Incomplete post of vital importance.

The following is the post that I never finished and never posted (until now). It's a mess, but I can't bring myself to edit or complete.  I wrote it 2 months ago as I was emerging from one of my darker, dark patches. I'm posting it now, in all its incomplete glory, because of its profound significance. I'll talk about that when I don't have to rush to the pharmacy.

I have been in the bell jar. Walking the black dog. Seduced by the dark side. Imagining another mouth under my chin. After last week's therapy session, I started limping my way back to the light, but then came the crawling, swarming, omnipresent blackness...

Last night, as usual, I had things that had to be achieved - school lunches made, dishwasher emptied, dinner planned, 10 minutes spent swapping positive comments with my husband, two week dry-spell broken, at least 6 of 24 fondant puppy dog cupcake toppers made to insure deadline is met. But instead of achieving my daily goal of Sufficient-Woman!, I had to eradicate a mind-fuck of ants from my baking drawer and every inch around it.

Two weeks ago, when the problem first crawled in, I allowed my landlord to convince me that an exterminator was unnecessary and that his bait would suffice, but the result was me chucking out hundreds of dollars worth of accumulated cake decorating shit, not to mention a precious night of accomplishments. As I charged through the dining room,  where my husband was working, brandishing ant-shrouds, the rabid,wild thing burning rubber in my brain, I venomously spat; "That's the last time I listen to a fucking man".

My husband responded reasonably, which allowed my brain to take its foot off the accelerator. It dipped its toe on the dark side and found a few bad boyfriends (nothing significant there) and then the male obstetrician who gave my son his disability. I felt that familiar feeling of being punched in the gut. I was folded double in PTSD pain - which is real and not real in equal parts. I heaved with tears. Then I heard the gentle tones of another voice in my head, not the rabid wild thing, but the wandering sage. She told me to stop. She gently talked my heart rate down and then she talked me through some logic.

Yes, it was a man who got it wrong with the ants.
Yes, it was a man who changed the course of you and your son's life.
But it was young girls who fucked you up all of those years ago, robbing you of your ability to deal constructively with anything as big as death or as small as ants.
And who were your only ally's back then?
The boys.
Then she gave me the same challenge that she's been whispering in my ear for years:
If you fix the biggest crack first, the smaller pieces will know where they fit.