Another day.

Fall is here, and the evenings up here on the side of a North Georgia mountain are worth every mile of the commute to/from work. Coolish, cripsity at times, I relish the need to snuggle into something slightly warmer.

I feel more peppy, and a little more interested in figuring out how to truly put my life back together.

The dog seems more energetic as well, and I tell myself we are going to start taking walks after work. I feel as though I owe it to him, the big goober. His life hasn't been what it should have been especially since the divorce.

None of our lives have been-Fox's, Gator's, mine. I look back hoping to find a way to look back and learn something valuable from the life we lived at Crusty's hands. I remember telling God that I would do everything I could to make sure this was all turned to His purpose somehow. I hate feeling sorry for myself but have always believing looking at the past is a learning experience-except this time that hasn't been the case. Over the years I have spent far too much time working on not being bitter, and too little time finding anything good besides that I don't have a .41 pointed at the back of my head, or at my son's.

Over the past years, I've spent too much time fighting depression; too much time not even caring that I was having trouble coping with the horrors-not enough time caring about me. I came TOO close to being homeless, and not really caring too much about it. I sort of got to the point that if the dog weren't around, I wouldn't care if I went homeless or not.

It didn't really matter because I've been homeless for a long time, I think; since 1999 I think I knew deep down inside that Fox and I were not going to survive this nightmare Crusty plunged us into, not without a terrible and prolonged battle.

The morning of New Year's Eve 1999 I walked into a crack house and retrieved my son. He smelled so badly that even in the cold I HAD to drive with the windows down.

Crusty and I had been legally divorced for three months, the day the divorce was granted (on my father's birthday, no less:) had been a happy day for me.

The day I realized I'd lost my son, at least 'temporarily' I just stopped caring.

I went through the motions, but the hope really had faded. With the hope, my ability to care for myself faded-day by day; one foot after the other; more and more I heard nothing, felt nothing... until last week I really understood just how uncaring about myself I've become.

I tell myself it is time to get some help. I tell myself it is not too late for me to restart my life. Then I try to tell my side of the story to an imaginary counselor, and I am unable to speak.

Unable to speak even to my own self.

Because I know no-one will believe me unless they've been there-and if they have, they can't speak either.

Another day. I dig out the few winter clothes I brought with me from South Alabama because the one thing I am truly able to feel is the cold.

Introspection is a double edged sword-if one cannot learn anything but just how deep grief can descend, why look?

Is it worth the trouble just to spite Crusty, who hoped out loud I would learn my lesson, that I would end up homeless and alone, berift of the very reasons for living-my son, a real husband, a real home where everyone is safe, and warm, and fed, and TOGETHER against all enemies...Do I live now only to thwart Crusty?

And if so, how do I thwart him alone when the very definition of thwarting him is not being ALONE?

One foot after another, another, another...

Another day.

Damn Dammit! Can that sorry wretch, whom God loves as much as he loves me, can that monster have really reduced ME to being abled only to eke out the merest survival???