The emptiness in my heart, the numbness pounding my brain, the salty tears that flowed unchecked from my eyes, the sheer nothingness that now took hold of my soul threatened to engulf mine entirely.  The blanket is thin and the night is cold. As I wrap it around my shoulders I know it is better than nothing but it fails to reach my toes, which sit like ice-blocks on my bed. I can't sleep tonight. A photograph, that was all it took for the tears to burst my dam of restraint. I clutched the solid wooden frame tight in my hand, able to see a ghostly reflection of my face in the thin sheen of glass that covered it. I looked past my own dreary eyes and gazed upon his face that had been caught in a moment of perfection, maturity, completion.  It was the happiest memories that hurt the worst, they were the ones that cut my deepest. I focused in on his eyes, they were glistening with the twinkle of laughter that once I loved.  

I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around my shins; if I could just curl up into a ball, I wouldn't have to face real life, I'd be protected from everything around me. But I'd still have to live with myself, with the wretched memories swirling around in my head. My eyes, already red and puffy from crying, squeezed shut to push more tears out. I let my head fall down to my knees, and I pulled my legs closer to me. No matter what I did, there was nowhere I could hide from the thoughts in my head.

  The thoughts are accelerating inside my head. I want them to slow so I can breathe but they won't. My breaths come in gasps and I feel like I will black out. My heart is hammering inside my chest like it belongs to a rabbit running for its skin. The room spins and I squat on the floor, trying to make everything slow to something my brain and body can cope with. I feel so sick. I want to call an ambulance but the phone is too far away, it's too far away, it's too far away. I don't know who to call, what's their number, who to call, too far away, he's gone, he went, breathe, gone, what number, too far away... blackness... creeping blackness... I'm on the floor in a ball- the fetal position. Where is he, what's my name, who to call, what's the number, the stairs are too steep, the room is spinning...blackness...he's gone... 

" I killed him..." 

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  The mother's love I have for my children is the ordinary kind. It is no more than any mother I know and respect. It is the kind of love that would move heaven and earth for my child if I had the power. It is the kind of love that says "I would give my life for my child anytime, any place." That doesn't make me unusual, I am only normal. It is the kind of love that would take on anyone, anyplace, anytime if they threaten the wellbeing of my children. That is ordinary love, it's the kind we all have inside. I mean the be the spark that ignites that in every person. I mean to do it in such an away that no-one is in danger at any time. Because this ordinary love of mine extends to everyone who loves like I do. 

She wasn't a girl anymore and she never would be again. She will never be the same again, once my father died I went through the same thing, but I feel a large distance between that through. I don't know how to comfort her as her mother, or as her friend. 

" I'm leaving..." My husband says, without another word he leaves. Marriage isn't a ring worn or a paper signed. It is not something endured but savored. It is the union of two hearts beating as one, each that would sacrifice for the other's happiness and well-being. Marriage is something so beautiful that in that natural world it would be an opening rose, always with radiant petals left to unfurl to a warm sun. Perhaps that is why we give roses to those we love and often have them at our sacred unions. Marriage is the blessing we give to one another, an eternal bond of soul-mates.

It's a Sunday, he's always off work because I see his schedule. Where is he going with that brief case? I look as he drives away but I can't stand this feeling, I don't know what happening to be, but I grab my keys and I follow him, I follow where in the world is he going. Staying two cars away from his car to turns at the cross light, turning into a housing commission, he pulls into a house and I park a few houses down, my chest begins to tighten.

" He's cheating on me... Unbelievable, just unbelievable." I see a woman's arm pull him in, and in a matter of seconds they're upstairs in the bedroom, their shadow through the curtain is pretty clear, she was a young woman. An affair, I drive back home, it sounds empty, I grab bodle of wind and I pour me a glass, and I place it down on the counter, but I just stare at it, not drinking, it's not pulling me in. Why should I ruin my body for his wrong doings? 

Weeks after the funeral, my child is not okay, she's not eating, my husband is cheating on me for months, he probably lost his job because I never see him work. Why is this happening?..?

Hours later he comes back and he sees me in the bedroom with the glass of wine, and he exhales and he shakes his head as if I did something wrong, and if I was the one in the wrong.

" If you come near me you'll see my sneer. I saw what you did, I saw it. No detail misses my eye, ever, and you knew I would beat you in the end. You could have turned over a new leaf at any time, yet you did not. The sight of you makes me sick from the ends of my hair to the nails on my toes. I don't come to hate easily, but I know evil when I see it. I know. It breaks me to give up on you more than you will ever know. Yet to save what is good, I need no permission from any man and I never did." I say in a louder voice so he understood what I said.

" Let's get a divorce." Instead, his mouth remains an uncharacteristic grim line amid his stubble. Almost robotically his hand rises upward and passes me a folded piece of paper, his eyes almost as still as some billboard poster.