c'est la vie

and so this was what life had become, early mornings in a suburban apartment block, bread crumbs and milk splashes on the floor and something always missing when it was time to leave for the daycare. 

the son was almost four years old now and impossibly difficult, and it didn't really help that she didn't enjoy being a mother all that much; but that is one of those things you cannot say out loud and if you do it's when you're drunk and feeling desperate and even then it makes the room around you go quiet in a horrified unison. so she didn't say it any more, tried not to think about it either because what good would that have done, it was as useless as dwelling in the fact that the marriage had gone foul and she hadn't really felt anything else than indifference towards her husband in ages.

but the good thing was that most of the things that life now consisted of rolled onwards as if on an autopilot, she didn't have to do much - just try not to pay attention to the details. as long as she didn't bother herself with the fact that when she hugged her son she felt nothing or that not feeling uncomfortable or awkward was the best she could hope for when intimate with her husband, she was fine. and it was fine, really it was, or this is what she told herself because it was the only way for her to keep going, and that was close enough to things actually being fine.

the son is healthy, she reminded herself, healthy and quite smart even if totally lacking the amiability all the other children of the same age seemed to possess. he will grow up, eventually, and will not define my existence as strongly as he does now; this phase of symbiotic, or rather, parasitic relationship will pass and i will be an individual again.

the son is healthy, and that is enough to be grateful.

and the husband is kind, most of the time; he is not violent, he does not drink too much, he has a job and he is responsible. he takes care of the son when she sometimes reaches her limits and cracks a little bit, closes herself in the bedroom and cries for hours, wails almost, claws her own skin and tries to rip a hole in her chest for her bleeding heart to escape from; and when she emerges, puffy-eyes and snotty and somber, he doesn't ask and this is good because she wouldn't know the answer.

and that's the thing, isn't it, that she just doesn't know. she refuses to adopt the easy explanation, the obvious one, the same her psychologist seems to be an avid supporter of  - that she feels trapped in the setting that is her life and the unhappiness brought about by the choices she has made is the reason for her distress. it cannot be so because every choice she has made she has made willingly, knowing the consequences; and even if one could argue that perhaps it might be the unexpected combined effect she could have not decided on, this doesn't ring true, either - for it would mean that the removal of the current setting would make her feel better.

and it's not so. she knows this as well as she knows the weight of the walls when she tries to keep them from falling on her, there is no mistaking about this one - the problem is not the current setting in itself. or it is, but in a way that doesn't make a difference - like it doesn't make a difference if whether you are shot or stabbed to dead. 
the process might be different; it might feel different. you might experience more pain, or less, or it might be over faster or it might take ages. but either way the outcome is that you're dead, and this is why it is not exactly so that the setting of her life would have been the real reason for anything it all.

she is still dying, from the inside, and a change in the way of it happening makes absolutely no difference.

so what is there to do than to deal with it; to do the best she can to silence the voices in her head and feign the affection needed to keep the son and the husband from suspecting anything. because even if things can't get necessarily better, she suspects they could get worse; therefore it is important to keep going. and so she kisses the son goodnight even if the son tries to slap her as she does and goes to bed next to the husband in their generic suburban apartment even if it makes no difference to her whether it'd be the husband or any other man. because that is what life has become to, and she deals with it.

and finally, when she closes her eyes and waits for the sleep to come the terrible hollowness that is life lets go, just for a while, and in her dreams she smiles.