Mired

Since the incident yesterday, I woke up still feeling 100% shitty about life itself. I moped around all morning.

I concluded that something had died in me.

RJ had left me a very cute note, asking me to turn on the oven to 350°F at 11:30 a.m. (so he could bake his beloved croissant). He'd come a long way. I have repeatedly asked him to please solicit my help. In general he doesn't ask me for anything. I'd notice him, sometimes, wandering about, as if lost. It's very adorable actually. Like a child. (He never complains. God bless him - if we believed in God.) Then I'd know he must have misplaced something. He's not the type to be hollering, "Honey, have you seen [insert noun]?"

Or sometimes he'd be searching high and low in the kitchen, and I'd offer to help him find a jar of something that a recipe calls for, be it in the fridge or in the pantry. He never initiates any such inquiry.

On this day, though, when I see the note, despite the little giddiness that he's come around, I write below his paragraph, as a reply:

If I am still alive.

Yeah, a bit dramatic. I agree.

In the afternoon, RJ asked me how I was feeling. I immediately turned weepy. But reined in the emotions in time.

"Pretty bleak," I replied.

I took a vow to safeguard my sanity. For a few days at least, I am not going to consume any social media. That shit is eating me alive. Everyone seems to be coping well and thriving, being responsible, productive, happy adults. I feel like I am the only one struggling, the only one who, just last night, bawled her eyes out because I thought Daddy liked me best but he doesn't.

I need a break. I need to get off the grid.

And I am most definitely NOT going on WhatsApp. I see that I have notifications. I don't want to know. Go away.

Today I avoided my phone like the plague. Like it could kill me. Any moment now.

It is too much to have to explain I am running away from toxicity. I just want to disappear.

Tomorrow is another work day. I can't run forever. I will need to be "findable" again. I hate that with our 21st century technology and phone culture, any one can reach out to you at all hours. Our boss, a fine person in many ways, has been known to call us frantically after hours at times. I resent the expectations to be available around the clock. I resent the expectation of findability.

So, I turn it off. While I can. Be off. World, be off.

A fairly recent epiphany of mine is that no one can ever truly know you. You will be the only person who truly knows you. No one could be there for every experience, every heartbreak. Those will be yours and yours alone.

And that's a tremendously lonely place to be.