I had barely opened my eyes, yet I already knew I wasn’t going to be able to bear it another day. The dim morning light shone against the threadbare curtains and turned the pea-green walls even more putrid than their reality. He and I had painted these walls when we moved in five years ago. In the six months since he’d stormed out, I had barely done a simple chore; the dust all around the place bore that out. The thought of repairing the wall (the imprint of his fist was still there), masking, priming, all of that even before painting – ugh, the thought of it all was too much to bear.
With a deep sigh of resignation, I sat up and swung my bare feet onto the worn area rug where they settled comfortably into the almost-bare impression of my feet, an impression created by this decades-old rug barely bearing up under the heaviness of years of me sitting there fretting and weeping. Yet another thing which had reached its time to go. Save that for another day.
And so it was time to begin the process. It would be a bear of an ordeal, I knew; painting, which I never liked anyway, always was. I rose from the bed a little too quickly, causing me to lose my bearings for a moment. I took a deep breath and whispered to myself, “Bear up. Bear up, girl. You can do this.” Fumbling around in the dim light, I found and threw on my favorite old sweatpants, the ones so worn out you could almost see through to my bare behind (so he’d told me many times) and readied myself to head to the paint store – Behr, of course.
Proof of My Existence 