Today's issue...

Guess I can consider it today, it is after 2 am already. But then again, I haven't been to sleep yet, so it could also still be considered last night too. Either way, today's issue is a certain smell. I don't typically associate events with particular smells, but ever since I plugged in my Moonlight Path air freshener from Bath & Body Works today, I've felt this tremendous feeling of sadness and it's bringing back memories of my failed marriage and of all my hospital stays.

I hadn't used the air freshener since before I moved in here. Not sure why, just never bothered to. But I finally got the kiddie into her own room upstairs earlier, so that freed up an outlet and I plugged it in. What's odd is that I use the bath products of this scent all the time and it's never brought up these memories. It's just the air freshener that's doing it.

It's strange how a single smell can take you to another place and time. I'm brought back to the bedroom of my old apartment, the one I shared with my ex for 7 years. The image so vivid that if I don't move, I almost feel as if I'm really there. I can clearly see everything as it was. The desk I'm sitting at now just to the right of the window. The king size bed that seemed to fill the entire room is behind me. The walk-in closet across the room from the window, whose door was always open though I always tried to keep it closed. The door to the hallway, also always open, but only so my daughter could freely enter to find me anytime she wanted. The fuchsia dresser between the desk & the hallway door. The dresser had been mine since I was a child, though back then it was painted in pastel colors...yellow, blue, pink & green. Don't know why I painted it fuchsia when I was in my late teens...only color I liked back then was black.

It's the room I was pulled out of by the cops & paramedics on a few occasions. It's the room I methodically planned my own death in. The room where I cut myself out of almost every photograph so there would be little proof I had ever existed. It's the room I was in when I found out my ex was cheating on me. But it was also the room where I'd snuggle in bed with my daughter and my husband. It's the room where we'd just lay in bed, talking for hours about anything and everything. It's the room where I surprised my husband on our 5th anniversary with my new driver's license...a new license that showed I had finally taken his last name as my own.

The feelings I'm experiencing are difficult. There are so many coming to the surface at once. The strongest is the feelings of failure, followed by regret, rage, sorrow, guilt, rejection, remorse, shock, deceit, and the list goes on. A part of me wants to kill the smell that's bringing all this on, another part of me wants to keep feeling all these things I try so hard to block out.

I just don't understand what happened to the life I used to have. I don't want to run through the list of why's, because there are no answer to my questions. Think I'll sit here, allow the scent to remain and just cry, just let it all out.