February has been the darkest, most loathsome month of my life, ever since I can remember. It's an era in which the tentacles of hatred, frigidity, sheer indifference to the world, to myself and to life in general, have always threatened to obliterate whatever narrow shards of my heart I was foolish enough to leave vulnerable from the previous months' holiday revelry. February contains my least favorite holiday on earth. The wretched month takes on a power, a possession so intense that I fail miserably to explain the effect it has on my to anyone, especially myself.
Even in the best of times, in the rare, "less than dastardly" days of February, it is difficult for me to exist, never mind to try and thrive.
This past February, 2010, I gave up all pretenses of trying to exist. I stayed in bed until just before my lover would come home. I wouldn't shower for days. I ignored everything that existed outside of my bellybutton. I pulled so tightly into myself that my old bindings which had cloistered me together for so long began to wither and crumble under the additional burden. I was light years beyond the usual Seasonal Affective Disorder that usually impales me at this time of year.
I pulled away from all that I used to enjoy, which really wasn't that difficult since sex was already taken away from me and chocolate was becoming less appealing since one of my meds had caused me to gain nearly 40 pounds in TWO FUCKING MONTHS!!!!!
About the only things I continued to do regularly were feed the cats, attend my doctors' appointments (so no one would suspect there was anything wrong with me)-I showered on these days and berate myself for being such a sexless, jobless, useless, unattractive, worthless, taking up too much space on the planet, good for nothing loser.
I was falling apart all over the place-inside myself, outside of myself, in my spiritual self, in my quasi-relationships with the few people I even bothered to make a pathetic attempt at maintaining a relationship with; and yet no one seemed to notice. Not my family-most of whom don't seem to believe there is anything wrong with me in the first place. Not my friends who are consumed with babies, careers and planning a wedding and most of all, not my lover who sometimes goes with me to my appointments and sees me fall to the floor in random spasms of uncontrolled pain.
All of the pretending, all of the trying and the lying to myself came to a crashing halt at the very end of February. My lover had just bought a "new" used car and we were at the dealership getting ready to sign the paperwork, of which I had made it perfectly clear, in advance, that I wanted no part of, because I had already applied for some government programs to help me get health care and food assistance and I was afraid that this car purchase would jeopardize all the work I had done, and besides, like me buying my car, it was supposed to be something he was doing all on his own. He assured me he took care of everything ahead of time, which should have been an enormous red flag that he took care of everything but the obvious stuff, and what ensued was a disaster!
When it came time to sign the papers, it very quickly became clear that my beloved had not taken care of much of anything and I, already a mess from whatever new concoction of meds I was on, was very quickly becoming livid. The dealer was probably never so uncomfortable in his life as I started first just yelling at Luke (we were the only customers in the dealership on a Saturday afternoon-weird right?).
Then, as I began to realize the depth of what he did not take care of, I started yelling a stream of expletives I will not repeat here. When I do that (which isn't terribly often) Luke grows calmer and calmer, which turns me into Mount St. Helen and I erupt, red face, spit and curse words flying, until I collapse from exhaustion.
It was fucking wonderful! If anyone had recorded it and put it on YouTube, we'd probably be mini-stars.
When I finally stopped screaming at him and he had a chance to speak, he said, with tears in his eyes, that the car wasn't worth all this and we could just wait until....but I stopped listening. I knew by the look in his eyes and the wounded way he was holding himself that I had hurt him very badly-never mind the fact that I had humiliated him in the dealership, I had done something much deeper than that, something that in my own hurt and rage I couldn't comprehend yet.
I knew I was wrong to have done what I did and I knew that he was wrong to say that he took care of everything when he didn't. I also knew that there were so many other options for how to handle this situation, but something inside me literally snapped.
That's the only way I can describe it. There was a complete break-down inside of me and I didn't care about a goddamn fucking thing anymore except lashing out. I wanted to hurt everything in my path-probably even my nephews too if they were there. I didn't care about hurting myself-I wanted to hurt myself! For a fucking change I wanted to know where the pain was coming from and why. I wanted to hurt my lover because I was tired of him living a presumably pain free life. I wanted to hurt the bloated car sales person who kept staring at my tits. I wanted to hurt the whole world. I wanted the whole world to feel February.
In the end I gave in, as I so often do, and screamed something at Luke along the lines of "Well FUCK YOU! You pay for all the groceries now any way! If you can't try and respect all the goddamn fucking work I've put into helping us try and save some money, what the fuck do I care if you fall farther into debt by buying this car and paying for all the groceries? It's not like we're fucking married or anything!"
I ended up scribbling something that could never pass for my signature on an endless ream of papers I never read and finally the Ford Focus was all his. Or was it our? I'm still unclear about that one.
I stormed out of the dealership after helping myself to one or two of their pens and Luke and I left in separate cars-no congratulations on your first financed car or anything and headed to a mutual friends house where we did out best to ignore each other all night. It was grand!
I bet the car dealer couldn't wait to see us go!
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