Precarious. Sitting delicately, oh so gently, perched on the worn out wire. Fragility and mental agony come off of me in almost visible waves, reeking ~ calling to those vulture-like creatures that make someone like me prey. I AM prey…even to myself. My own shadow-demons await to eat me alive using my own hands to do it. But instead of listening to the insistent whispering that screams in my ears, violating me ~ I put my focus, all that I can, on staying perched on that stringy rope.

The last 15 hours have been fairly uneventful. Quiet. I ended my evening last night with my face pressed into my hands against the wall, curled into the smallest ball I could make of myself while I cried and sobbed silently. Torturous; trying to envelope the screams into nothing but shuddering breaths. At some unknown moment the exertion of the day and the magnitude of the agony finally gave me the pathway, the key, to rest. I slept, though fitfully. But sleep is all I craved, and poor sleep is better than no sleep.

I awoke in a cacophony of sounds; a male voice, the babbling of a radio, someone calling my name insistently. Lights that were dim but too bright for my eyes pelted me like sleet, and me without a slicker. It was the worst carnival ride I've ever endured, my stomach threatening to heave it's contents all over me. I closed my eyes again, but that only made the feeling more intense. Open them, open them dammit! My stomach's insistence won; I cracked my eyelids and made them take in the light little by little. Things began falling into place ~ the male voice, my husband. The babbling radio, the alarm clock. My name being called over and over? Again, my husband telling me to wake up, get up, he had to leave. The realization hit me. It was morning, and it was time to put on my "I'm Healthy!" and my "Happy Mommy!" mask. No time or desire to deal with the "Satisfied Wife" mask.

So I get up, do the routine things people are supposed to do at the beginning of their day, and then become my changeling self ~ not just a mask anymore but a whole SUIT that I wear. I embody "Happy Mommy!" as I tickle my son awake, make his breakfast, pack his lunch, get him ready for school and drive him there. I kiss him goodbye, tell him I love him and leave the car loop.

As soon as I get on the road, on the actual asphalt, the changeling folds itself away like a chameleon, disappearing into the background, almost invisible. I turn off the radio; the chatter and pop music irritate my mental state. I drive in silence at first, only the sound of the wind through the open window keeping me company. But then I start to talk, I start to pray out loud ~ because I know what I say is being heard. I talk all of the way home, and then stay in the car, parked in the carport, to talk some more. I talk until I can think of nothing more to say, and then I make my way into the house.

I don't know what I did with the rest of the day until I picked my son up from school. Not in the 'I blacked out' sense, but more in the 'there was nothing worth remembering' sense.

I haven't cried today. I'm still sitting very carefully on the wire, trying not to draw attention to myself, trying not to wiggle the ancient threads. I will stay here awhile I think. I don't know how long. But at least I'm no longer hanging from it by a fingertip.