"We are sisters. We will always be sisters. Our differences may never go away, but neither, for me, will our song." Elizabeth Fishel

My sister got an apartment. For the past few years, she, her husband and her young son have been living in the basement of her mother-in-law's house. She calls it the cave. They were doing it because housing is so fucking expensive around here, and she was working nights while her husband worked days, and it kind of didn't matter that they lived in a dungeon for a while. They made do.

But at the end of the month, they'll be moving into an apartment, close to where her husband works, and in a good school system for their soon-to-be-kindergarten-age son. She got laid off from her night job at the end of November, with a pretty nice severance package, and decided to start a home business selling bath salts and essentially-oiled-soaps, and she seems happy. Excited. I'm happy for her.

But I haven't asked if the apartment is on the first floor yet, because I know it's basically just another opportunity to have my heart broken.

Because this is the sister who gives me a lift whenever I need it and doesn't complain or make me feel like a huge burden for needing the lift in the first place, but she's also the sister who was getting married and told me she wasn't having a bridal party because she and "my real sister" were fighting and there wasn't any point in having the rest of us.

(By real sister, she meant the only sister who is 100% blood related to her, and with our mishmash of halves and steps and somes, our sisterhood is a wee bit complicated that way, I suppose. But I'd never considered it so until that moment, until the second she told me that she considered me to be some second tier sister, with the carelessness of someone who's just mentioning the truth as they know it, as simply as saying "fish swim in water": As if it was given, a thing that everyone already knew and acknowledged.)

Sisterhood is a complicated, messed up, confusing mix of shit, sometimes.

I have five sisters.

One of them - the one who joined us last, by marrying our only brother - is dead. I watched her die, with both startling suddenness and screeching slowness. I let her down, and let her kids down, because I allowed her to live those last months in a denial that seemed impenetrable at the time, although I recognize now that that was mostly my own cowardice: I knew the end was coming long before anybody else here could recognize it, and I so wanted to be wrong that I allowed myself to be convinced it wasn't true. I knew what was true, though, and not confronting her with it, not presenting it to her in a way she could accept robbed her of her goodbyes, I think. Robbed her kids of all the letters she should have written them to open on graduations and birthdays and weddings. When I think of the hole she has left in our family, in the threads of us, I couldn't be sadder. I feel guilty that I am raising her children, or talking with her sister, or having Easter dinner with her parents, knowing that it should be her there instead. I miss her laugh, and her "let's do it" spirit, and I'm still mad about the time she told me to suck it up, and guilty that I felt vindicated when she was sick enough herself to apologize for having said it. The feeling of missing her is a feeling of weight in my chest, of tears that want to flow for her, and her children, and her husband, and her family. I hope that she knows that I loved her, and that my love for them is not just because of my brother, but because of her, too. I know I'm just a placeholder here, but I hope she knows how much I miss her.

My older sister, the one that came with the dad my mom chose for us, is distant in a different way. She's independent of the rest of us in a way that I both envy and pity. She has her own happiness and her own path, and I wish her well on them both, but I'd rather not be lectured on them any more, if it's all the same to you.

You know that pop psychology saying where the things you don't like about other people are the things you don't like about yourself? This sister is the one who makes me most feel like a hypocrite. Because I talk about what I need and making it work with what other people need, but when she does it, it seems so selfish to me that I almost cannot process it. Our needs are different of course, but I'm not sure hers are any less mandatory (in her mind) than mine are to me. That's a hard thing to face - to feel like you are being self-less when you are in fact being selfish.

This sister has a laugh that I miss: A cackling snort that was a staple of my childhood, and that I doubt I've heard in years. She's aloof in a way that makes me feel aloof. I know she's a mama bear, but she protects her cubs in such a different way than I would, that it's hard for me to hold out my hand to help. She says she has healing ... abilities. She has never once offered them to me. (And I cannot think that I would be anything but pissed off if she did. Hello, hypocrisy. Hello, mirror.)

She shuts doors with an enviable ease, but I think they're the wrong doors, so we find ourselves on opposite sides. I have never felt like she was my big sister: I feel like in everyone's eyes, I have always been the oldest, and I'm jealous that she somehow avoided all of that responsibility. Her favorite board game when we were children was Aggravation, and I'm not sure there could be a more apt description anywhere of how our relationship has evolved.

The rest of my sisters are younger, and they are all babies to me in some way, even though the youngest will be thirty this year, and the other two are mothers.

