Day 4

An excerpt of Mari's older POV, is this getting too depressing? I want to lighten it up. We'll see what my binge is like tonight, but so far this is where its been heading:

For a while his obsession was with antique shaker miniature furniture. A miniature pedal lathe from 1887 that he paid $500 for. An miniature pedal buzz saw from the same year, for $600. For his birthday, he asked me for a miniature Shaker bicycle router from 1927 and when I told him that we didn’t have the money for another one of these toys, he looked as if I had told him that I slept with his brother. Shocked and heartbroken, full of fear, too scared of the fury hidden behind his own emotions. I relented and put it on our card. He was sober at that moment. I knew because he was complaining of a headache, and seemed more exhausted than usual. When I told him, in my most sincere attempts to undo the pain I had just caused him, that, actually, his birthday was more important than our silly debt, which at this point was assuredly going to necessitate bankruptcy anyway because of the mounting medical bills of all of my various procedures, that really I’m the expensive one of the family, he softened into the face of a newborn puppy, and broke into an easy, excited, grin, “Really?!” He looked 7 at the moment, being told that this birthday party would involved ponies. He stroke what was left of my hair (for some bizarre reason I refused to shave it off even though I looked like a freak), and kissed the gray bald spot in the middle of my head. “Babe, can I get you tea?” he asked, sweet, soft, gently. I didn’t want any. My stomach was too queasy even for sips of liquid. “Sure babe, that would be awesome” I responded. He left to the kitchen, put on the kettle, then slipped into the bathroom where I heard him unfolding the newspaper, where he stashed his pot. Lately I had wanted to smoke some, too, to ease my nausea. But I couldn’t bring myself to ask him for any. It felt like giving up a battle I had surrendered too much for already. It would be saying that the drugs, the shopping, the explosive anger that appeared randomly and without warning were all okay. A part of me thought maybe he needed that validation, that to withhold that from him was partly causing his downward spiral, that I refused to accept him and his flaws, that I judged him. A part of me wondered if asking for some of his pot would be perhaps the greatest gift I could offer him at the moment, an invitation to relax and just be. The way he had always been with me. But I refused. Despite my own need for the comfort the marijuana might afford me, despite the intimacy we might gain, despite the gift it would perhaps offer him, there was another message that rang far louder in my head. My life was once a perfect Disney movie, and you have trapped me into a David Lynch hell. Fuck you. Suffer as I do.