Blank

Snow spits and flows by my window as I stare into the blank white space of my back yard and yearn for sleep. The lethargy of fatigue settles in whenever I stop to think, but I fret and buzz despite it. I don't want this, but I can't seem to do anything about it. I keep trying to give way, but nothing happens.

This must be the after effects of long-standing stress. I can't settle down. I can't feel the relief I thought for sure would come. It hasn't. It may never. My lawyer said, stupidly, "You look better. Your face isn't as contorted as it was when I first met you."

Oh, thanks. Yes. Acknowledge the consequence of pain, but not the thing itself or your part in prolonging it.

In fact, I wasn't looking better, I had just hacked off my hair. Isn't that what women usually do to symbolize change and signal a sense of liberation when maybe all they feel is defeat?

Last night A and I slept at E's house, having made the journey there to watch the Oscars. A wasn't interested in what clearly wasn't a cartoon; E's daughter tried to be interested, but quickly fell asleep; and E, having cooked and cleaned to his satisfaction, sat with his feet on me and asked me to rub his 'injury,' a split shin he got from a nasty tumble with a baggage carousel. He was still so jetlagged from his trip to Europe that he went to bed at 10:30 pm, promising to wake me at 6:30 am, perhaps with a scream of anguish at the ungodly hour.

I didn't sleep and still can't. The unplowed roads this morning threw me into an adrenaline panic so intense that I cannot relax. The prospect of walking to A's school to retrieve her because the school buses aren't running is daunting, but I refuse to use the car again lest my fatigue lead to some avoidable accident. Often, I am able to redirect days like this with a nap, but not today. I'll have to weather it, but I'm not able to animate it.