Joy anyways.

   I need help. It has been 5 months and 14 days since Willow died and I have become something I never saw coming. I have always been happy. I have been so stupidly happy that I earned the nickname  Dopey and it stuck with me for 4 years. I still do a pretty good job of showing that side from time to time. I have tried everything I can to show a happy person, a person who rises above my circumstances and finds joy anyways and inspires people through my resilience through such hard times. Tripe. Its not me. I am broken and full of anger and at times hatred. I don't want to be mean to anyone. I don't want to be impatient. Sometimes, when people are rude to me I just want to grab them by the sides of their heads and scream at them "She's dead!!!! Don't you get it! How in the world can I give two shits about your stupid problem when my entire being is collapsing from the inside and all I want to do is die? How can you go on like life is okay when my baby girl is rotting in the ground!!!?!?!??!?! Hit me! Shoot me! Beat me until I breath my last but for God's sake shut up!!!!!!" I find myself at times, be it in a supermarket or restaurant, doing my job and taking care of my customers when I want to just fall to the floor and weep openly and wretchedly. I want to scream and pound my fists and beat my chest and not care in the slightest who sees it. I want them to call an ambulance to take me away and lock me in a padded room where I can live out the remainder of my days in a straight jacket, rocking back and forth and reciting her precious name. I can't do it though. I have a son who needs me and a daughter who needs to know that someone is holding it together so she can have something to cling to. She needs to know that she can make it because I can make it. My son WILL NOT see me in and out of mental hospitals like I saw my dad. It wrecked me as a person to see how little of a hold he had on sanity and I will not let him see it. My son will see me as a rock who can be clung to when he has no control. My daughter will see me as strong and secure in the midst of this storm. I hear myself saying this but I know it isn't true. Not yet. I need help. Tomorrow I am going to go to a doctor, or a psychologist, or whoever might be able to help me. It is certain that I will not let go. I will not allow myself to go to that dark place that has its claws in me and is tearing at my flesh, trying desperately to get me to fall. I will not allow it, but I can no longer fight it alone, so I am reaching out. I am finally admitting what no man wants to admit. I am completely and utterly unable to fight this fight. I don't recognize myself anymore. I am committed to not being this version of myself. This creature that I do not recognize. I won't let it consume me.