Fences and merry-go-rounds

No matter how hard I scream at god, allah, vishnu … whatever damn name the circus conductor goes by …. “STOP … I want to get off” … my screams fall on deaf ears. The ride goes on … up and down … round and round … spinning faster and faster …
Hell I’m dizzy, sick to my stomach and finding it harder and harder to pretend any kind of sympathy or interest in my neighbour’s trivial chit-chat over the fence. Can’t they see? Do I have to spell everything out??
The cops were here again last night … Jonathan’s worst episode … spurred on by some Captain Morgan and too much time on his hands (trying to add reason to something that is un-reasonable somehow makes the world make more sense … though I do realize on some level that this is all senseless and just my grasping at straws).
It was chaos, mayhem … Funny how autopilot takes over … no time for thought or ponderings … the answers and choices are made without question. Who needs “Nightmare on Elm Street” … we’ve lived horror … the kind that just rips your heart apart and leaves you shaking, helpless … spooked.
3 AM found me sitting in the Emergency Room … waiting to be escorted behind the cold, metal doors to see some over-worked psychiatric in-take worker … to repeat the story once again. Don’t they take notes … same questions, same answers, same “I don’t know’s” … But this time, it slipped out … “I don’t know if I can handle this a second time in my life.”
The in-take worker’s eyes and ears perked straight up … “Excuse me ….?” I babbled something about this having happened to Jonathan’s father … and how helpless I feel. The eyes and ears settled … guess that wasn’t as interesting as the possibility of the mother being unstable as well ….
I can’t sleep so I’m in the backyard tending to the jasmine tree that Jonathan brought home … picking the occasional weed … doing a rather decent job at looking busy and yet I was unable to stave the onslaught of the social commentary over the fence.
Why am I so mad at this poor woman? She’s just being friendly … wonder what she would say if I just blurted out all my troubles? I smile … probably run for the hills. But then again, she’s had her fair share of darkness. Rumour has it that ten years she came home to find her husband had committed suicide in the family car in the garage. We all have our crosses to bear, don’t we?
Smile, Gail … it’ll get easier and after all, it’s not about me, is it? Jonathan is the one who is lost … I’m still here, free, relatively sane … with the sun kissing my skin on this bright sunny day …
… never did like merry-go-rounds …