December 2006 Archives

the day before the day before. I'm into double statements, double negatives, and a good night's sleep (finally).

hi. it's 9:15 and I've only been up for a half hour. I can't remember the last time I slept past 7 or 7:30, and half the week I'm up at 5. so last night was glorious. I'm looking around our apartment, which, in a week will be dismantled. I never made it quite what I wanted it to be, and that saddens me a little bit. I think it was just an in-between, I can totally see how it has served it's purpose, but the writing in the sun at the shiny kitchen table element never really totally took on. it's cute and all... but mostly all I saw in it was what it wasn't. now, it's a certified disaster area - you can't walk five feet without banging into something, be it a wall or a stack of laundry or what have you. so today, I have the day off. I will putter, clean up, and lounge. I might even bake a pie or two. no job, no school, no nothin' till tuesday. except for stuff I want to do, and maybe some laundry here and there.

I've felt like a normal girl with backlash lately. I got so scared about my mom, for so long it felt like, and it was so, so hard - and now, I'm more okay about it, but it's still at my back door - all the terrified energy. all that just in case, all that feeling on the edge of everything - that's not right up in the front of my head, but there are such repercussions. I'm bitchy and cranky and I'm forgetting things and I feel all arms and legs. I read about how wellbutrin can cause agitation and sexual side effects - and then erin goes, or dude, you've had so much going on that like, you probably just need to sleep for a while - so herein begins the experiment.

tucker was home for five minutes yesterday from georgia, we all had dinner out last night after the meeting. I got cute little boxes and christmas cards and kacia gave me the sweetest little book with a poem that made her think of me, cut out and taped to the inside. I stood on the stairwell and cried, as she sat there and told me abou this book about love and compassion and how she saw things in there that I had told her, and - this is how it goes. I get so, so, far away from everything I know to be me and right and peaceful, and I'm convinced everyone is just going to run away from me screaming, and then kacia does this or kelly gives me a card about how inspirational it is to watch me just be myself - I just can't believe it.

I'm just looking around this place at how much I have to do. harrumph. I think I'll have breakfast first instead. the new place has two bedrooms, and for now, if raf agrees, I want to put all the extra whatever into the second one with laundry and all that until we can figure out where things fit. and then little by little I want to store things and organize things and just make it everything I ever wanted it to be. only now, I know that it's not the end-all be-all of my life, it's just a thing on the side. if it looks all great, fine; if not, it really doesn't mean much in the scope of my existence. I remember when I used to think that if you just arranged the things around you to be okay, then things would be okay - and when I sat there in my shiny clean kitchen, nothing was okay. I thought I was going to lose my mind.

so here's to big empty spaces and mismatched things. including me and raf. I feel like some days, we're the two pieces of the puzzle that you don't try to put in a particular space, because it looks like the shape or the color are wrong - and then you put them together, and the picture comes to life, and you wonder why you didn't do it sooner.

if I'm not back soon, merry christmas, everybody.

"search not for happiness. search for right living, and happiness will be your reward."
-anon.

never has a journal post created such a flurry of activity. people are reading - many people - even the ones I thought had slipped away in the cold dark night forever (or at least for a long time).

hi.

so, my mom's doing better. all that stuff, her heart stuff, she was so short of breath she couldn't even walk down the driveway without getting winded - apparently it's not her heart, or her lungs, it's some kind of fluid causing pressure in her abodmen that will dissipate (sp?) on its own. so for right this second, the panic button is not being perpetually hovered over.

my days are all blurring together - especially with christmas and the end of the semester all at once. every free moment is write your paper, call your mom, order those pictures, all the while with the morning shift looming when the alarm goes off at 4:45. raf and I call it "everything all the time" - I took that from cheryl's myspace page.

so I sat down this morning, fresh off my email, with all these things to say and now my head's gone blank. nine days till christmas, seven days till the paper is due, lots of people to see and lots of brownies to make. work and words pound into my brain, which is so conditioned to getting up now that I sprung awake at 6:45. I'm just tired of wasting time. I'm also now fully on soy (conversational A.D.D., sorry). we're moving in about a month, and then florida after that, and then seattle after that (if we can pull it together!). like we talked about in class - I don't want to become a parody of my own life.

class - class. a guy that served in iraq came to talk to us yesterday, and it's singlehandedly been one of the heaviest days I can remember of late. he was twenty five at best, and - I almost don't want to write it all out right now because it's just so much and I feel like I left a part of it in yesterday that I don't want to disturb. I did my research paper on ptsd in vietnam veterans, and to see this guy - eric - to watch what happened to his face when he talked about the first time he had to shoot somebody; to hear him talk about how every time he goes up the stairs at night in his quiet dark house, his hands take the shape of his weapon; how he went to fight for a cause - and did - but sat in front of us broken... it was a lot. I think I'm going to start shifting my school towards counseling, maybe with a concentration in ptsd and then a minor in photography.

I can't think of any other way to do my dad justice.

eight a.m., and I'm off to the races. xo

Yesterday I was on my way to do some Christmas shopping when my mom called. It was nothing, she said. The doctors were following protocol, but she needed to let me know what was happening. Just in case. The shortness of breath had gotten worse as of late, and the people doing her radiation didn't know whether or not it was treatment related. So they had to figure out whether or not she had to go to the hospital - apparently it can be a signal that she's reacting in some way that's not good. My sister works in Glastonbury, and since I was in New Haven, it would be easier for me to get there faster, you know, just in case. Since my sister and I are my mom's medical proxy people or whatever it's called, we're the ones that have to make the decisions if my mom can't.

So one of us has to be there. Just in case.

I can't even tell you how these three words have become the bane of my existence. (That's my new favorite saying, by the way. I don't know if I'm spelling 'bane' right, but whatever.) So, this just in case, this inbetween, this chronic edge of something maybe happening, this moment being thrown into total disarray - you're heading to Target, and out of nowhere the phone rings and you have to go to the hospital, to be there just in case. And no one ever wants to finish that sentence. It was like the woman at the cardiac center this morning, knowing my mom, asking me how things were going, and telling me her mom had gone through some of the same stuff. There was an awkward pause, where I would have normally asked how she was doing, and in that same instant realizing that her mom might not have made it, so we just lookat at each other for a second, and then it faded away.

I sat in the car, pulled over in front of the hospital, sobbing. My mother had called back to tell me that she didn't need to go to the hospital, that the doctor's office had said just to come in in the morning for an appointment. "I don't want to do this anymore," I said between heaving sobs. And Raf, ever the wise man that he is, looked out the window and said, "I don't think your mom does either." And then we drove away.

Life is so different now. I make my lists and start my days, and I'm always forgetting something or losing my keys or my phone or my wallet. On any given day, when the phone rings, you wonder if it's the call you're dreading, or someone from work you forgot to call back, or maybe just one of your friends trying to keep you from hiding out. Because work is pushed aside and meetings are pushed aside and your entire world grinds to a halt, for that continuous moment on the precipice, that second you realize you're falling before you catch yourself, that part where you miss the last step and your heart skips - it's mostly right there. Continually ready to be there, you know - just in case.

I retreated backwards, then sideways, then outright walking away down the hospital hallway. The doctor's voice had gone underwater right before, and faded out with every step - like a radio in a car that was backing out of the driveway. Things just got sort of numb after that, there were teardrops and glimpses out third-floor windows. Cut to the exit with not much inbetween, weaving through the other wounded pedestrians... in that moment, if I had a hood, I would havce hidden beneath it and walked away forever. I settled for a concrete seat in the sun instead, and I wept.