Microseconds

Every single microsecond is so painful that the blond hairs on my pale skinny arms are constantly sticking up.  My goosebumps are constantly alert and my eyes are constantly burning at the corners.  I cry on the way to work and then I cry on the way home from work.  As I sit on my kitchen floor wearing my cute apron, chicken baking in the oven, I cry.  When I blow out my candles, cold tears are dripping onto my breasts.  When I lie in bed, it's cold, and I don't even bother to put on a sweatshirt.  I freeze.

I wake up and it all begins again.  Again and again.  For a little less than 365 days, this has been it.  I've had a few smiles in between there, mostly while intoxicated.  Mostly while I was so distracted by the dark atmosphere of the bar and the people buzzing around me like working bees.  Those were the times where I fit in a smile.  I smiled when I forgot how alone I truly am.  I come home to nothing.  I have nothing.  I sleep alone, I cry alone, I eat alone.  I go out to dinner alone.  I drink entire bottles of wine alone and I smoke cigars alone on the stoop outside, unless you count the companionship of the bugs flying around the dim yellow porch lamp.

That is it.  That's all that I have.  Is this all that I deserve?  Will it ever end?  I have spent so much time complaining, yes, but I have spent even more time trying to change things.  And nothing, absolutely nothing can change this.  I have been working diligently towards a light at the end of this miserable tunnel every single day for an intolerable amount of time and even when I think that maybe I'm approaching even a small glimpse of light, I feel as though I get pushed back to the beginning of the tunnel.

I admit to it- I have finally found reasons to love myself, but that does nothing to fill in the void that is in my heart.  They say that you should not base your self worth on other people.  Okay, I get it.  I value myself.  I love myself.  I think I am okay.  I am loving, I am caring, I am intelligent, I am hard working, I am a friend to those in need, I am charitable, I am fun, I am the first to start dancing at a party, I am the first to run to my friends' sides when they need me for anything, anything,

but that does nothing.  Nothing.  I still come home alone.  I still have an empty passenger seat in my car.  I still lack the physical affection that humans naturally desire.  I am still the only single person when I go out with my friends.  I am still the only one sitting alone on a Friday night.

This is it.  This is all that I have.  Self-pity is not attractive, I know.  But bottling up your emotions is just as dangerous.  Years ago my dad told me that he wanted to buy me a gun.  I turned him down and  I turned him down because I was afraid that I might kill myself one day.  I am so thankful that he never gave me that gun.  I am gunless, alive, and thankful for that.  I will never own a gun in my entire life.  I saw how easily Brian was murdered because there was a gun in the house.  I stepped over the blood on the basement carpet.  I experienced it.  I went to jail once a week on Thursdays for three months to talk to the man who murdered him in the house where I lived.  The blood stains were literally a few feet from where I slept every night.  

I am a woman who has experienced so much.

Why have I had to go through so much pain?  I just don't understand it.  It is not fair.  My sister said, "no one said it would be fair."  Yes, but I'm just asking for a break.  I am thoroughly exhausted.  I woke up crying, fought back tears all day at work, came home crying..

And I just want a fucking break.