4 a.m.

Half-way through the night and half-way through a year. Half-way between 37 and 38. And just halfway between. It's 4 a.m. I've been here six months. Happy 1/2 year blogiversary to me.

The birds are already chirping

It's weeks, not even weeks - one week and change - after I leave my marriage this blog begins. The apartment reeks of gas and fresh paint. Boxes are stacked against the walls. Every thing is bare white. Every night is like this one, sleepless. All of my plants are withering, the African Violet down to just three leaves. I have no idea how I can do this, no idea how I can't.

If the jagged fragments were not preserved in white on black, I wouldn't remember a fucking thing. Amazing how quickly the brain dismembers pain. Three months pass between the day I say I'm going and the day the U-Haul's loaded. The days between all begin with a haiku on the bathroom mirror. Every single fucking day. My stomach twists up into itself, but I can't pull the post-it's down, They multiply on the glass until just a tiny space is left to catch my reflection. And it's six-months before that when I'm done. Jump 10,000 feet into the open sky to know that I can do anything. I can jump.

Today is long, one long day. I'm off and my girls read it. Truth is, I don't want to be a mom today. So inconveiniant to wake with stories in my head kicking to write themselves when these little people need tending. SO annoying. Everyone feels it. Josie fights with Amelia all day. What the hell was I thinking? Certainly not about the 15-hour days brushing hair, brushing teeth, changing diapers, changing socks, zipping jackets, wiping butts, making meals and snacks and piles of little folded clothes warm from the dryer. Not ever that my five-year-old could push so hard with words that I shove her out of the bed before I can stop my hands. Never. But I do tonight.

And I hate myself.

I'm ruining them. I think. Everything they knew, I've hammered into pieces.

Fifeteen-hours later, my mind mushy, muscles calcified, feels like a dried riverbed along my back, rocks digging out from the chair. On the computer, a slide-show of everything I've taken: Amelia and Josie barefoot smelling flowers in the big back yard, playing in the pillow fort in front of the picture window, curled up with Scott and me on the Loveseat. If it just could have been like the pictures and not so easy to mourn these visions of what never was. Some pictures speak a thousand words, 900 of them lies.

This slide show doesn't tell a thing about the anger in this grinning four-year-old. Doesn't show the day I'm called to pick her up early from school because she's had her hands around another kid's throat, hit and bitten the teacher. Laying in the bedtime dark she says the best part of the day was choking Steffen. I can feel the grin, sociopath rising. They don't show that and they don't show this child a year later, happy and easy in her skin, easy with her friends. Don't show how she walks away when she is pushed. For the first time in five years she has peace and turns it outward. You can't see any of those things in these pictures.

Bedtime tonight she has a plan to share. Walks fast tight circles, head tucked to right shoulder, talking rapid fire flow, her legs moving with her mouth.

"OK. We'll make baskets of flowers - paper flowers, I can cut them out - and we will leave them in front of everyone's door. Then we can ring the doorbell and hide. They'll think it was a trick, but then they'll find out it was a great surprise," she walking and talking and walking.

"Good plan," I agree. "I bet they will like that."

She paces and revises. "They'll have to know who the flowers are from. So I can cut out one paper flower and a long stem so it sticks out from the rest. And I can write Amelia and Josie so people will know it was us. Or, I could just write "the sisters." They would know right? Now, Do we know names for the people who live in three and four? We know Miles lives in two, that's just across the hall. So we know that. Maybe, oh, I know, I could cut out hearts and glue them on sticks to put in the basket and write our names on those. And we could fill the rest of the basket with real flowers, but not flowers we pick. We have to find them on the ground."

She breathes in and pauses for my nod.

"Ok. I'll do the hearts right now." She moves for the door, the art supply cupboard.

"Wait, wiat. That's a fantastic idea. Let's save it for tomorrow when you have more time for cutting hearts and flowers. Right now it's getting late. How about, pick out your book."

And it goes beautifully until it does not. Stories and songs and then Amelia on Josie's bed, taunting.

"Bad baby," she's hissing. "You are bad, Josie." On and on, ignoring the direction to go back to her own bed. A shove, Amelia on the floor, cries. Fuck. We work it out, Amelia and me. Agree we've both made some terrible choices tonight, vow to work harder, be kinder. I lay in one bed then another until I can pull two blankets to two sleeping chins. Kiss cheeks and foreheads and noses. Six months.

Out in the living room the ruins of a blanket fort cling to the futon. Barely the energy to lift my arms and drop the futon to my bed.

The African Violet is blooming on the table, a half-dozen fuscia flowers from a plant that needs re-potting. Thriving. It needs bigger space.

Six months out and six months in. Half-way.