My fucking 50’s. Is this what it’s going to be like? Flooding of memories? Hyper-vigilance every fucking day?

I discovered in my 50’s my love for drinking a bottle of rosé by myself in my bedroom. On my balcony. On my small but inviting roof deck. Adriana, you worked so hard. You saved every penny so you could live in this place where you can house 60 plants inside and have a shared front yard to grow zinnias and a shared backyard to grow three flourishing rose bushes. Two planted for my mother. One for Bill’s. I dead head the ones for my mom daily. The next day a bud appears. The most amazing orange with edges of pink. In honor of you mom I take care of the rose bushes daily. The orange roses organized and beautiful like you mom. The fuchsia roses wildly growing in all directions like me. The light pink rose bush a combination of both.

On the Dalai Lama scale I am a negative 100. What if I started living in the moment? Forgave myself for all the things I allowed to happen to me? Accepted my thick legs and fat stomach?

I empathically feel all that I bare witness to. I am a doer. One by one. Trying to make life easier for one by one-by-one multiple that by two. Never letting the evil systems forgot they are evil. That I am a thorn in DC’s side of injustice. I can say fuck in a meeting and command respect. That I know struggle even though it’s different. That I know what it feels like to want to numb. What it feels like to hate myself.

Despite never feeling quite safe, i know I can fuck someone up with two keys in between my pointer and middle fingers. That you will never forgive those who beat you. Fucked you. Did you not hear me say no even though I screamed it? I don’t know how you didn’t. How I fucking fought to be alive at age 51. I always wanted it to be me instead of my mom. I cry in the shower. Almost weekly for the last 3 years. Beg a god I don’t believe in to please take me. bring my mother back to my father. Bring her back to my sister. Bring her back to my nephews who she cared for. Take me.

I wake up. I am still alive. My mother still dead. Youth I loved like their aunties are dead. Or locked up. Or staying in a warehouse of a shelter. Or paralyzed due to the bullet that hit this one youth before his bullet killed another. I still beg the god I don’t believe in that I am ready. Bring my mother back I say out loud. Let me dad live another 20 years with her. I have lived enough. I am tired. I am so tired I mouth to the god I don’t believe in. I forget how tired I am until I sit. Drink a bottle of rosé. Sob as I shower before bed.

I wake up. I know today will bring what I just had tomorrow. I know that my day will start out with dead heading my mom’s rose bush. Watering my swiss chard seedlings that cannot wait for the cooler weather. I will take my meds hoping the increased dosage will allow for a moment of peace. My morning phone call to my father who hasn’t slept since my mom was sick and eventually leaving us for the god she did believe in. I know that when the workday is over the restlessness in my mind starts. Ruminating starts. I tell the god I don’t believe that I feel tired. So fucking tired.