Drive Home...

The drive home is always the same. It's a blank stare out my windshield. It is a stare so strong I lose my place... I fade into the dashed lines and the double yellows. I follow the road some how oblivious to where I am going. It is mechanical and I am blind. I don't see... I am numb... I am probably high.

Why did I go there, why did I drive my car, why did I rearrange my time, how did I think it would end any different? My therapist tells me I am testing it. Testing them to see if they will always let me down and testing me to see if I will always pick a path I consider a failure. I replay the scenario over and over praying and hoping for a different ending. But there isn't one.

Tonight he was a gentleman. My therapist commonly helps me make sense of it in my head. My lame attempts at 'no'... "those were enough," she reassures me. Everytime we fall back to the same line, "he should have listened, he should have stopped". This time he asked, "do you want me to stop?" ... I never said, "yes". So, he didn't stop. He just kept telling me I was so pretty... so damn pretty. Like it was my fault he couldn't resist. It's already my fault I can't resist, it can't be my fault he can't resist too!

I didn't want it. I somehow couldn't get over what it would mean if I said no. I don't even know why. His kiss was small, closed, and tasted of stale everything and dill pickles. It was enough to make me gag. He was good looking, but not overly so. I was not drawn to him. There was no attraction. So... so what if I said no? I didn't want it. Why isn't that enough? He kissed and sucked my neck and it made me nervous. I could feel him over-sucking... I was terrified of who would know. Which next/current guy would see? I look like a leopard. Who knows if I will ever see him again and who cares? There was a time when they had to be repeats so I didn't feel I let my guard down in vain. Now, there have been so many... and so many I don't ever want to see or feel again... what does it really matter?

I'm driving home as a spotted leopard... I'm driving home numb... I'm driving home from a stranger's house. And it has been a few weeks from hell. I'm not sure when the hell will end. It started with a letter in the mail telling me they had found something off with my pap smear that would need to be addressed further. It's not quite over... but I have been diagnosed with HPV. A disgusting, completely common, and mainly unpreventable virus that I didn't know one goddamn thing about before it took over my body.

I flash to... 'this would all be easier if...' But I couldn't do that. When I was 16... I thought I could do it and tried several times. And everytime I stopped. Everytime I came back to the same thought. If I hurt myself, my mother would die of a broken heart. Everytime it was always you, mom. Everytime it made me stop. And it always will... if I fell that far again.

My therapist reassured me... this is a hard time. Two of my most very basic necessities that we all need in life to survive, to sustain, and to move on... are being threatened. I feel I have taken on a blunt attack. My health and my home. I am consumed with panic. I find myself crying for my husband, my best friend. He reassured me. He held me. He steadied me. ... he is no longer an option. I must find this steadiness and comfort on my own. So I claw and crawl my way out of this hole I am in.

But driving down the road I am blank and numb. Angry at myself. Angry at my inability to prevent these situations. I keep thinking if I just know the point where I start to fall into the addiction, maybe I can stop it there. Stop before the rush crashes over me. Stop before the temptation consumes me. But why on the drive home does it all have to surface? Why do I have to feel all the guilt and shame? Why do I feel so numb at this moment? Just get me home safe... in my own body, because right now I feel completely out of it.