My mind wanders back in time. A time when support was lacking and I kept company with enablers and naysayers and partners in vices. I took a long drag of my cigarette that afternoon almost ten years ago.

I struggle through the racing thoughts in my mind I can’t quiet down. I pick up the phone and think through the names I could dial. None of them seem like I should bother. Everyone has their own shit going on, businesses to run, children to run after, illnesses running their course. My racing brain that’s about to explode is not worthy of their precious time.

I needed him so very much to feel at home, I needed him to be where I could feel safe in his shield. He was my love, he was my home but sometimes like in this episode, his touch repelled me, like a million ants on my skin, like nails to the chalkboard.

I just saw the lines, I knew where my pencil should strike, I felt every bit of it, as fluent as I could scribe, my hand was drawing. I kept at it, I did not eat, I did not stop till I was somewhat satisfied.

We were here because my selfish ass thought to be depressed and spent the last few months living in autopilot, watching in aerial view as my body performed all the basic motherly tasks, bathing the children, feeding them, the worst of this all were the kisses I gave my husband but craved at the same time because I wasn’t in the shell that pressed the lips that were mine on his.

We started to build a table. We drew up plans and we shopped for the wood and we started building another fucking table. The third one this year.