. Every tick was a second closer to freedom, a second closer to days spent lying in the sun, staying up all night, and sleeping all day.

Hot Summer days where we ran around in bathing suits, played in the sprinkler, and were always sticky with sugar from Kool-Aid popsicles.

Those days are nothing more than memories now. Good memories, but still memories.

Now, the tick of the clock brings me closer and closer to endless hours of trying to amuse my girls.

Hours where they can’t run through the sprinklers, because we live in the desert during a drought. Hours where they’ll beg me for popsicles and trips to the beach.

Hours where I will surely loose my mind in the lines at Disneyland, cleaning sand out of my hair from trips to the beach, and spending too many hours in traffic on the freeway, all to make memories for my girls.

Warning.

I took this video while driving home last week. I drive a stick. The video is sideways. If it’ll bug you close your eyes and listen.

I don’t even know where to start with this post. There is so much going on in such a small space and it’s all yelling at the top of its lungs, “Pick Me! Pick Me! NO, not him! I said PICK MEEE!!!!”

So if you’re looking for a happy cheery post about how wonderful Bug’s birthday was, check here or here. (Though they probably won’t post until tomorrow or possibly Monday, because we’re all pretty tired.)

The last week has been really hard on me and I don’t even know why. Shawn came home on Monday instead of Sunday for the second week in a row, but he didn’t have to leave until Wednesday, so it’s not like I was shorted in my allotted time to spend with him. We even got one of the things I wanted to do done. SuperChic’s cat Snap had four kittens last Saturday while we were at a friend’s house. So I now have four cute little furballs and their proud mommy living under my dresser. You’d think all that would cheer me up, but it hasn’t.

This week I’ve found myself breaking into tears for no reason. And I really mean no reason, not they’re-so-stupid-I-just-can’t-tell-you reasons. The latest incident was today. Imagine a house full of happy, smiling, laughing people, and all of a sudden you break into tears. Luckily I realized it was coming and left the room just in time, as in I turned the corner and the tears started flowing. If I’d stayed in the chair even two seconds longer I would have started blubbering in front of everyone. The last thing I needed was a room full of people staring at me asking, “Okay then. What’s up with her?”

Because then Bren would have had to follow me from the room to find out what was wrong and would’ve spend the rest of the day worrying in the back of her mind. That is not what I want. Though writing this post is definitely going to cause the same reaction.

This is not the first time I’ve had this happen. The last time was the Summer of 2005 and we had to move back to California because of it. Imagine getting a phone call at work from someone crying so hard they can barely talk and then all they can say is, “I can’t do this anymore.”

What does that even mean? I didn’t want to die, though I often wondered if Shawn, the girls, and everyone would be better off if I just disappeared. I didn’t know where I would go or what I would do, but I felt as if I were useless.

I’m starting to feel that way again.

I guess.

Sort of.

I think.

I don’t even know how to describe what and how I’m feeling. I don’t know what’s causing it and I don’t know how to stop it.

I’m the person that people talk to when they need to talk. I’m the one that you can call at two a.m., because your husband is leaving you. I’m the one who’ll drop everything and come help you move even if I really don’t have time, because I’m laying flooring and all my furniture is in the kitchen. That is who I am. I’m a shoulder to lean on, an ear to listen, and an advice-giver. I can talk you through anything. I listen well and see things that you don’t but others do and won’t tell you.

I am not the person who cries for no reason. I am not the person who needs someone to talk to at 2 a.m. I am not the one who needs a shoulder.

But suddenly I’m finding out that I am.

There have been so many things that have gone wrong in my life, but there are also so many that have gone right.

I was sexually molested by two different people at two different times in my life. Both between the ages of 7 and 10, both times by people I trusted. Neither of them were family.

The first time was by the son of my parents’ friends. He was 13 or 14 years old. I told, no one believed me, and it kept happening. He moved, it stopped, but I was now sleeping in the same bedroom where it happened. I was there for 8 years.

The second time was by a friend’s grandfather. I was in the fourth grade. I told, my dad beat the crap out of him, and he was never left alone with his granddaughter again. In the fifth grade we watched one of those stupid videos and I freaked out. The cops were called, but it had been over a year. I was more freaked out after talking to the police than I was before.

My dad was an abusive @ss. I don’t know when it started, but until I was in 11th grade I don’t remember a time when he wasn’t that way. I told others about it, but no one believed me. He only beat me and my mom. My sophomore year I ended up with a concussion and he went to jail. When he came home he made my life a living hell.

