I Am The Opponent

So you know the thing on Facebook, “Memories” where it recalls every post you’ve made on said date since you’ve had Facebook. That’s awesome. Mostly on this date I’ve posted quite hilarious things that my child has said because she is really quite the comedian.

January 22, 2017:

Tyler’s trampoline she got as a Christmas present went rolling end over end through our backyard and I said “Hey, Ty, your Christmas present is escaping.” And my 6 year old walked calmly from the living room to the kitchen window and paused for a second before saying “Well… shit.”

And on January 22, 2015 (Tyler was 4 years old), I posted:

Things Tyler Grace has said tonight...
"Mommy, am I still awake when my eye skin is closed?"
"Did you know sometimes my breath whistles out of my nose?"
"If I had a nickel for every time I said that, I'd be famous."

The same night I explained to Facebook world that I had to explain how tampons work to my four year old:

“That moment when your kid walks in while you're handling "lady business" and asks you what you're sticking up your butt.... number one on my list of things I don't want to explain to my 4 year old... tampons. ”

January 22, 2014, Tyler Grace was 3:

Things that are said in my house that I'm pretty sure aren't normal:
"Stop walking on my counters."
"I can't wait until I'm grown and I can have the big closet and you can have my room."
"If you don't get out of my room, I'm gonna fart."
"I'm not going to school today. It's raining and I'd rather sleep."
"Stop trying to shut yourself in the refrigerator. You're not hiding. I can clearly see you."
"Be careful, don't lock yourself in the dryer again."

And then all the other years there are some funny memes and whatnot and then I scroll down and I find a seven year old, terribly grainy picture taken on a Blackberry cell phone of me holding a sleeping Keller at a Mexican restaurant in Prattville and I just stop. I remember the afternoon we went. I remember telling Evan to take the picture. I don’t remember whether or not Ty was there. I think she was, but then again, I’d probably have a picture of Evan and Ty together because she always sat at his side of the table. Always a daddy’s girl.

I look at these “Facebook Memories” every morning. It’s the first thing I do when I wake up. Part of me wants to remember some of the good memories, part of me wants to make sure I save every picture of Keller, ever, and part of me wants to forget that I was a human being posting on the internet from the years 2006-until I became a mom. I’m very glad cell phone photos weren’t a thing in high school and for most of college and there’s not so much evidence of the stupid shit I did then.

But I look back on these memories every day and more often than not I just sit there thinking “how in the fuck did we get here?” I went from a doting wife and mother, happy to be raising two kids under the age of two in pure chaos to a depressed, suicidal, recovering addict, pending felon, who has one dead kid and lost custody of her other one. Like, how the fuck did we get here? I know losing Keller was the most detrimental blow to my mental health, but I was surviving, I was okay. I was still finding humor in Ty’s shenanigans, I was still functioning. I was still social, did brunch with my girlfriends, dated casually, made time for myself, worked full time, had my own house, a brand new car, my child went to private school, I had everything anyone my age could have hoped for, but it wasn’t enough.

I don’t know that anything will ever be enough to fill this void. And it’s not just a void left in my life where Keller was, it’s everything before that and everything else I lost with him. Everybody says “just fake it ‘til you make it,” but what if you can’t fake it forever? And what if you never “make it?” I get so exhausted pretending that I’m okay. I get tired of telling people “I feel better, maybe this medicine will help.” When really, more days than not are bad. More days than not I want to crawl out of my skin. The anxiety is crippling. Sure, I could take a Xanax every morning when I wake up, it’s written on my prescription for me to take one during the day and two at bedtime, but I’m terrified that if I start to take them every day, I will NEED them every day. Life is overwhelming, at best, on most days, and I don’t want mediocre days to require me to reach for a pill because there’s so many bad days that I want to numb, the okay days will now seem overwhelming.

And I feel alone. Completely, 100% alone. I feel trapped. I feel jaded. I feel misunderstood. I’m confused and frustrated and bored. I’ve tried to find “hobbies” as outlets to distract myself. I tried to teach myself how to crochet, that is Satan’s craft. I thought I would learn Spanish. I always wanted to. I took three years of it in high school and college and couldn’t tell you a damn thing. But after a week, my excitement for it just kind of dwindled. I used to make those really intricate friendship bracelets, but again, the contentment just goes away one day. I was reading, a lot, probably more than I ever have in my life. I was averaging 3-4 books a week, then, one day, just stopped midway through the first Game of Thrones book and haven’t picked it up in almost a month. Writing used to be an outlet and while today, I felt compelled, most days I don’t even want to open my laptop. I just now, last night, got a satellite thing upstairs in my room where I can pick up local channels on my tv, but even then, it’s just background noise to scrolling endlessly on my phone.

I don’t know how to pull myself out of this bleakness I’ve created. I don’t even know how I created it, but I did. I look back at the few years following Keller’s death and I wonder how in the hell I held it all together. And then I wonder if I was trying to, again, “fake it ‘til I made it” and I just didn’t make it. I’ve had a lot of people ask me if I was “happy” before Keller died and if these things that I struggle with now are just a product of that. Truth be told, I’ve never understood “happy.” I define happy as an overwhelming feeling of contentment and joy and so no, I guess I wasn’t happy. Then or now. I don’t remember the last time I felt a calmness in my soul where I felt like me, as a human being, was at rest. I’ve always felt restless and scared, almost haunted like I’m always standing on the edge of a cliff and one misstep, one distraction, will send me falling, so I’ve always faked this kind of carefree attitude to hide the fact that every minute of every day I’m just waiting for the one small thing that will send me over the edge. But I’ve faked it so well and for so long, that I’ve allowed all of these expectations to be placed on me, never allowing anyone to see how much I struggled to try to keep up with them.

I’ve always felt the need to live up to the expectations, whether real or imagined, whether they were someone else’s or my own, and to be in a place where I don’t even have any expectations for myself but to try to make it through the day without being ugly to anyone, I feel incredibly jaded. You know when people have those out of body experiences and they see themselves as if they’re watching someone else, that’s how I feel every day. I feel like I’m part of a team, me, my family, my children (dead and alive), my boyfriend, my friends. My life is a game and right now, we’re losing, miserably, and I’m just watching the game from the bench and it’s getting worse and worse and all of these things are happening and I’m screaming from the bench “put me in, let me play,” but the loss is too great and I’m so far from the star player I used to be, that I would only make it worse. At this point, the fear of absolutely causing more harm is greater than the glimmer of hope, of not even winning, but narrowing the gap. I feel like the game of life is just giving us blow after blow, scoring point after point; our opponent is ruthless and unyielding and I’m just screaming from the sidelines for a referee to call the game so that the one or two players that I have left in the game, fighting like hell, can rest.

They are so tired. But I needed them to come into the game for me. I needed them to come in and win for me. But I’m tired of watching them bleed out for nothing because I’m who they’re fighting against. I am the problem. I am the heartache. The disappointment. The depression. The anxiety. The lies. The addict. The failure. The sadness. Every single frustration that the players on my team feel are because they’re playing my game of life against me. I am the opponent.