rain.

Snow. Sleet. Hail. Now rain. Still pretty. Sure. I am so emotional. So completely wracked around. No! If it rains, then there is no more snow, and then Boris won't have snow to play in, and what if this is his last winter? What if it's mine? Have I given him enough play time? Am I giving him a good enough life? Oh, but all this snow and rain is good for the garden, and I really need the garden. It is okay that there won't be snow; don't panic. His leg has been hurting, and I wonder if it would have happened if you were still here. What is normal, what is because of this, or because of me? That I am ready for winter to be done and to have warmth in my bones again - does that mean I am "better" than last year, when I didn't want winter to end? I am not accustomed to being anxious. Not accustomed to fretting such tiny little nothing things, or questioning absolutely everything. I am not accustomed to finding no peace at all, and let me tell you, it stinks. I am protective of myself - I have nothing in me to withstand more trauma, yet I imagine it, and imagine not having anything left in me to stop it.

An unfamiliar truck just drove in the driveway, and I can see a uniformed officer in the driver's seat. This likely has a benign explanation, given that my landlord is a sheriff. But what is my first thought? Who Is Dead Now? The lingering aftermath of trauma - it just lives in me. I'm a tabloid news show waiting to happen. Panic takes me in odd moments, and I have no place to calm down. I can't say "everything will be fine," because it isn't, always. Not everything works out. The "everything will be alright" sometimes includes sudden f-cking death, and suffering, and still living with it when you would rather not. I used to tell me "no sense imagining terrible things. If something happens, you will deal with it then, not now." Good advice, and still true. But I just can't and don't believe things will be alright. Things happen. Bad things. Horrible terrible nightmare things. Nightmares you have to get used to, as they are not going away. I am tired of knowing I am alone in this, forever, until I die. That the one whose words and thoughts I would trust is not here to give them, and no one else can do. I am tired of surviving trauma. I am tired of all the ways it infects me and changes me and makes me not who I was. I am tired of being wary of every little thing because every little thing can bring me back there, to that day, and that water, and that life. I am tired of thinking how long I will be like this, and then horrified that I could not be like this, because then I have lived long enough to not feel. I am tired of feeling scared that I won't be who I was, because you are not here with me, and because trauma has kicked the shiitake out of me.

That is what I've got this morning. Rain. Trauma. Tired. Very tired that these words are about me.

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