Stepping on land mines

Do I do this? Do I? Do I dread this month so much that I somehow call out for more pain in this day, this hour into my life? Or does time wait for me, wait to pull me beneath the dark waters of these days that sit otherwise innocently enough in February? Hate in red ink arrived in my mail yesterday. Hurtful words intended, aimed, landed. I can aim, I can. But not like that. I have archery medals, riflery medals and still could not shoot my target as spot-on as she. Nor would I. Not with thought, not with words, not for a game of control. It's not true, that children's saying about sticks and stones and words. They do hurt, the words. They do.

Upside down, looking for release, insisting on staying here at home when three friends were pleading yesterday to place me in their home where they can watch me. I sat here instead and tried to escape. I looked through my archives. Two years ago I was struggling between the words scattered and released. The former seemed too loose and lost, and the later intentional and freeing. We had released my Father's ashes at sea, but were referring to it that day as scattering. Me being me, I got hung up on the words because the meaning was and is important to me.

My friend calls. I'm crying. She tells me she wants to protect me. She tells me she's spoken with my friend in Vermont. They worry. I am doing the best I can, I am. I am trying to mend and trying to do so without anger or bitterness for I do not want those negatives in my heart. It takes time. Much longer than two weeks. But there has been progress, sleeping through the night, unaided, for example. Sleeping in my own bed again. And yet, these legs I stand on are fragile and that point blank shot at me in yesterday's mail knocked me off my footing completely. Two steps back, three, four, however many, but I have to pick myself up again and the energy that takes is enormous. It's not about deserving better, nor is it a matter of fairness. Those are the obvious. No one deserves this, and fairness isn't applicable because I don't recall life signing a contract with me that said it would always be fair. But it is about my trying to move forward and getting unnecessarily knocked back down by red-ink cruelty. It's a battle I didn't sign up for, a war I'm not part of, and yet have been pulled into and knocked down by nonetheless.

And all the while I have personified the month of February, this thundering bully, this prison warden of months, and say to myself, in March, you'll be free. That may or may not be the case, but at least March will arrive later this week and I'll get to turn the calendar page to a fresh set of days. That much I can feel good about.