Homeless

This morning I struggled to remember the prayers I memorized in my youth.
Simple prayers: "Our Father", "Hail Mary", "Apostle's Creed".

I could not remember the words I have mumbled for decades.

I felt abandoned, alone, ashamed.

If I am ill, I do not know how to heal.

If I am well, I do not comprehend and therefore lie...waiting, suffering.

My moments of connection are not sustaining me.

The life force is draining.

And I forget my prayers.

This morning I wept on the phone with 1, 2, 3 people. Each one assured me it was okay. I finally calmed passed the curtain of my tears when I asked Titi to pray with me.

I was driving a 5-speed car, late for a class, and all I could think to help myself was, "I need someone to pray with."

The other thoughts told me how absurd it was that I was alive, that I served no purpose, and that I had no one in my life.

My infantile brain wanted to be taken care of. She was hungry. She was lonely. She was cold. She felt unsafe.

But she is in the body of an adult woman and so there is some sense of expectation that she knows how to handle this life by herself.

There is some sense of expectation that she has to endure.

The comparisons pour out of her mind to belittle her.

She is daughter, sister, aunt, neice.

She is a computer user. She is a dreamer.

And she hurts. She's alone. She's ashamed.

Her mind is fogged with her loneliness.

She is alienated. Her friends seem thousands of miles away, if they exist at all.

She feels she can't make or keep or maintain friendships.

She feels like a pariah. The mark on her face marks her with "undesirable".

Unclean.

Her mind jumbles things to the point where she can't keep them straight.

Ideas are spoken to her and filter to her brain to come out a dustball of information that once made sense.

Writing is hard. Listening is hard. Smiling is hard.

She waits for Him to take her.

She hopes His plan is not to have her suffer in the prison of the mind.

She sees these words and thinks they sound pathetic, typical.

If she was in a novel she'd be a tragic character.

But since she's in the real world and really unimportant, this is the cry she makes to the world.

She tries to be heard.

She tries to think of herself as more than the sum of her debts, the total weight and folds on her body, the marks and scars on her face, the stains on her teeth.

She tries not to see herself as abomination.

She does not succeed.

She listens to the bombing in Gaza and almost wishes she could be martyred saving a child. Then maybe she would be precious.

She doesn't quite wish for death.

She wants her mind not to hate her body so much.

She wants to be considered worthwhile.

She wants affection. She was coddled with so much love as a child and suffers from lack of it as an adult.

She is an infant trapped in a woman's body without the means to understand the woman's body.

She is angry to be put in a position where she is meant to fail.

She is angry at the pathetic bit of flesh taking up resources and space on this planet without a light at the end of the tunnel.

She wants peace.

She spends time in the tombs of the dead for peace.

She has no one to share this with.