Maile Hernandez

I know now what Hell is.

Even my onetime friend, sleep, has turned on me.  I spent twelve hours having nightmare after nightmare, watching my son die over and over, in a myriad of ways.  Kissing his pale face goodbye.  When the dreams weren’t about that, they were about the loss of love - a love I now question I ever had.

Hell is being awake.

Hell is being asleep.

Hell is hating everyone that has a life, children, lovers.

Hell is not being able to stand being around people.

Hell is not being able to stand being alone.

Yesterday I got off work early and got home about 4:30.

Immediately that feeling which is becoming so familiar settled in.  The blackness so dark that I couldn’t escape it.

I shoveled in some food.  I keep thinking it’s going to give me the pleasure it once did.  It never does.  But I keep trying, hoping it will turn off the feeling just for a moment.

Then I took a Xanax and went to bed.

It was 5:15.

I wasn’t tired.  I just couldn’t stand to be conscious.  I couldn’t stand to be part of my own existence.

I was awakened once, at 10:30, by the sound of one of my cats puking.  They’re doing their best to ornament my new carpet with spots of vomit.  It feels like they are throwing up more since I moved.  Yuck.

This weekend Linda is coming.  Although I’m so drained and feel I won’t be good company at all, her presence will at least shake things up a bit.  I’m not so naive as to think it will be a distraction.

Nothing is a distraction anymore.

My therapist routinely asks, “Are you suicidal?”

No.  I don’t have nearly the energy and anger to dredge up that kind of act.

But when I’m not forced to be actively engaged in something, being conscious is just too unbearable.  This weight is too heavy.

In a way I feel dead already.  This isn’t living.  I remember what living used to feel like, and this isn’t it.  This is some bizarre half-life.

I’ll be keeping the good makers of Xanax in business for a while.

There are some minor satisfactions.

The apartment is completely finished.  Neat, clean, and unpacked.  The pictures of Max all around are as painful as they are necessary. 

I’m still cleaning out the old house.  I’m having the Merry Maids do a move-out cleaning tomorrow.  I have ten tons of stuff in the garage for which I have scheduled a bulk pick-up.  I have things to put in storage.

And the last of Conrad’s beer bottle collection, God help me, needs to be recycled, once I can make room in the bin.

Walk-through with the landlord and I am OUT!

Yes, everything is organized and taken care of.

Of course, my mind is a disaster.

I’m back at work after having used my two-week vacation to move.  It took all of those two weeks to do it.  Going from a family home to a single person’s apartment, there is so much to deal with. 

But it’s done.

And now it’s me.  Alone on my couch, night after night, fretting over which friend I might be able to pester.  Did I call this one too recently?  Is this one busy or out of town?

And sometimes, though I’m desperately lonely, I also can’t dredge up the energy to reach out.  Sometimes I just pace the apartment.

The TV is rarely used.  I got rid of as many channels as I could, because what’s the point?  I have no concentration for watching anyway.

This is a most uncomfortable crossroads of my life.  I wonder when it will end.

Until it does, I don’t have much to say.

I’m haunted.  No matter where I go, you follow me.

What happened?  Why did you change?  What changed you from my best friend, in life my angel, into a demon in death, bent on hurting me?

You checked out of this hotel three months ago.  You shouldn’t be here.  But you are.  And all you can do is continue to find new ways to hurt me.

Did you hate me so much in life, that you have found a way to reach beyond the grave and stab me in the heart in every way possible?

It’s not enough that I must have this terrible sadness of loss.  No, that’s not nearly enough, is it.

You have the power to taint everything.  The past, the present, the future.  I fear it all now, because of you.

No one can abuse their power over you more than one who has gained your absolute trust.

There is no escape from this sadness and pain.  The only escapes I find are fleeting at best.

You took it all.  And what you couldn’t take, you irretrievably destroyed.

Have you truly become a demon, or are you only possessed by one?

Please, God, make his noise stop.  That noise that has only become so much louder since he left.  Please let me breathe.

I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, for all that I did that wasn’t good enough.  I’m sorry for the mistakes.  What can I do to make it stop?

Please, I have to get off this ride and go home.

I went to the grave this morning.  I’m not sure why.

I AM sure why.  I went to see my son.

It was the first time I’ve been there and there wasn’t anything there.  I felt badly that I hadn’t brought flowers.  I thought, I should go get flowers and come back.

While I was thinking this, a lady came to one of the graves next to ours.  She crossed herself and stood still.

I placed myself behind the tree so that she could have some privacy.  I stood still too, just looking down.

I told Max in a whisper, “I am so sorry, my sweet baby.  I am so sorry that I couldn’t protect you.  I am so sorry that you are gone and it wasn’t your fault.”

And he replied.

He said, “I KNOW it wasn’t my fault!  Nothing’s my fault!”

Haha.

