The Prey

"Such a lovely, well mannered, but quiet girl"
"Needs to come out of her shell, but otherwise, perfect student!"
 "Shy, but sweet and smart"
The loopy cursive may be faded and smudged on pink carbon-copy paper, but the same messages echoed back through a dozen years of report cards- a quiet but lovely girl. What every parent hoped for. But inside, she felt alone and scared. Insecure, a victim without circumstance.

The perfect child, she would sit cross-legged on the Persian rug and watch the static black and white TV, blasting out Leave it To Beaver or Walter Cronkite, a well-adjusted girl with secrets going on right there on the couch behind her, behind seemingly invisible veil.

Emotional abuse. Schizophrenia. Methamphetamine. The illegal gun trade. Discussions of overdoses, the KKK, prison, prostitutes, and blacking out, all the while she seemingly was oblivious. The quiet, perfect child.

Demons danced in the shadows unabashedly, whispering in her ears with their raspy voices, "are you afraid of the dark, little girl?" She feared her room, yearned for the comfort of home; felt abandoned by her parents yet drawn to their hugs and false security.

A host of haggard untouchables, toothless, legless, hopeless, came in and out like the pumping of blood through veins, seeking the illegal goods provided in her family. At age eight, she could (if she had ever wanted) negotiate a drugs or arms deal, but not explain the meaning of family, religion, safety. She saw the TV world as just that, a pretend world where there were three square meals, smiles, kind words, baseball games, and slumber parties, a world beyond her reach behind the fiberglass of the television.

In a world unfit for children, she existed quietly, afraid to shake up a volatility not of her understanding.

The worst experiences, by far, were those haggard men. They would mention, while standing over her, "Hey she's gonna make a hot wife!" while their stinging alcohol breath wafted down like poison gas. They would swoon over her beauty, her hair and eyes and how she was a looker. All the while, her parents turned a blind (or imtoxicated) eye. Nothing much ever came of it, but every day she could feel predatory eyes, imaginary lips licking over her luscious prepubescent body, the demons lurking in every corner, and appearing in reality daily to get their score and more.

The predatory demons left their scent for decades, wisps of fear leaking into everyday interactions, like a permanent tattoo, an ominous unshakable presence. When her collection of psychologists asked her, "what's wrong, ehy are you here", it all came back to her and she wanted to recede into her shell even more, in hopes hiding from life would hide her demons.

...Work of fiction after reading a psychological thriller...

broken part 2

My tablet is wonky so my last post ends midsentence, i cant add any more or delete or....so here goes... .....
.....
something about cleaning! My bff swept and mopped the floor! It looks so nice and she cleaned off the kitchen counter and I was like ahhhh...i feel less mess-twitchy.

So anyways. 12 hours after the soft cast and dr visit, my big toe cramps up. I am trying to sleep. It cramps worse and worse until I am choking back tears, and I finally wake my husband (I hate asking people for help) and he takes off my cast. imstant relief. The next morning we put it back on and a few hours later, I have migrzine or childbirth level pain in my toe. I call the nurse hotline and am advised to just loosen stuff. Luckily it worked as wowza it hurt.

I hate hate hate asking people for help. It goes back to some odd psychological issue of, if I don't ask for help, I dont cause any negative feelings and can just become the wallflower that I am, meets, the huge moral I was taught and have a complex for, dont ever hurt anyone's feelings and that includes not even asking them for help.

so here I am needing help for everything. Help...no...more, someone must do an entire task for me. I cant clean the cst litter or pick up the sock on the floor or shower on my own. i cant drive a car, chase after my boys, water my garden, or reach the bowls and plates and cups. I cannot do any of this for at least 6 weeks and must rely on others to do it all for me.

I refuse to use my crutches as they are cumbersome, deadly-teeter-totter-y, and hurt my armpit and boobs. So i have an office chair I can wheel around in, but that still restricts me to 200 square feet of chair-scoot-able space. And my good foot and leg are tired of scooting. You exert a lot of energy, surprisingly, when you can only use one leg. It is exhausting, oddly, to be stuck in bed or a chair all day.

I am a calm but anxious and ADD type restless person. I realize in a normal ten minutes, i have probably checked facebook, gotten a snack for myself and juce for the kids, let the dog out to pee, turned off a light, rescued a child from imminent danger (repeat that twice), broke up a wrestling match, let dog back in, changed seating positions, searched for a toy, put shoes on to go imto the garden. I realize how ADD active I am and how oddly soothing it is, like a drug fix...must...do...ten...things...at...once. suddnely I cant do that.

I now have A cam boot, it weighs a ton and makes me itchy. My foot looked bruised and tan but the tan is actuslly a bruise. Im sitting right now Without the boot as I removed it to itch my ankle and....4 hours later am still cast boot-less, against doctors orders, because my husband disappeared into his office to work 4 hours ago and it requires 2 people to put back on.