My junior year, I fell in love. We’d become friends the year before and started dating the first few weeks of my junior year. I lost my virginity to him a week or so after I turned 17. I was dumb and in love and desperately needed someone to want me, and he did. When I got pregnant the following spring he said it wasn’t his, but couldn’t tell me whose it could possibly be. After talking, yelling, and lots of pressure, I had an abortion in July 1996.

He left for Colorado the day before the procedure, which should have been a clue. I stayed with him through most of my senior year. I say “most” because my dad kicked me out of the house when I came home after staying out all night the week before Valentine’s Day 1997. (Though it actually was innocent. I was at school volunteering with the Rotary club, of which I was VP. My mom got sick and couldn’t come get me, and my boyfriend’s mom’s car was in the shop. I tried everyone I knew. No one could take me home and my dad refused to come get me.

We broke up at Easter.

I met Shawn at the end of April 1997. We got married May 22, 1997. Everyone thought we “had” to get married.

I got pregnant in August 1997. Rapunzel was born May 21, 1998—the day before our first anniversary.

Early Summer 2000 I miscarried.

October 2000 pregnant, December 2000 miscarriage, a week before Christmas.

February 2001 pregnant. April 2001 we move to Illinois. May 2001 I go to the ER with heavy bleeding. July 2001 we find out the baby is a girl, and she has Trisomy 13. She is not expected to live. August 2001 I go into labor. I give birth to an angel, Ashley Elizabeth. We bury her the following week.

February 2002 pregnant. I have a level-2 ultrasound and an amniocentesis. July 2002, I find out it’s a girl, and she’s healthy. August/September/October 2002, I’m on bedrest. November 22, 2002 SuperChic was born.

I had my tubes tied when she was a year old. She was number six, and another pregnancy would probably kill me. I’m ok with that though. When I look at a little baby, or a pregnant friend I get that all-too-familiar ache. But when I look at my family I don’t feel like there’s someone missing.

With everything that’s gone wrong in my life I should not be happily married to a man who not only loves me, but worships me. I should not have two beautiful daughters that love me unconditionally. I should not have in-laws that I don’t call “in-laws” but Mom, Dad, and Sister. I should not have a niece who loves me so much that she cries when I leave. I should not have friends that I can call and talk to and hang out with.

Based on my history, what I “should” have is a drug addiction, a husband who beats me, and kids who hate me for doing to them what was done to me. I should have in-laws that never want to see me and wish I weren’t around. I should have non-friends who ignore my calls because I’m a loser and they’re tired of me and my crap.

When I compare what I do have to what I “should” have, I am astounded. Statistics show that people like me don’t get the happy ending, yet I have it.

So why am I so sad?

A conversation with SuperChic:

Me: You need a bath, you stink.

SuperChic: No baths

Me: You can take a bath tomorrow morning before school.

S: No more baths.

Me: Would you like to take a shower?

S: No!.

Me: You want to go to school all stinky.

S: Yes. I never want to take a bath or shower again.

Me. Then I guess you’ll never get married, ’cause boys don’t like stinky girls.

S: Yes they do.

Me: No they don’t. They like girls who smell nice and clean.

S: Not the cool ones.

********************************************************************

A conversation with Rapunzel

Rapunzel: I don’t like driving by the grave.

Me: You mean the cemetery? Graves are what the casket goes in. The cemetery is what the graves are in.

R: Oh. Well I don’t like them. They stink.

Me: They what?

R: They stink.

Me: Why?

R: Because of all the dead people.

Me: They do not stink.

R: Yes they do. It has a dead body in it, it has to stink.

Me. Nope they use embalming fluid to make it so your body doesn’t rot so fast. Otherwise you couldn’t see people before they were buried. They’d be all stinky and their skin would be coming off and there’d be lots of bugs.

R: Well, when it does start to rot it’s going to smell and the smell will come out.

Me: Nope. They seal the casket, but you can just bury me in a pine box and let the worms eat me. I won’t need my body anymore.

R: Well, what about those room ones? They have to smell bad.

Me: You mean a mausoleum or tomb? They’re still in a casket. It shouldn’t smell.

R: You don’t know. You’ve never been in one.

Me: No, I haven’t, but your Grandpa’s Grandpa or Uncle is buried in a wall in a cemetery. I’ve been there and he wasn’t the only one. There was a whole wall with dead people in it and it didn’t smell at all.

R: Why was he buried in a wall?????

Me: I have no clue. Ask your Grandpa.