Today is my stupid anniversary day. As I fell asleep last night, the buried shit-treasures of our past anniversaries came back to me. They aren't wonderful memories, any of them, and the wedding itself was stressful (I was seven fucking months pregnant, couldn't even drink. We were still infatuated with one another, but just the day before he'd had the first of what would be many, increasingly awful episodes of insanity, and I was feeling shellshocked and scared, knowing I was making an even bigger mistake than I originally thought).
So yeah, I remembered how each and every March 17th since I met him, he was in some affair. Last year, it was the woman with whom he's now shacking up. I was three months pregnant, we went to one of our favorite restaurants. He was anxious, shifty, and oddly aroused. Now I know why. The year before, he'd taken waaaaay too many painkillers and drank a bunch of scotch the night before and had been violently ill all day long. By the time we were out to celebrate, he was puffy from vomiting, swollen from the pain pills, mean as hell when he wasn't zombified. I was deeply sad, really fucking pissed, very embarrassed. It was that particular anniversary that I told him shit had to start changing, that I couldn't go on in this way. I can't even remember the year before that. Maybe it was alright, but I doubt it.
And I'm not reflecting on any of this and thinking 'poor me'. I'm thinking 'stupid me'. Fucked up me. I have rationalized how I got to that place, I have gone over the reasons in my mind many times, have allowed myself to feel strong as a result of getting out of it, but perhaps I'm just really goddamn dumb and weak for getting into it in the first place. And I realize that I'm both, as my cycle of really-dark-place-in-which-I-do-dumb-shit and prolific-and-tough-as-nails-place-in-which-I-pick-up-the-pieces goes on and on. It always will, or it will always TRY to, and I can control the cycle by containing it, by trying to remain conscious in every state of the cycle, in the upswing and the descent.
But today, that ain't happening. Today, my sons are in someone else's care, I'm alone in the city. I'm gonna walk and think and sulk and maybe cry, and get mad at myself a few times, and smoke some cigarettes about it, and enjoy it in the sick and lovely way I enjoy my own stupid and silly suffering. Then, I'm going home to my boys, to snuggle and smell them, and by the time I go to bed, I will be in a different place than I am right now.
Go drink five pints and puke on someone else's shoes, pinch someone way too hard in a hurty place for not wearing green even if you aren't, either. Happy St. Patrick's Day