Soon, my husband has to travel for work. I will be stuck alone with small kids and well, I am basically bed ridden. My mom will drop by "for a few hours one day" which I am grateful and bitter about...like...thanks, 2 hours of you chasing the kids and  reaching a cup for me so I can drink water totally doesnt make up for days of me praying my kids will just sit still, and that I can somehow feed and clothe and bathe them and myself all on my own. Oh and that darn cam boot cant come off, so i will reek because I wont be able to wash it or myself. Or any clothes.

And I get to be on crutches, dont walk on the broken foot, for at least 6 weeks. My mom has delusions of grandeur of us shopping. Suuuuure, I will park 400 yards away from kohls, and crutch-hobble while she pushes my reluctant kids in a stroller, all around the store, placing prospective outfits...somewhere....and onto the next store....sure mom.

I know I know. Complaining doesnt help. But this sucks!

After 23 days where we never saw the sun (but did see snow!) The fog has lifted and summer is here, beckoning my kids and I outdoors. Screw you, inviting summer I cant enjoy!

My mother in law uses a cane to walk, and seems to actually enjoy ordering others around while she rests in the chair. Not me.

Oh!

Oh! But there is more!

I get half my cervix chopped off and drilled into next week.

Because why not, right?

all the joys of broken

Yeah....the title is gramatically incorrect... No one ever told me how much of a pain in the ass crutches are. How splints and boots anD the like itch like mad. How pain,well, hurts, and how being handicapped sucks. A few days ago, my clumsy self decided to ski down the 45° board on the side of the stairs, full weight on the ankle bent sideways, then boom, land on the ankle and foot full force on the non-carpeted floor. All I can say about that is white hot. And the world's loudest, longest, F word. I felt pain as bad as The worst part of childbirth (which I did unemedicated) but yet different, more sharp. I saw a flash of blinding white, nothing else which slowly faded to real vision. Heat and light, like being struck by lightninG. I painfully rolled myself to my back, and grabbed a (luckily clean, fell out of the hamper) shark mop pad which was within reach and bit down. I did not even cry because it hurt that bad. My husband rushed down, my youngest son crying (perhaps he knew something was very wrong, or I frightened him with my loud cursing). I was uncontrollably shaking, and my husband scooped me up and plopped me on the couch, covered me in a blanket as I shook and shivered like mad, and put a shot of tequila to my lips. I am trying not to drink alcohol, but it did not matter, I needed to numb the pain or my mind or something before the gone missing advil could be found and take effect. I hopped to bed and slept. In the morning i did a weird backwards butt crawl thing upstairs for breakfast and kept eyeing my foot. I finally decided, yes, I hafe sprained this very ankle twice but the pain wasnt nearly as bad and i could gently bear weight on it and this time, no. So off to urgent care I went. I sat in a wheelchair that wasnt a self moving one, so someone else had to wheel me. The secretary called for my copay and luckily someone took mercy on me and wheeled me over, because I got stuck! Once in an actual patiet room, I had to pee. Of course. So I was wheeled in, door shut, and had to figure out how to get out of a wheelchair, pants off, onto the toilet, back up, to the sink, and paper towels (omg why are they so far away?!?!) And back into the chair without falling and injuring myself more. I succeeded and pulled the nurse button-cord and got yelled at for not turning it off (hello the off button would require me to stand!) off to xray and... Fractured metatarsal bone and a severe ankle sprain. I got a "soft cast" and an appointment 3 days later. I got crutches, too. Crutches suck big hairy rocks. The slightest incline or step results in a death defying teetering maneuver, and even on flat surfaces, you realize you are essentially an untrained circus stint walker. With injuries. And they say dont rest the crutch in your armpit and they mean it!! Dont!! Even when I try not to, my armpits ache as if they have swoolen lymph nodes. The crutch even made a breast cyst of mine get all...cyst-y so now that hurts, too. I havent seen the downstairs of my home for 3 days. I do know the mess down their is hoarders-meets-tornado level, and I can do nothing about it. I just want the toenail clippers hiding down there. I know, its the little things! I have bad swelling, so I am stuck most hours of the day in bed or on the couch, foot raised. My tailbone (which has a sciatica type issue) aches from this. I cannot just get up and go pee or grab a snack. Oddly, as much as I loathe housecleaning, I miss it. Or rather, the mess makes me feel all twitchy and stabby and not being able to fix it drives me mad. Luckily my bff came over and man if I could just not be jealous, and have her as a sister wife (plus other complications...) she rocks. My tile floor upstairs is sparkly clean, she fed my kiddos some lunch, and..ok that was