The other two are amazing mothers: Such different mothers, but both so caring, so capable, so determined to avoid the mistakes of our parents. And yet, their mothering reminds me so much of our mother, that sometimes it's indistinguishable. They have their own relationships with our mom, fraught with the opposite complications of my own (I was her chronically ill child; they were the children who wished for the attention I had stolen. I cannot find it in me to blame any of the players in that play for resenting the roles they were cast in, even as I regret and resent our casting.), and so to say to them "You have the best parts of our mother, mixed into your mothering" is a bridge I haven't crossed with either of them, unsure of the reception I'd get on the other side, but it doesn't make it any less true.

One sister mothers with an ease and grace and adult-ness that was shocking and unexpected from one of our family's 'babies'. And yet, somehow, mothering is as natural to her as breathing, and her bond with her son is mesmerizing and sweet, complete and thoughtful. I know she is hurt, as I am, by the children who haven't come, the siblings she wishes for her son. Maybe they'll come in time for her; maybe they won't, like me. I'll be sad with and for her, if she doesn't get the family she wants, but I also know the family she has is enough. I hope she feels it too, if she needs to. Her boy is her heart, her guide, her star, and only good things will come from/for either of them.

The other mother is anxious, and eager to avoid the generational mistakes that plague us. It's hard, when she's living in our parents' house, having to balance a pregnancy and a tantruming toddler, and a chronic illness or two that are untreated/able. But here's the thing I can't make her see, although I have tried, and will continue to try, every day if she requires me to. Every day, she battles, and she believes, and she begs and barters and bends her way through the day. Every. Day. And there's nothing that could make me more proud of her. Nothing that could make me say "You are the mother your kids deserve," than that. The need, the drive, the willingness to keep going, in the face of all that she has to handle, makes her a mother, full stop. Makes her THEIR MOTHER, and that's all they will require from her, if only she could step back and see it.

She's the most closely connected to our mom, right now, and I am both envious (because I miss that for myself) and grateful (because I don't miss it ALL). She was the sister closest to me by age, who came along and stole whatever attention I must have been getting at the time (I was a pretty cute four year old, guys), and that made some of our relationship pretty rocky. She's the teenager who planned her sweet sixteen up a huge flight of stairs, then got mad at me for "making a scene" when I needed to be almost carried up them. Who my college roommate called a bitch (but only to me), the 300th time I was crying about some illness-related issue that she refused to accommodate. (She was big on perfume, as a teenager. And tantrums, including name calling her 'lazy ass, fake ass' pretending poser of a big sister.) But she's also the only sister who's apologized for all of that, who has acknowledged that teenage-her's behavior was shameful and horrifying. She's the sister I've sat, huddled under the table with, as she battled her own demons, and who would text me hysterically laughing during The Office. ("He's wearing Kleenex boxes for shoes: This shit is TOO MUCH!") She has a fierceness that made me sort her into Slytherin before the Sorting Hat could choose, but with such a Hufflepuff heart, it's hard not to build a giant shield around her so nothing bad in the world can hurt her. She's the one who calls me her person, and who tries to make me recognize that I am probably not a hideously dreadful human being, when I most feel like one.

She's jealous of the connection the next-in-line sister and I have; I'm jealous of the one they have. There's so many twists and turns between us all, we could outdo most soap operas, pretty easily.

That next-in-line sister and I have a physical proximity now that has helped us be closer, and a nephew we both love that we work hard to show our love for, together. She's become a friend I wish I could have, to her chronically ill best friend - the kind that listens and does your grocery shopping if you need milk, and calls your husband an ass if he calls you lazy, and remembers what you're allergic to - and I wonder where the girl who made me feel like the biggest imposition for daring to STILL be sick on Christmas, or her birthday, disappeared to. Her evolution as a human being has been so impressive and inspiring, and I wish I didn't have to tip toe so much around her that I don't get to enjoy all the benefits of that. But she never treats me like I should stop asking for favors, and she genuinely seems to appreciate my helping hand and occasional words of wisdom when it comes to her kid.

She's the baby I carried around on my hip the most, the one I learned how to fill bottles for and change diapers on, and I remember her tiny, chubby little hand holding mine as she hid behind my leg, from whatever people my parents had over. She has a level of warrior and witchcraft I wasn't expecting, and I feel lucky to be able to watch them bloom.

The youngest of us, the true baby chronologically, lives the furthest physical distance away. She came to us late - a voice on a phone, a high, happy giggle - and everyone who should have loved her most abandoned her (either through death or by choice, or both) her whole young life. Some of us have stood up for her, and I think she knows that she is an integral part of us, a vital finger on the hand of us, but I also think that she's the furthest away because she's afraid of the abandonments to come: Her adoptive father, my uncle, is elderly. I am unwell. My brother checked out a long time ago. There are only so many times you can say goodbye.