I told him I’d go get flowers and come right back.

He said, “Don’t bother getting flowers.  Just do what you need to do for YOU.  That’s what you can do for me.”

So I didn’t get flowers.  Instead I took care of business, business that I’ve put off for a couple days because I had housecleaning in my head to do.

I ran errands.  I made phone calls.  I checked things off my list.  And I’ll probably do more as the day goes on.

I will love him, the best way I can.  I will love him by taking care of me.

Because he told me to - and he was always very bent on getting his way.

The bad news is, nothing lasts forever.

The good news is, nothing lasts forever.

I never lived a lie.  I lived truthfully, honestly and lovingly.  I can hold my head up high.

That, in the end, is the one piece of forever that I have control over.

So much has been lost, but that is something I can hold onto.  No one can take it away from me.

It hurts to feel unrewarded, even punished, for it, but I also feel proud.  Because how many other people can say the same?

As long as my head stays high, I am still a good mother.  I am being real and true, and that is the best thing that I can do for my son, still and always.

I think maybe the key to being a good person is to be yourself.  Running from yourself, you will only run into darkness.  And I think, despite everything, I’ve always been myself.  Even when it was hard.  Even when I didn’t like myself very much.

I believe that is a gift to myself and to the people in my life.

“No phone, no pool, no pets . . . ain’t got no cigarettes . . . I’m a man of means by no means, King of the Road.”

I have all of the above items.  And the song must be accurate, because I am Queen of - absolutely nothing.

I feel like I’m dying.

I guess that’s overdramatic.  But what cannot be denied is that it’s almost 4, and all I’ve done today is sleep.

It’s as if someone drained all my strength.

Maybe someone did.

I feel at this time like I will never have energy again.

All the rage, the fear, the excruciating sadness, have given way to this deadness.

Not only is there nothing of my life left, I feel like there’s nothing of ME left either.

Except the pets, phone and cigarettes, I guess.

And I don’t seem to care, really.

I keep searching, searching, searching.

As if I’m going to find him.

I can’t sleep.  I am a consummate detective.

I’m searching for someone who is dead, who is contained in two urns, one beneath the ground and one in my bedroom.

Where is he?  I keep thinking the next recovered file, the next email, I will find him.

I will find him and he will talk to me.  He will tell me everything I need to know and hear.

He will explain it to me in a way I will understand.

He will make me realize that it wasn’t what I think.  That it was all a mistake.  That nothing mattered to him more than our times spooning together, and that we will have many more to come, because that’s all he wants, all he ever needed.

He will come to me and make me laugh.  He will make me laugh at myself, at my foolishness, at my overreactions.

He will tell me that none of it is true.  He will take over the remote.  He will turn it to football, away from The Real Housewives of D.C.

“How much time left in the game?”  He will quiz me, with a twinkle in his eye.

He will show me that this nightmare is only a dream.

He has to come.  Oh, please come.

He will give me peace, so that I will sleep again.

If I can just recover the right file -

I will find him.

But I fear I haven’t the coherence of mind to say it.

All I can say is this.  I watch myself, like a bug under a glass.  You watch how the bug reacts to loud noises, to taps on the glass.  Maybe you hold a cigarette close to the bug and watch it recoil.

The last few days I’ve had that cigarette held close to me.  A burning, terrible flame, threatening to destroy me.

But as the scientist watching the bug, I’m amazed to see that the bug, me, does not die.  I do not curl up in a ball and retreat, even though inside myself I feel that inclination.

Instead I watch as, somehow, something takes over for me.  The open wound becomes scabbed over, stops stinging.

And I go on.  Not because of determination, but because of some hardwiring that Mother Nature gives us.

I don’t congratulate myself for it, because I don’t really feel like it’s my doing.  It just IS.  I feel the sting give way to numbness, to understanding, to even a sense of humor about things.

I don’t know if I believe in love.

But as the scientific evidence mounts, I HAVE to believe in me.

Been out of commission for a little while.  Moving, stress, stress, moving, and oh yes, stress.

Today we are moving the big stuff to the little apartment.

I’m not all packed.  I packed a lot but not all.  Which means I’ll have to be transporting rinky dinky stuff to the new place, little by little, after my bed and all have been moved there.

The Cox guy is supposed to come tomorrow to set me up in the new place but in case something goes wrong - and let’s be realistic, something always goes wrong - I may be out of commission again for just a little bit.

Friends, friends, friends.  They are continuing to be my backbone when I don’t have one.  This past couple days I needed to be picked up off the floor a few times, and they did it.

I’M tired of my own crises, but they are not - or if they are, they’re still seeing me through them.

I just look forward to the day I can be the giver and not the needer.  It has to come sometime.

I could say so much more, but I’m just not going to just now.  My brain is too jumbled.  I’ll check back when I get my bearings.

Thanks to everyone who has been so kind to me.