I don't know where I am going. Or how to get there. Every day feels like Christmas morning. I am so excited to fall out of bed and get my coffee and just get started with all this living and doing, and being and existing. The only thing I question regularly is the lack of direction. I have direction when it comes to the girls. Be the best bloody mom I can be. Listen to them a lot. Support them. And love them through it. The love part comes naturally. We all can make a concerted effort to be more emotionally available to the people closest to us, especially when we're busy.
I have my personal goals, I mean I carry on like a harpy about my school work. I know its dull as hell for everyone around me. Its my schtick. Its where I get that little bit of validation that although I appear to be rolling around like a tumble weed I seriously am anchored or grounded in some sense, at least in an academic sense, and I can produce fruits of my labour that mean something to some professional somewhere. It also helps clear out my head. I would rather be consumed with external input than obsessed with my own inner churnings.
I have my job which I have grown to love. I love the at times challenges, I love having a shipment arrive and not knowing what in the world I am going to find, or how greasy or oily my fingers are going to get, and sorting it all into what goes where, the paperwork to follow it, the shipping labels (although sometimes I goof up), and then making a record of it all so we can work backwards a couple months back from now to figure out what went where and why. I love the interaction and the banter I have with a couple of my vendors. I just got invited to stay with one of our machinists and his wife in Arkansas. And to drink copious amounts of whiskey. Very funny. I love taking bank statements and reconciling them down to zero. I love how perfectly it all fits. My life may be chaotic, crazy, harrowing, but there is order there too.
It just really comes to where I am personally. I love the silence in my house. I love the freedom of thinking where do I want to go today, and just going. But then I also think that life is for sharing. And who do I turn to to share it?
Yes I have my friends. My beautiful, beautiful friends, who swoop in, and rescue me from me and my necessity to stay hidden away at home, force me out into the sunshine, make me go to places and experience things I never would have else wise.
But I am waking up at midnight, at one, at two. I switch from the blackness of sleep, to the starkness of awareness in an instance. No grogginess. I am acutely aware of my silken sheets, knowing in the light that they are aqua, exactly the colour that I wanted. I have seven pillows, four that stay in the bed with me, three that I throw off to the side. I sleep towards the middle, phone on the right by my head, in hands reach. I feel for my pillows, making notes of where each of them are and turn over, to readjust. And all I want to do is put my hands on his bare shoulder, to touch him, to make sure he is still there. In anticipation I imagine his skin is warm and smooth, the sheets are cool. But he is an illusion. The illusion vanishes and each time, I am overcome with sadness. I doubt he will ever be here.
Sunday, March 22, 2015
Sunday, March 15, 2015
The cruel dance.
Daddy sat opposite me at the restaurant. Mom sat next to me in the booth. Daddy sprung into a one man performance. Glee. Mirth. Zeal. He packed a power punched line up. "Hey Diby...!" he said expecting my mom to engage with him. "Hey Diby....!" She smiled. Nodded. She retreated to that space behind her eyes, the place only she can access. She made her shoulders small. I grabbed her thigh and rubbed it through out the meal. She didn't return the contact. Turning 45 degrees to almost face me was all she could handle.
That didn't slow my dad down though. Unperturbed he carried on speaking in exciting tones. I realized then our roles for the night. Daddy needed me to keep the conversation going. Daddy needed to pretend it was all normal. That he was normal. That she was normal. That we were just a normal family eating a normal meal on a normal Saturday night. I actually had zero desire to go out that night. But seeing them all washed and ready in my drive way was all that it took for me to pull my sulky self out of my sulky socks and set myself straight.
Daddy has this thing about Mom's car. He says it is just perfect and so smooth. The second we got on the road out of the subdivision, he floored it, going 80 for a short stretch. I told him not to accelerate whilst turning like that, someone has to be the adult here, but actually the short burst of speed was thrilling and it left my heart pounding loudly in my ears.
Moms laughter burst through her lips like a guffaw. When she turned to me her sapphires were glistening and lit with an inner radiance. I think Daddy risks getting super speeder tickets just to make mom smile. I wonder if the state troopers would see it was a necessity and not necessarily risky behaviour.
Across the table, Daddy and I joked. I told him about bringing "guns to the gun show" and made him feel the place where my muscles are supposed to be. I told him that my brother had told me he would bring the guns, I just had to bring the beer. Daddy told me I should work on my triceps. I then showed him hey we do this, and we do that, all whilst being comical to make mom laugh. Her laughter is kind of breathless. There is no mimicry or reinactment or comments. It is the hollow sound of someone watching who can no longer engage. It has an eerie sadness of a perpetual observer.
The thing is I think we all subconsciously know it is not real. I just think we're not ready to give up pretending we're normal. For as long as mom can eat her mashed potatoes and her ribs, we will be doing our little song and dance. And Daddy when it comes to Mom's car. I say floor it.
That didn't slow my dad down though. Unperturbed he carried on speaking in exciting tones. I realized then our roles for the night. Daddy needed me to keep the conversation going. Daddy needed to pretend it was all normal. That he was normal. That she was normal. That we were just a normal family eating a normal meal on a normal Saturday night. I actually had zero desire to go out that night. But seeing them all washed and ready in my drive way was all that it took for me to pull my sulky self out of my sulky socks and set myself straight.
Daddy has this thing about Mom's car. He says it is just perfect and so smooth. The second we got on the road out of the subdivision, he floored it, going 80 for a short stretch. I told him not to accelerate whilst turning like that, someone has to be the adult here, but actually the short burst of speed was thrilling and it left my heart pounding loudly in my ears.
Moms laughter burst through her lips like a guffaw. When she turned to me her sapphires were glistening and lit with an inner radiance. I think Daddy risks getting super speeder tickets just to make mom smile. I wonder if the state troopers would see it was a necessity and not necessarily risky behaviour.
Across the table, Daddy and I joked. I told him about bringing "guns to the gun show" and made him feel the place where my muscles are supposed to be. I told him that my brother had told me he would bring the guns, I just had to bring the beer. Daddy told me I should work on my triceps. I then showed him hey we do this, and we do that, all whilst being comical to make mom laugh. Her laughter is kind of breathless. There is no mimicry or reinactment or comments. It is the hollow sound of someone watching who can no longer engage. It has an eerie sadness of a perpetual observer.
The thing is I think we all subconsciously know it is not real. I just think we're not ready to give up pretending we're normal. For as long as mom can eat her mashed potatoes and her ribs, we will be doing our little song and dance. And Daddy when it comes to Mom's car. I say floor it.
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