The Burning Barrel.......by Julianna Rowe

 The Burning Barrel     by Julianna Rowe  

  I was standing in the kitchen working on making potato salad with my eyes closed because I am dealing with COVID or Omicron FATIGUE.  It is real!  I can hardly stay awake.  This is day 19 and from what I have heard it may take a couple more weeks for me to be awake again.  I am a very energetic person who in my entire life has never felt such fatigue and I can only pray, love, hope, it goes away without attaching its ugly head to me like a bad tic. I can also only pray, love, hope, Mr. Right doesn’t come to the door like Javier Bardem, I mean Felipe on his moped asking for my love for life because I would go.  Yes, I would go and fall off the moped from COVID fatigue and lose the most beautiful man on the planet.  Damn.

  This feeling is the same as before surgery when the anesthesiologist instructs you to begin counting backwards from 100.  Hell! You only get to 98 and you’re out.  This is 99 from the time you wake up until you go back down in the nighttime. You forget when to feed the cats, or feed yourself because you can’t taste it much anyway, when to shower, when to eat, take your couple of pills, and try not to think about when it might go away and if you will ever find Felipe again. 

That led me to begin thinking about if I should die tomorrow.  Not today, or tonight, but tomorrow.  I have no idea why not sooner than later.  Blame it on COVID, idk.  But I did think it.  As I was peeling the organic eggs with my eyes shut due to COVID fatigue and the need to eat at some point, I wondered if I cared.  I have been here a long time. Maybe I am tired of here.  I wondered who would really care?  I have tried to rid my life of not all unnecessary things but some.  I detest the thought of kids coming in and throwing my life into black garage bags with no forethought.   Would they miss the love letters from a couple of my Felipe’s?  Would they publish the books I have written and left in cyberspace?  Would they notice that the second drawer of my dresser on the right side has messages from God?  Do they even know I can hear from the spirit world?  I began imagining the golden words inside blackness being picked up by a “garbage’ truck and taken to a land fill and dumped like rotten food.  Yet it isn’t rotten food, it is manna from heaven and I bet the ground it is dumped upon would be blessed for the generations to come because those words are alive just as when God said, “Let there be light!”  Yet there is a little part of me that wanted some recognition from my people.  They always thought I was lessor a person due to some serious life mistakes. Oh, I didn’t go to prison, although my son did.  I wanted them to be proud of me.  I wanted my friends to value my loyalty, my humbleness, my ability to let them be who they are without judgment.  To appreciate my giving nature. And to understand why I chose partners who misused me.  Whom I allowed to because I thought I was helping them find their way in this difficult world.  I think I sacrificed myself thinking it would benefit me spiritually like Jesus did.  But I was wrong.  I should have been more obedient to myself for each sacrifice was a form or earthly quick sand that sucked me farther into the abyss of life.  Am I stupid?  Nawh.  I am too caring. How does one stop being too caring?   They say I should love myself more than others.  Jesus loved others like I do.  But then he died a horrible death while asking God to forgive those that hung him with nails on a cross.  Jesus Christ!!  Is that my fate because I care too much?  I don’t want to care that much.  I want to have some sort of good on this earth versus survival.  Or “simply” be appreciated and understood like I understand when others mess up. 

I know many believe me to be vain because I post nice photos of myself on Facebook or my blog.  Yes, I do.  Because I am trying to love myself more not only spiritually but tangible.  My mother chose to burn all my lifelong photos in a burning barrel.   She murdered me in a sense due to her anger and inability to see past here own needs. That was when I was in my 2^nd decade of life and I still tried to make her love me.  I don’t anymore.  But that took 7 decades and wasted time.  Do I sound like a victim?  I was.  I am no longer. I fear my mother is now. Poor woman.

Sure, wish Felipe would come along for one last ride!  I deserve it.  Or a sweet vacation cabin where I can listen to the birds and hear from my guide, oh, and the sound of Felipe riding up on his Italian moped of course. Or on a horse, in a car, or on foot….. LOL

I will post the next Chapter of The Horrors that Hide tomorrow.. I took a necessary detour today!!