I Ate Chips

 

I keep asking the question how in the world did that sweet 13-year-old girl survive.  How did she wake up every morning and go to school and take care of all the things that were asked of her.  Today on the way home, I know what she did.  She ate chips. And somewhere in the madness she held onto hope.   Something so simple.  She ate chips to survive, and She hoped that someday there was something better out there.  On the way home from Mark's I had to stop the car and I got sick because there are just so many things on my plate and I am at a point where there isn't much left of me.  This morning I yelled at Mariska because she didn't throw her Pepsi cans away.  I said the F bomb as soon as I walked outside this morning because Vincent backed my car into the driveway. Neither of those things is ok.  Right now there isn't even enough of me for my family because I am trying to give all of me to work.  I am exhausted and I am not sure that I am going to make it.  Every single day it feels like a scab is being ripped off of my skin and I am full of memories and flashbacks and still giving it 200 % at my job.  I come home and I want to crawl in a hole. I have been interview like crazy, I just need to find a home,  where I can teach and have a classroom and love going to work.  I want to go to a place where I feel like I am doing good.  I want to be a t a place that doesn't bring memories and flashbacks.  

I can remember being in middle school, and there were these like rip off Doritos but with way more flavor.   I can even remember the rectangle container that they were in.  I was hiding beside the chair I just needed a moment away, a moment to myself a moment when no one was hurting me, and I enjoyed every bite.  Then our foreign exchange student came and sat by me, I offered to share, and he said no I would rather have an apple.  I remember feeling so small because those chips were my safety those chips are what helped me through the day. Those chips made me forget the monster that was my father, and the men who were always attracted to me. I shrank in my own skin and put the lid on.  He could never have known all the things that were going on, but that was my only happy in a world so full of violence.  So when i ask that question, how did she do it ?, She hid and ate chips trying to be normal, trying to forget the life that she had to live. She smiled and pretended that everything was fine even though there were storms of unimaginable proportions inside her heart that not a single person will ever understand. 

I heart your heart.