To the Point of Shatter

5. Abby

        There are lives going on beyond this room. I can hear them downstairs, living them. It is early afternoon. Chloe has just brought Ava home from school. I hear her voice, and Aiden's and Ava's sweet laughter. I am not a part of this. I am in my own boxed in world right now. Chloe and Aiden are raising my daughter and she will be better for it. I am an afterthought. And I don't even care.

        I have been home for two weeks now after spending seven days in the hospital to finish my course of IV antibiotics. The wound from my attack is healed. My hysterectomy incision nearly so. The wounds inside though...they're fresh, raw and tender. But I can't help poking at them, making these emotional scars bleed again and again.

        The doctor at the hospital mentioned depression. Said it was certainly understandable to feel the way I must after going through all I had. He prescribed an antidepressant. And I flushed them down the toilet after I got home when Aiden wasn't around, replacing them with plain aspirin that I take daily so he won't know. I have brought enough misery to him, to everyone. Even my dad, so far away, cried on the phone the last time I spoke to him.

        I hate myself.

        I am in a very dark place. I know it...but I don't care. At least here I am removed from the people I love, who once loved me. I can't hurt them as badly from here. I don't eat much and when I do it's just to appease my husband. I sleep. A lot. I live in this bed. I haven't taken a shower in four days. It just takes more energy than I have. I lie to Aiden all of the time now. That I've showered, eaten, gotten up, brushed my hair and teeth, taken my meds. But he's here all the blessed time so I'm sure he knows how full of it I am. He's not an idiot.

        Still.

        I can't pull myself out of this darkness. It consumes me, feeds on me like a parasite, draining me of any desire to move forward. I am barren and scarred and forever changed. I just cannot get past it.

        I'd rather sleep. When I sleep it all goes away except for the dream of Aiden surrounded by worthier women. When I sleep, I don't have to deal with my failures. I don't have to see the look in Aiden's eyes, or Ava's. He is always worried, she has grown a little afraid of me. It would break my heart, motivate change...if I cared.

        The only one that doesn't look at me with some kind of desperation is Chloe. She speaks to me matter-of-factly but doesn't cling. She tells me what I'm missing but not in a way meant to guilt me into getting up and taking part. She is letting me do what I can.

        Which is pretty much nothing.

        I am secure in the knowledge that they would all be better off without me. And this may sound selfish, but it's mostly not. I am a burden, a disappointment, a thing that drags them down. The selfish part, the one that knows what a relief it would be not to have to deal with this inadequacy and fear and darkness, well, that's just an added benefit. If I were to go, they have each other and would be able to get over it and move on. Ava is young enough to forget me. And maybe Aiden and Chloe would stay together, drawn close by despair but remain because they actually care for one another. I have thought this through. And I know I am changed beyond recognition.

        Three months ago this thought, of Aiden and Chloe together, would have brought out a hot spark of mean jealousy in me. But not now. They all deserve better and if they were together, it's one less worry for me.

        Because I just don't care any more. Everything I ever cared about has somehow been stolen from me by this blackness. There is not reason to stay.

        I roll over and burrow underneath the blue and white Laura Ashley comforter that Aiden went out and bought after my last miscarriage irrevocably stained our old one. I like it. It's thick but light. I can wrap up in it, cocoon myself, and not feel suffocated or hot. The fan is always on but doesn't quite drown out of the life going on in other parts of this house.