Sometimes it seems only natural that my eldest daughter ended up ashes.
What I should have expected.
I start so many things. With good intentions.
For a while, I may even be proud of them.
I hold them close to my heart and wave them around when I'm feeling sad.
Cheery flags that proclaim that I can't be all that bad. Can I? But . . . but look, I've got these things.
Look at them glisten and shine.
Twin pregnancy.
Marriage.
Friendships.
A job.
Writing.
But they never seem to end well. I don't know why.
What I was once so proud of seeps into my dreams.
But there is no pride there. Just hurt. Upset. Bruising.
The strange and sweaty thump of nightmares.
Birthing my ill, nearly dead children.
Friendships that didn't last.
Marriage that stumbles and slips.
Writing that is not ever what I mean it to say.
That I should have kept close instead of letting it flap around so ineptly, like a bird with a broken wing.
Or even two broken wings. In the interests of accuracy.
Things that I set out on with so much pride and love. But that, somehow, ended up in hot salt and disturbed nights. Regretted. Bitterly.
There is nothing so awful as something you thought you had done right. That you loved.
Turning to ashes.
I'm sorry. I tried so hard. I don't why it doesn't work. Why I don't work.
I'm sorry. Sorry to anyone I've ever failed or disappointed or messed up with.
Because that is never, ever my plan. Truly.
I don't set out to be an idiot.
It just seems to come very easily to me.
Because there is one common strand to all these problems.
Me.
And when you start to suspect that you are the rotten apple in the barrel?
What then?
I suppose you could try and ooze your rotten old fruity self out through a knot in the wood?
Or try and focus on rotting as quick as you could so as to do the least amount of damage possible? Squinting apple-y eyes shut tight to will on the process of disintegration.
I'm frightened. Of losing my husband and my two living children.
That I will make that fatal mis-step that seems to cost me everything else.
And I won't even know I'm making it.
Not even as the sole of my foot hits the earth.
Despite the familiar feel of the soil underneath my feet (because, lets face it, it will be far from the first time that I make contact with this particular tripping point)
Only a donkey falls over the same stone twice.
An ass. Ee-yore.
I fear that I won't even notice that I've fallen.
And it will already be too late.
Maybe I'm already there?
Georgina, I'm sorry. I love you so much. Sometimes I fear that may have been your undoing.
