blogless 5: barely in bismarck

i just sat on "la quinta" 's covered toilet seat and it buckled with a belch.

not a good sign.

i am not used to lugging an extra 20 lbs. around, even if it's only a quick piss stop at a "flying j".

yes, we are on the road again, and i am officially deflated.

deflated from the blood-letting purge that was rehab. emotionally deficient, i flipped up my collar to yuletide expectations i knew could not be met. and so i trudged, head down, neck flushed red, eyes bright with shame. petrified to look up and scan the prairie flats; its endlessness so painfully ripe with opportunities i could not feel.

[breeze me, float me upwards into the great beyond, far away from the crossroads traffic jam i am in...]

deflated over a body i so longed to celebrate, yet still barely navigate.

it belongs to immunosuppressives. it belongs to cedars-sinai. it belongs to kevin.

[it's pretty demoralizing when your default wardrobe is your husband's...]

deflated.

i once had an enormous purple balloon...a celebratory sphere filled with dreams, hopes, aspirations and the courage to lift my eyes off the ground as i put two extra-wide, danish-sized feet together.

now, i can barely raise wet eyelashes up to brief the horizon. every thought paralyses, like the startling, arctic drafts trailing us. every action fractures my heart; small fissures throb, like teeth-torn cuticles; raw, painful reminders that you. are. diseased.

all the helium has fizzled away, long before i could lift up my voice.

so now. i breathe. moment by moment.

and try to blow each day up to it's absolute strained, fullest, most robust, bursting best.

because right now, there's barely air.