honestly

my life is all wrong. I don't mean a little wrong, in a way that can be fixed with a diet, a change in schedule, a bit of enlightened reading, some embroidery by the fireplace, a good book, a sweet cuddle involving small sticky hands, or a visit to my shrink. Not the kind that will pass, as all wrongs do eventually, washed away in time's great laundry machine like another chocolate or blood stain on the great white sheet of existence, as in the oh-so-longed-for 'this too shall pass'. Not the kind that can be lived with, because no life is perfect, and so of course neither is mine, so let's list the little unavoidable imperfections that can so easily be taken on board, and that secretly not so secretly do nothing but emphasise the otherwise perfect goodness of what I have. Not the kind that can be flaunted, like a bad girl's habit, James Dean-style smoking , or a Marilyn Monroey interest in my next-door neighbour. No, the whole thing is wrong, massively big-time wrong in unrepairably permanently damaged never-to-be-recovered or forgiven or forgotten or accommodated ways. Everything about my life is wrong. It is not the life I imagined, not the life I planned, not the one I worked so hard to achieve. Every aspect of it is just bloody wrong. And I am killing myself pretending that all this wrongness will just go away, if I don't look at it, or if I stare at it until it (or I) go blind, or if I work work work to make it right again, or if I accept it, as in lie down and just tell myself 'my life is all wrong, it will never be right again, I've lost the rhythm, forgotten the steps, the teacher left, so did the other students, and a hole got burnt in the instruction book, plus it's getting chilly and dark anyway, and I better go home, but this was it, my one and only chance to find out how to dance this, so I guess I'll never know, and I'll never dance, and that's how wrong it is', if I lie down and keep repeating this, then maybe maybe it will turn right again. But then I do all that, I do it all day long, in between the work and the children and the friends and the man and the cat and the house and the tired irked irate body and facebook and blogs and laundry, and I do it all night, in between the toddler and the six-year old and the cat and the man and the moon, and it doesn't help, it's not getting itself sorted out, it's not getting smoother, or lighter, or more bearable, or less wrong, no matter how I tweak and pull and push and shove, and swear and cry and lie prostrate.

And when I say my life is wrong, I mean everything about it is wrong, I mean every single moment of every single day is wrong, it is wrong for instance that I sit here now writing this when I could/should/might have done something to fix this sorry mess, radically change my livelihood, stop my children from growing up and leaving me, discover a large bag of gold coins that would guarantee I never again have to do what i have to do every day, so that the bread is baked, and the butter purchased, and the school fees covered, and the bodies clothed, and the car maintenanced. And if I wasn't writing this now, if I was in fact cuddling the cat (who clearly deserves a more committed, more involved, more loving, more present, more enlightened kind of owner), or doing the laundry, or finishing the translation that is always always due, or cooking the spaghetti sauce for tomorrow, or clearing out the dishwasher, or phoning the children, or texting the man, or preparing some sweet surprise for their home return, or doing my administration, or playing the accordion, or sorting through  photographs, or getting the groceries, or having a nap, or washing my hair without using shampoo, or getting a less blood-stained rag to catch more menstrual blood, well then that would be all wrong too, because it would not be any of them other 'or's, and it would not be writing.

Because with this much wrongness around, the least, the very least I could do is get this one thing right, at least, don't you think, I could at least, raving, mad, deluded exhausted, lain flat, destroyed and abandoned by all rightness, at least I could write about it, be eloquent and funny, and true and honest and raw and take the mess, and the unshed tears and the frustration and the delusion and the castles in the sky, and the tiny on-the-floor details, and make it into something that amuses and moves, rips open and titillates, something artistic, inspiring, preferably both, since I am a writer, albeit a wrong, failed one, one that doesn't, if at all possible, write. at all. ever.

Except I am writing now, yes, let's just say, just for now, yes, let's just say that this is, in fact, writing.