My breast is laid bare.

I hate to use this diary as a place to complain in. The face I want to present to the world is serene, unruffled, calm, able to deal with life and take enjoyment from it. I am none of those things right now. I feel as though my skin doesn’t fit my body properly, that it’s too tight and will start splitting at the seams. I know this isn’t true; after my bath today I was bemoaning my sagging flesh. But it is metaphorically too tight to contain the cauldron of emotions boiling away beneath the surface.

Part of it is my mother’s condition. Actually, that’s a very large part. She called again this morning, telling me that she was so tired of living in that place, that she wanted to get an apartment of her own, that the staff there won’t let her do anything, go anywhere, that it was like being in jail. I tried to explain to her that they are just doing their jobs, and that is to keep the residents safe. She was almost in tears and said she would rather die than keep living like this. Just typing that now, I am also ready to burst into tears. I hate to see my mother so unhappy, and yet I am powerless to do anything for her.

Another part has to do with my relationship with my husband. In the past few months, I have been experiencing tearing and bleeding during sexual intercourse. It’s extremely painful while it’s happening, and it’s uncomfortable while it’s healing. I am also one of those 10% of women with vulvar vestibulitis (which basically means I experience pain during sex) and while I have put up with the attendant discomfort all these years because intercourse meant more to me than just orgasms (which also are not a guaranteed reward for the amount of pain they cost me), the time has come when I have put my foot down and said, “No more. There are other ways to please my man, but vaginal penetration is no longer an option.”

He was not pleased when we discussed this matter. He would have preferred that I find some way so that we could continue as we always have, but I simply don’t want to do this anymore. Period. He was rather distant for several days. Things are better now. But it hasn’t helped that I can’t make an appointment with my doctor until the end of August.

And then there’s the fact that I really don’t have anyone here I can talk to about my inner conflicts. My best friend is on the other side of the Atlantic and while we do talk, there’s no substitute for having coffee or tea across the table from each other and exchanging hugs as necessary. The people I love most (apart from my husband and my son) are so very far away. I want to be able to reach through computer monitors and draw them into my kitchen, or find a way to slip between the molecules so I can end up in theirs. This absence is tearing me apart.

Also, I am experiencing the vocal rustiness I always do after long periods of not practising. I need to get in shape so I can finish making the blues recording we started after our concert, when I had laryngitis and sounded awful. Well, I sound awful again, but from disuse, not from illness, and it takes a while to get it back.

So I’m feeling rather useless these days, as a daughter, as a wife, and as a singer. There is no joy in Mudville. Mighty Casey has struck out.

|

<~~~ * ~~~>