I know its bad. My hair hangs in dirty, greasy clumps against my cheeks and neck. I can't remember the last time I washed it honestly. My face is a mess; my facial skin pocked with small bloody sores from picking at percieved imperfections. I can't seem to stop pulling at the scabs…it seems like I do it when I'm not paying attention to anything, which is most of the time.

I haven't cried yet today, so that's a good thing I think. Could be a bad thing too; possibly going into that awful 'numb' phase that happens in deep depressive states. Yesterday I cried for over 3 hours, my back sliding down the glass door as my body seized and contorted with the uncontrollable sobs that poured out of my throat and tore out of my mouth. What scared me the most was that I didn't recognize my own voice; that the sound I was hearing was me and the agony I've been holding in for months. And then I remembered that I'd heard that same sound before once; when I was pregnant with my son and so deep in psychosis and depression that I was almost unreachable. THAT terrified me. I called my husband.

I hate the holidays. Not because I'm a grinch, but simply because they hold so much pain for me that I don't want to face them and have to pretend that I feel joyful and elated when I'm really miserable and just want to stay in bed and hide until mid-January. That doesn't work when you have a child and expectations from family that refuses to understand your predicament. It makes you hate them, truly HATE them ~ for putting you through the parties and get-togethers and dinners and such. Another treacherous 4 hour event that you have to wear a mask that doesn't fit and is grotesque and a complete mockery. So you come home and sleep like the dead from the exhaustion of trying to be something you can't be for other people. And in doing so it saps what energy you had and renders you unable to spend time with the most important people in your life: your child, your husband. How do you explain to a 7 year-old boy why Mommy doesn't/can't play with him or read a story with him or make art or push him on the tire swing at the park?

I don't know.

What I do know is that I can't take the disappointment on his beautiful face because in his mind and heart he feels and questions if I love him and if I really want to spend time with him and if there is something wrong with himself. So I push harder, give what I don't have, and sink myself deeper into the muck that is sucking me down little by little. But I would gladly give my life to make him understand that I love him more than anything in this world, and that I want to spend time with him, and he is the most beautiful angel there is and he is perfect to me beyond words.

That is my one true focus. He IS my life. Someday I will tell him when he's a grown man with children of his own so he can truly appreciate what he did for me and not feel like he has to meet any expectations from me any more. Children are funny like that; they tend to take on the burdens of their parents and make them their own to carry on their so small shoulders. I am bound and determined not to let that happen to him. I did that myself as a little girl and I'm still trying to let go of all of those things. I cannot change the tragedies that have happened to my grandmother, or my own mother ~ I can only choose my own path and how I will react and learn from my own misfortunes. No one else needs carry my burdens, especially not my child.

I fight for HIM. I breathe for HIM. He is my EVERYTHING.

I am going to make myself take that shower. I'm am GOING to wash my hair. I am going to cut my nails off so that I can't pick at myself any more. And I am going to make myself get out of the house and go do some minor Christmas shopping for my niece and nephew and my son. Then I will go and get the person who means the most to me in this universe; and I am counting the hours until he is in my arms again. I have that to get me through the day. It is enough.