i am trying to live.

dearest world,

i've been unable to breathe well lately. my mother broke my heart-again. somehow i feel as though something as sucked all the air out of me and i am left with nothing but an able bodied carcass. i am walking, barely speaking and unable to breathe.

she broke my heart again. the old adage if you fool me once, fool me twice...fool me my whole life and then everything is simply a whirlwind. again. i am cold, disaffected and so very sad.

the words that i write seem so distant from me but i insist on writing them just to make sure that i stay alive. i must remember that i am in pain from this loss of breath, from this broken heart, before i turn to dying. i must remember my pain to make sure that i stay alive and am living.

yesterday, one day after her open heart surgery, the same day after my 32nd birthday, my mother told me that she didn't love me. crushing words, painful. i turned to my sister and said aloud, "i told you she hated me." with a hope that i had guilted my mother into shame for hurting me on the first full day of my 32nd year. instead she continued, "see? see how disrespectful you are? listen to your tone." mine's was a tone filled with sadness that had dropped all the way down to my feet, i could barely drag myself out of that critical care room. heavy with grief. but when i turned, i could not return.

my mother broke my fucking heart. her's had surgery: sutures and long visible scars. mine: simply sundered into pieces.

i know that i am in pain. i know there is grief. i know that i am crying. but tonight, i simply can't feel any of it. none of it. there are no tears to wipe away tonight. i can't even seem to beg them to appear. i am instead gasping for breath. she broke my heart, again. like she did when i was young and left us. similar to how she let her boyfriend shake me into a nosebleed. likened to how she told me i looked just like my father while i yearned so longingly to look just like her instead of the man who abused and left her.

i am trying to feel this agony i know is inside. i want to feel it in my limbs, just know that i am feeling. i am live. in pain, and struggling inside of my life. instead, i am barely able to breathe.

i couldn't come back to see her today. there was no energy left in me. no ability to see her and endure the madness. i had no strength. none.

i don't even know where to go from here. don't know how to pretend that i didn't hear those words come from her. and yes, i know that she will deny them. tell me that i'm too sensitive and of course, selfish for not seeing her on her terms.

in this i struggle to find the feelings, to breathe again and then to know just what to do now...now that it is clear to me that my mother doesn't love me-so she says finally.

pain.