My Ravenous Heart...

I poured my heart out into a delicate white cup that sat on a saucer.  I tempered it with cream and sugar to sweeten its bitterness.  But it made me grimace when I tasted it so I spit it back into the cup.  And dumped the remains down the drain.

Now my heart needs a refill.  It needs something more palatable this time…more soulfully edible.  My heart is ravenously hungry for something delicious…something savory and sweet…like chocolate.  

Yes, my heart needs this unctuously dark and mysterious treat.  Something it will not tire of easily but desire little by little every day.  A nibble on Tuesday…a sip on Thursday…a spoonful on Sunday until it’s sated. Which will be never. 

Single mother's lament...

As usual my daughter did not want to go to bed last night.  She complained of things hurting.  She needed water.  She needed to go to the bathroom.  It was a seemingly never ending barrage of requests and complaints that continued to frustrate me to no end.  Then I lost my cool.  I yelled for her to JUST GET IN BED…NO MORE ANYTHING! She sulked and returned to her room apparently defeated.  Then as if she know exactly what would make my achilles snap she shouted from her room, “I want my daddy! Where’s my daddy?”  The words crowded in my chest and inhibited my lungs from inflating.  

I could not believe she just said that.  It was an absolute nightmare.  I have dreaded the daddy discussion from the moment the door hit him in the ass as he was running out of it.  I had no idea that it would come so soon.  I imagined that in her teen years she would sour of me and in a heated rage tell me she wanted to go live with her father or something like that.   A response to this I have planned and ready in my holster.  But not for her three year old request for her daddy.  

I bawled almost immediately out of frustration with her and that I have to tell her that her father is a ghost.  She heard me and crept down the hall asking repeatedly, “What’s the matter mommy?”  To which I could only respond by requesting that she get back in bed.  But she was relentless.  She was concerned.  I wanted to tell her I am upset because your father is an asshole and a loser.  And you deserve someone so much better than him because he is selfish and no good for anyone including himself.   But those words are reserved for her teenage years.  

Instead I escorted her back to bed and told her that she did not have a daddy.  I told her that I was both mommy and daddy because her daddy could not be a good daddy.  I told her that it’s just mommy.  Mommy is the one that takes care of you.  And I will be here for you forever.  She said, “okay” in her tiniest voice.

I am not sure she understood what I was saying.  I am sure that it won’t be the last time she requests her daddy…the phantom.  I know my skin should be thicker. And I will work to be stronger.  It is enough that he broke my heart.   I can’t let him break hers too.

Too tired to name this shit...

The need to have good conversation with ease overwhelms me.  Painfully drawn out words followed by awkward silence are the order of the day.  It saddens me.  Where are the confessions and professions?  What’s happened to coffee and cigarettes and midnight ramblings followed by omelets and more coffee?  

Eyes burned by the sunrise squinting and smiling.  Desires interwoven with words and stares and glances and smirks and giggles.  Where is imagination?  Where is the how do you do?  Getting to know someone does not include asking about how big their tits are or if they like their mouth fucked.  Even if the answers are big and often does that make you want to get to know me?  Does it make you want to know what my desires and fears are as a human being?  No, it makes you want to get to know my tits and my mouth.  Well they are grounded and can’t come out to play. 

Deep to the core my values are old-fashioned however forthcoming I may be.  My wont is to volley words…pass them back and forth until the game meets matchpoint.  Then and only then can you advance to the next round.  You can’t just skip to the victory lap!  You can’t just walk up and claim your prize when you have not even played the game!

I’m tired.  It’s 5am and my metaphors are shit.  My lyricism is half past dead.  But my cynicism is brewing with the morning coffee.  I will sip slowly and in it dunk a big dry hunk of my disintegrating desires and choke them down.  Mmmm…the breakfast of failed champions.

She's crushing my soul...ok so I exaggerate.

I can’t have anything for myself that my daughter doesn't muck up with her grubby little kid hands.  I just found my bottle of Crystal Light water caved in on one side and cap half unscrewed as I stepped on a rug saturated with peach iced tea.  She broke my headphones today and pooped on the floor in the hallway because she did not want to stay on the potty!  Parenthood is beyond difficult.  Single-parenthood is excruciatingly difficult.  I can’t just hand her off to someone and say…You take her before I kill her.  I actually have to restrain myself from murder. 

A couple of evenings ago I stopped at the grocery store on the way home from my sister’s.  Eva was asleep in her seat and I knew that waking her was going to be a fool’s errand.  But…I needed shit in the store and I wanted ice cream.  I have to do what I have to do.  I turn off the car and softly start singing her name.  ”Eeeevvvaaa.”  She began to stir.  First a scowl then a whine.  I do it again, “Eeeeevvvaaa.”  This time she starts whining the word no…over and over.  ”Do you want to go into the store with Mumma and get some ice cream?” I asked so sweetly.  She answered with a whiny sob.  I stashed a pouch of juice in my purse to bargain with.  Then I got her out of her chair and carried her into the store.  

She whined the entire time.  I tried to put her into the seat of the cart.  She whined.  We entered the store.  She whined.  I gave her the pouch of juice.  I thought it would buy me a few minutes and that’s all I really needed.  She whined while she drank which was for about thirty seconds.  Upon slurping the last of the juice she let out a cacophonous, “Nooooooooo!”  One that rivaled The Evil Queen’s when she found out Snow White wasn’t dead…again.  The bag of juice was depleted and so was my patience.  

She cried and yelled, “No!”  And nothing I said or did would make her stop.  I pleaded.  I bargained.  I threatened.  She didn’t care and she told me so while she continued to make a scene.  One customer strolled by with his seven or eight year old son and said, “Poor little thing.”  It took everything I had to not snipe back at him, “Poor little thing?  I’m the poor little thing.  She’s torturing me you know.  Not the other way round.  This little fucker has me by the balls.  Don’t play her game!  Take your poor little thing and shove it up your ass!”  It was at this point that I knew we must leave the store now.  I heaved her tantruming little body from the cart and slung her over my shoulder.  Leaving the cart with the food and ice cream abandoned in the aisle.

With her over my shoulder I marched outside.  I wanted to take her by the scruff of the neck with one hand and by the back of her pants with the other and give her a few good heaves before letting her sail into the parking lot.  I decided not to.  Instead I plopped her down in her seat, buckled her harness and slammed the door.  I was so upset that I could not even relish the silence of the 8 second jaunt from her door to mine.  I got into the car.  She was quieter now but still crying.  I told her how disappointed I was that she behaved so badly in the store.  She began to quiet down.  Then she said, “Mumma, my mouth.”  Which is what she says right before she gets car sick.  ”I don’t care.”  I coldly replied.  ”Mumma needs you to be quiet on the way home.  I am very upset with you.”   This hurt her feelings and she started crying again.  I don’t like to see her hurt.  Can she tell when I’m hurting?  Probably not.  I’m exhausted and stressed.  I have a streak of grey hair right on the front hairline just left of the center of my forehead.  And now I have no Chunky Monkey.

As I drove she quieted.  However I began to sob quietly.  There was no specific reason for my tears other than…this shit is hard.  I’m tired and this shit is hard.