Who the fuck is going to eat all the chocolate off my Snickers bars or fight over recipes or swap laundry photos? One minute she was sunshine, the next she was being an asshole, but always, always she loved me. When I was the most broken in my life, when I was so devestated I lost 50 lbs in a month, she was there. She took care of my kids. She went out every morning and got me a sweet tea and would give me 1 cheddar round. Just one, it was all I could eat and not get sick.
We would get drunk and do the Cupid shuffle with my parrot (he could dance his ass off). We would bar hop and come home and terrorize my kids by pretending to be monsters outside their windows. She accidentally made the best chicken and dumplings in the history of ever when she mistook a shaker of sugar for salt. She held my secrets and my hand. She made me madder than anyone but managed to make me laugh no matter how much I wanted to choke her. She loved me and hated me and loved me again and sometimes in the same day.
Friday, August 30, 2019
Thursday, August 15, 2019
Grieving
It's 10:49 pm, August 27, 2019.
A year ago tonight my Andreana died.
I've spent the day in my room, mostly sleeping, my heart too heavy to even talk.
I've gone though a great many things, and experienced so much loss, but this, this has broken me.
For all my grasping and pulling, I can't fucking pull it together. It's too much.
I'm constantly exhausted. Everything feels loud and heavy and intrusive.
I go days or sometimes weeks where I'm busy enough or distracted enough to hold back what's coming, though I feel it always coming to swallow me. Always coming in the replay of laying in my floor screaming my sister is dead over and over. I need to scream it and never think it and let everyone and no one know it all at the same time. There is nothing good that has come of this, nothing. Nothing to make sense of. Nothing to rise up from. It's just a big fucking void continuously consuming me.
A year ago tonight my Andreana died.
I've spent the day in my room, mostly sleeping, my heart too heavy to even talk.
I've gone though a great many things, and experienced so much loss, but this, this has broken me.
For all my grasping and pulling, I can't fucking pull it together. It's too much.
I'm constantly exhausted. Everything feels loud and heavy and intrusive.
I go days or sometimes weeks where I'm busy enough or distracted enough to hold back what's coming, though I feel it always coming to swallow me. Always coming in the replay of laying in my floor screaming my sister is dead over and over. I need to scream it and never think it and let everyone and no one know it all at the same time. There is nothing good that has come of this, nothing. Nothing to make sense of. Nothing to rise up from. It's just a big fucking void continuously consuming me.
Birthdays and Brokenness
Birthdays are supposed to be full of joy, celebration, cake, balloons, gifts, family, excitement and pride.
Caring for someone with severe mental illness, with a history of trauma, those are very different birthdays.
Today is someone I love's birthday.
For the first time in 14 years, I am choosing to stay home. I can't do it. Not one moment more.
I've spent most of the last 14 years going to one lock down facility or another.
Security screenings
Small decrepit rooms that smell like a weird mix of urine and sanitizer.
Damaged walls from whoever was mad last that they won't bother to fix.
Strangers paid minimum wage sitting nearby.
Awkwardness
Pain
Gifts that meet hospital criteria, no strings, nothing sharp, nothing liquid or that could otherwise be cleverly used in the most awful of ways.
The birthday girl excited about things, never the people that come with them.
Aching goodbyes.
Long drives home full of tears.
Curling up in a ball and crying for hours because this is never what I imagined life would be like when I chose to be a mom.
So I'm choosing to stay home today.
She will still have all the birthday things, just not me, not that I would be missed. The things are what matter.
There will still be tears, but I get to skip all the in-between awfulness, all the pretending. I simply cannot do it anymore.
Caring for someone with severe mental illness, with a history of trauma, those are very different birthdays.
Today is someone I love's birthday.
For the first time in 14 years, I am choosing to stay home. I can't do it. Not one moment more.
I've spent most of the last 14 years going to one lock down facility or another.
Security screenings
Small decrepit rooms that smell like a weird mix of urine and sanitizer.
Damaged walls from whoever was mad last that they won't bother to fix.
Strangers paid minimum wage sitting nearby.
Awkwardness
Pain
Gifts that meet hospital criteria, no strings, nothing sharp, nothing liquid or that could otherwise be cleverly used in the most awful of ways.
The birthday girl excited about things, never the people that come with them.
Aching goodbyes.
Long drives home full of tears.
Curling up in a ball and crying for hours because this is never what I imagined life would be like when I chose to be a mom.
So I'm choosing to stay home today.
She will still have all the birthday things, just not me, not that I would be missed. The things are what matter.
There will still be tears, but I get to skip all the in-between awfulness, all the pretending. I simply cannot do it anymore.
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