Another Rainy Night

Will the rains ever stop????? I'll be floating to San Jose soon, if the river spills over again.
I came online to reply to some email I've neglected and found I don't feel like being cheery and...well, me.

Autumn is around the corner and I can feel myself withdrawing into a self-imposed isolation.
October will be here soon. The days growing darker, the nights even more darker.
I need to recharge in spirit, before the impending holidays and their stress on my system.

Ah... I can hear rain hitting the tin awning over the window outside. Should be soothing but it isn't.

Spider solitaire sits on my task bar, no web in sight though. A webless spider...

I feel my aches tonight.... my carpal tunnel syndrome is making my right hand stiff. I have to keep backspacing to erase a misplaced letter. My left ankle keeps popping--I have sprung it at least 6 times in my life. The shoulder that had a contusion in 1994 is swollen. I think from concentrating on too much arm exercising via belly dance. Snake arms are a chore to master--I'm out of practice. But the ache that has gotten me down tonight is the one on the left side of my womb--where I had the most miserable problem of inflamation after my miscarriage in 98.

It makes my heart ache. All my life I've managed to carry my grief on the inside, so that no one can guess its there. From the age of 5 I've felt as if I've had to watch over my siblings and then as I grew older, I realized I was the one who had to be Mom's little helper. Groomed in the southern way to be a care-taker for the family. One that never has let them down. I shoulder burdens, its a task I am very good at. I think alot of you online who read me know this--I've probably been there for you many times.

But when it comes to myself, I am as reliable as a chair with the seat broken through. Ha, how many of you have heard me say that! A few I imagine.

Everyday I feel a loss so great that it takes all I can muster to keep the knife from slicing through to my surface. But I manage it. I thank God nightly for having nephews, so that the memory of a baby girl doesn't slap me in the face every time I'm around them. I embrace their fondess for baseball and their love of Spiderman, because it takes away the wistfulness of tea parties and braids with pink ribbons. Something I know I'll never have in this lifetime.

I've sat here and pinged away at the keyboard in spurts with long pauses as I try to look at the monitor through a haze of moisture. What is the purpose of this prattle? I really don't know. Maybe because this place is a good place to cry on invisible shoulders because I find it so hard to do so in real life.