I hate doing dishes. So much.

Every morning I walk into my kitchen to dishes. It doesn’t matter if I have recently done them, haven’t done them in days, or whatever. It’s like… they just grow there and multiply. I am not going to lie, through all of this stuff I’ve been going through, (divorce, getting strangled, multiple court dates, etc.) the dishes and the laundry are just two things that pile up until I can’t take one more second of them.

It just… it hasn’t really been an option.

How can I think about dishes and trash and floors when I don’t even know what my plan is for next month? And that’s the thing… in my head I have my future planned, so planned always– but in this super loose chill way that just works for me. But, in my head– even though there was abuse and even though the marriage was awful, he was there.

I was always planning around him.

The trips we didn’t take because he had a big raid that week, or the things we missed out on because he was grinding for his newest gear, and I needed to make enough money so that he could get that fancy new mouse that everyone was talking about, etc.

This was my life, and now that it isn’t anymore, it’s almost like it’s hard to get there. It’s hard to take the next step. Yeah, he’s in jail for a lil bit, but that doesn’t make my brain magically fixed. Does it? I mean I don’t know. I know there’s healing to be done, but at this point I don’t even know what healing looks like anymore.

What I do know is that I don’t know how to plan for a life that he isn’t going to mess up, and that feels weird.

Because for so long, my life wasn’t really mine to plan.

It sounds insane, but I was always waiting on the other shoe to drop. For everything around me to crumble… and now I know why. It was because he was crumbling the pieces and dropping the shoes.

The best analogy I always had for this was he was Godzilla, and I was the in charge of the city after he left. So after all the buildings and things like that were smashed and I was just looking around thinking, “OMGWTF am I even going to do next?”

And just as I’d get it all built back up—sometimes before the glue was even dry—he’d Godzilla the whole thing again. I can’t understand why. I think that’s a big part of it. Why destroy life when it’s so good? Why didn’t he think we deserved that?

And then, I think that’s a part of why I stopped and just sort of existed. Because if he was so sure we didn’t deserve our little life, then who was I to think that we did. I mean, I am starting to understand now that I deserve it, and he doesn’t, and that’s why I have to fight like tooth and nail to preserve it.

I don’t know if you’ve ever not opened your mail for six months, and then had to have your mom open it all for you and put it in little baggies labeled… but let me tell you guys, it is a CHALLENGE that never in a million years thought I would be involved in.

Therapy is all about one hard thing a day, but the thing is… it’s all hard. Like, I could do those dishes or I could get my bills paid. I don’t know why I can’t do both. I used to be so good at doing both.

I used to be so good at doing all the things, and I know that. I do. Like, deep down, inside of me somewhere I know I am good at being grown and taking care of me and my daughter, and even a deadbeat husband who caused more pain an anguish than anything else.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe I don’t know how to do this without the brick wall in front of me. Like, could it really be this easy? I think that’s a part of it, honestly… it feels easier somehow. Then I am like, “did I work hard enough for this?”

I guess that’s a whole thing, right? Of course we worked hard enough for it– because we’re still here.