I'm Not Going To Change The Way

These Are Pictures Of The People In My Family Where We Look Like The Most Awkward And Desperate Folk You Ever Saw, Poster Children For The Human Condition.

No One Tells You That Your Life Is Effectively Over When You Have A Child: That You're Never Going To Draw Another Complacent Breath Again... Or That Whatever Level Of Hypochondria And Rage You'd Learned To Repress And Live With Is Going To Seem Like The Good Old Days.

Mostly What Happens In The Novels Never Happened In Real Life.

And I Felt Like My Heart Had Been So Thoroughly And Irreparably Broken That There Could Be No Real Joy Again, That At Best There Might Eventually Be A Little Contentment. Everyone Wanted Me To Get Help And Rejoin Life, Pick Up The Pieces And Move On, And I Tried To, I Wanted To, But I Just Had To Lie In The Mud With My Arms Wrapped Around Myself, Eyes Closed, Grieving, Until I Didn’t Have To Anymore.

My Best Teachers Were Mess, Failure, Death, Mistakes, And The People I Hated, Including Myself.