Awake....still

Journaling they said, would help me sleep. I haven't slept more than a few hours in days. So here I sit pen in hand poised to make a mark on the page in this journal. Still poised an hour later. What to say what to write. How to express my feelings right this moment. I thought this would be so easy! Here's the thing; I want to write to sing to scream to talk and I want to change my life by doing these things and you know what realization I came to? I can't. Tomorrow I will begin the journey to yet another home. Another town. New people. New places. There will be packing and driving and unpacking and take-out food. There will be service techs to hook up the cable. We'll meet a few of the neighbors. I'll walk the dogs later. All the while smiling. Nodding. Hello. Nice to meet you. Yes I know we are going to love it here. But inside...deep down inside my soul aches. My heart hardly beats. I'm dead inside. The circus hasn't changed its just moved to a new town. He'll soon make the connections. The smell will soon fill this new home. Gone will be the scent of freshly dried paint. No more heady aroma from the hardwood floors waxing. Once again the trash can will overflow with the bottles and cans. He will lurk around silently looking out the windows. "Is anybody here?" He will ask as he hides behind the curtain. But outside he's a God. Muscled and tan good looking and charismatic. Much younger in appearance than his 58 years. You live with your mother people will ask him. I can't imagine how he will answer. I do look 70 to my real age of 58. It's taken its toll on me over the years that's for sure. I prayed and prayed that there was another way this time. Im so tired. If im going to write in this journal I better get at it. I have to leave in a few hours for work. It takes me an hour now versus the 20 minutes from our old place. Maybe I'll ride by there today. See if it's still empty. See if it misses me as much as I miss it. I seem to always back the wrong horse so to speak. No relationship so far has been good. Oh maybe for a little while. But the bad always comes. Some really bad! I've been thrown into world's I would have never guessed existed let alone me be a part of them. Scary how another human can take control of your mind. A mind that you were just using not that long ago. It was serving you well. You went to a job you loved. Saw customers who were friends now. Paid bills. Ordered supplies for the office. Made dinner. You remodeled your bedroom all by yourself for heavens sake! How could another person take your whole life and turn it into an absolute living hell on earth? And you escape it just to have it happen again?? With a different person? Is the whole world full of them now? What did I miss? Where was I when relationships between men and women became stories for horror movies? Police sirens. Cops running through my living room chasing him out the back door. Handcuffed and in the police car...gone not one time not twice three or four times I lost count. Im walking down a highway 5 months pregnant it's snowing he didn't pick me up from work he's stolen my car. He is drunk and trying to burn my 18 year old daughter on her face with his lit cigarette. I'm running with an infant in my arms to the neighbors. Help us please. Sirens. Police. He's gone again. Protective orders. Restraining papers. Sign and date please. Go to court. I'm glad the cameras at his motel room caught me pushing him across the parking lot with my feet when he tried to snatch me from the car. Sirens. Here we go again. The desk clerk wad watching the camera. She called them. After he was released the last time I picked him up and drove 230 miles straight to his mother's doorstep. Here you can have him. Good riddance. And I drove away. And for 4 years I lived in my happy place until the Spector of love showed his face in my store and charmed me like a snake! 10 years later well here I am poised to write in this journal because I can't sleep because for the life of me I cannot understand how one person can be so gullible. Okay I can see once but again? What is it I cannot comprehend? Is my self esteem that low? Does all this go back to my childhood? I want to write in this journal that tonight marks a turning point in what's left of my life. I want to go out there and talk to girls and empower them to feel so good about themselves that they can take on the world. Carry it on their shoulders as if it weighs the same as a cotton ball. Stride past any man. Know who they are and what they want and kick ass out there! I can journal and I can think and read and pray and talk ; you get the idea. But I can't go back in time. I can't change the past and no I cannot start over. Not now. Not yet. I'm dead inside, remember? Wow. All this thought and writing has made me surprisingly sleepy. Maybe there's something to this journaling thing after all. If I stop now I can get a whole 2 hours of sleep before i gave to get ready for work. I hope today brings an opportunity to speak out and begin a journey into helping others with joy and positivity and love. When you think about it we only live a short while after we are born. Before you have a chance to stop and catch your breath or write a line or two in a journal you've reached the age where you're looking back and reminiscing and regretting. To live fully; to enjoy each day each breath we cannot let anyone steal our joy. Not for their own selfish reasons. Not for any reason.