Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Cilice

My particular, special pathology is that I can make anything into a weapon to use against myself.
When I take pleasure in working out and caring for my physical body, I am vain.
Selfish for buying clothes for myself.
A trip to a craft store today with my mom reminds me of all the things I didn't do for my kids: I should have decorated more for the holidays, made scrapbooks, did projects with them.

And so, left to my own devices, left alone with myself, the enemy, in a 5-hour car ride, the litany begins.
These are the things that break my heart:
neither of my kids lives with me, or with each other, and their relationship is not strong.
my kids live 5 hours away from me.
the time my son cried, tantrumming in the truck when I wouldn't let him up on the roof with a hammer.
the time I left my daughter overnight in the hospital with she had her tonsils removed, or that bone spur taken off her thumb, I can't even recall.
the abortions.
the divorces.
my ignorance, which seems only to expand exponentially.

I carefully craft a thick hairshirt: these are my wounds. The pain that cleaves my soul. And this is how I choose to define myself.
But if it wasn't these things, it would other things...

Sometimes I'm so tired but I can't quiet the voices in my head that whisper Fail, fail, fail.

1 comment:

  1. "Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall." A great line from Shakespeare's Measure By Measure is what came to mind reading your post. I see you rising, my friend.

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