It is the depths of night, the well of 3 am, the bottomless, bucket-less, dry hole of the insomniac.  I am thirsty but I do not drink.  There are no brackish waters at the bottom of this restless place.  I am not an indecisive person. I've always known my own mind...but tonight I lie awake with all my unanswered questions, and my mouth is dry but I don't even reach for the cup of water on my headboard...because I am too tired.  Too tired to think my way out of the maze of my life because thinking requires taking hold of a desire, like fingers wrapped around a fraying rope, and then the inevitable tug of muscles as I pull that rope up, out of the well, and discover that my desire for a better life is nothing but the broken end of a string with the smashed bucket at the bottom.   Because I want things.  I want a better, truer, happier way of living. I know what is right for me...but I am afraid of what that choice will bring, not just for myself but others....

For I've been told and shown over and over that if I leave there will be a suicide.  I've pulled down the nooses and screamed and pried my fingers in a mouth to get out the pills, and I've pulled a man much heavier and taller than myself out of a highrise window (probably by sheer adrenaline), and I've listened to him sitting behind a locked bathroom door sharpening a knife over and over for an hour and seen the cut marks all over his arm the next day...I've listened to the endless threats...I've known he's gone to the ocean at 4 am and considered drowning. He often disappears in the night, sometimes walking for six hours straight.  It could be the depths of winter but he won't stop until he gets to that cold northern water...and sometimes he drives, who knows where, for hours and hours, he says he just goes, hits the road, keeps moving somewhere along the empty highways of pre-dawn.

He is a father...but that makes no difference to him.  He is a husband...but the demons are his bride.  Truth is he doesn't love much because he scoffs at all things of value, thumbs his nose at God, says nothing matters, that he is an asshole loser and will die an asshole loser.  His mother still prays for him.  He runs her heart ragged with worry.  She fears him too, his dark moods, his bi-polar storms.  She's been known to barricade her door against him with stacks and stacks of water bottles, plus bolting every lock. She lives beneath us in her own apartment and once, when the kids were desperate for her, she would not even open her door for them she was so afraid.  What is he a ghoul, a ghost, a demon incarnate?  Or just a very sick man.

I want to be done with the sorrow, the weight of it, the constant watching of him, the buffering of his relationships, how I stand between his mania and the children, between his cold-blooded rages and his own flesh and blood.  I am tired of calling his psychiatrist who has no answers beyond her dosages and her pat little sessions with him and his blue-eyed charm.  I know she thinks he's not half bad.  I know she thinks it takes two to tango.  If only she could have her clothes ripped from her body, feel his blows, have her most private, most feminine self violated, have her soul demeaned.  Would she like all the glass in her house smashed, from her favorite art work, to her children's belongings as they scream, right down to a big jar of honey, now a heap of gold with glass fragments in it, smack in the center of the floor? He is searching for a hammer, to finish off the glasses...would she care?

And I don't leave because...dare I say it...because I fear deep down for our lives.

Is it wiser to hold the monster at bay with my bare hands until the children are grown and safer?

Until they have left this dark house with its ragged shades and clutter and flickering half-light.  With its unvarnished floors, and broken-hinged drawers, with its non-functioning stove, only two burners igniting, their flames shooting too high in places, to the sticky handle of the '90s fridge with its magnetic poetry crammed in lopsided stanzas of jibberish hope? There are rotting things at the back of the fridge. I don't want to get them out.  It is dirty work.  I confess I am afraid.  I confess I feel alone.

I pull up the shades.  I let in the light. I sweep and mop the floors trying to create a shine. Only a pleasant smell is accomplished.  I pry my drawers open with my fingertips.  I don't complain.  I cook in a small oven on the countertop (I have for over a decade).  I rotate my pans so that they don't burn food on one side or turn black in places.  I clean the fridge with bleach.  I stand before the poetry and leave it alone. Sometimes a word falls and catches on my shoe.  I walk around with it until I finally pull it off.  It might be a simple thing like: light. Or complicated like: eternity.  Once it only said: she.  As if that explained everything.

I don't want your pity.

I grew up much better than this.  My home was bright, durable, ordered by hope and plans. I had security of immeasurable worth.  I had love... shelter. I knew the path ahead.

Now I feel suffocated by this madhouse, by this exhausted day stretching out into an endless night.  And there are brief rests between the rapid cycling darkness...but in these rests I cannot rest.

I lie awake writing this. To no one.  To the wall. To anyone who will listen.

Just the other day I heard of a woman in a nearby town.  She was in the process of a divorce.  The ex killed her and their twin sons.  Then he killed himself.

Why? Why?

I holler this down into the well and my voice echoes round and round and back out at me.

It is a cry against dry stone.

That is because I am dry and without tears.

I don't have the luxury of grief or grieving.

I must survive so that I can extricate my children.

I must get them out whole (though damaged).  Damaged is better than dead.

You can't heal in the grave.

I am afraid.

And I am parched.

But I will keep going.

I will get the right help so I can dig the well deeper.

And once it refills with that cold, clear and refreshing deluge, I will lean out over the lip and reach a hand down, past those blind grey stones to the empty center where a rope hangs, and I will pull it up and reattach my own bucket.

That is my gift--refilling the wells, fixing the container, and pulling up my hope so I can offer a drink to others.

I will drink first and then serve.

That is my plan...arrived at in the dark, before the alarm goes off.

Dig. Drink. Serve.