She's our scholar, our high achiever, and I may have spent some time in my younger days resenting her nabbing the title away from me, and still managing to be the bohemian adventurer at the same time. I may spend some of my older days doing the same thing: who knows? She's careless with money, and has the same lax communication skills we all have, but she knows what matters, and how to say it out loud. She's a word wizard, a poetess (by both trade and temperament), and whatever she decides is what she does. Another independent spirit, somehow scattered in our flock. Maybe she feels like the black sheep, but I see her as yet another fuzzy cuddler. She non-ironically owns a typewriter, although she was not around when I was using one way back in grade school. She thinks up last minute crafts for Christmas gifts, and makes sure every piece of tinsel on the tree is strategically placed. Her artists eye may arrive a tad bit late, but you can depend on it, no matter what. She does not give up on the people she loves, even when they turn their backs, even when she maybe should.

These are my sisters: Spread out amongst the world, and another world, and always in my heart. It's hard for me to not be physically near them all, and yet, when I am physically near them, that is often hard too. Sistership is a more tangled thread than friendship: It comes with it's own weight and weariness, it's own rememberances and remorse. And yet I would not trade it for anything.

I wonder often about my mother, who lost her own sister so young - How did she go on from that? Did she ever feel that missed connection feeling of sending out signal into the universe only to have it bounce back unanswered? Does she feel it still? (It has been 30+yrs since my aunt died.) I do not remember my aunt well enough, as an individual adult, to recall what their relationship was like - there was more than 12 years separating them, after all: My mom was the baby, my aunt the eldest. I wonder too, how my remaining aunts and uncles go on, having lost so many of their number - They started (in my memory, anyways) as a clan of nine; their ranks now hold only 4. Less than half of them, and hardly ever in the same space. My heart hurts for them, and I can see how they hurt when we're together. How they reach for the stories, or the storytellers, and that pang when the only other one who'd remember isn't there to tell it with you.

One of my goals lately has been to strengthen the connections I know mean the most to me. Sometimes this has been easy - making more dreaded phone calls (only the doing is dreaded: once we are talking there's nothing but warmth), poking and checking in on people who'd rather live in their shells. Often, though, it has been difficult. Sucking up my pride and apologizing for a thing I didn't mean to do wrong, but did wrong. Listening to opinions I do not agree with and not responding with sarcasm or spite. Leaving space for the needs of others, knowing that I may not (will not) be able to fill them all. And sisterhood has proven to be one of the trickiest.

Because we're all these diverse, different people, and in some ways we're exactly the same. Some of us hate texting; others hate talking on the phone. Some have heartfelt meaningful discussions, told only in meme form. Others have no idea what memes are, or why we think they're so funny. All of us are hurting, in our own ways. All of us love each other, even if love means deeply different things to each of us. But I'm working on it. I'm working with it, and as much as I can, with them. Trying not to hold on too hard, but never giving up the fight.

They're worth it. Each and every one of them.

Things that shouldn't be hard, but are.

I'm in the handicapped stall in the Bertucci's bathroom, staring at the same four little tiles underneath my feet, trying to breathe, afraid to do anything more, anything other, than that. Outside are 4/5 sisters, a handful of my niblings and not my brother. Inside the bathroom, an older lady who'd held the door open for me when we were both coming in, is coughing in her stall. Peeing.

I'm just sitting and breathing.

In the movies, or books, when a character goes into the restroom to have a breakdown, it is conveniently huge, echoing and empty, or otherwise a single stall with someone rudely banging away on the door. Here, it's me and these four tiles and the old lady in the stall next to me.

And I couldn't have a breakdown even if I wanted to, because everyone is counting on my to be an adult, there has already been enough drama. My brother and older sister already had a disagreement that ended with him leaving the restaurant before we'd even been seated. There was no actual yelling, and it was probably better that he left, because restraint is SO not his thing, but the kids are on edge, the remaining adults are feeling a little awkward, a little off. (Or at least, I am.)

I have not slept - and I mean in any way for more than three minutes at a time - for over eighty hours. No real reason; just a shitty painsomnia cycle combined with brain overload and pills that stopped working all of the sudden. Not completely unexpected or unheard of, just another joy of life with chronic illness. I know I've made it over 100 hours with no sleep before, but it's been a while, and it's definitely disorienting. Everything seems either too close or too far away - as if I'm looking down the end of a spyglass, or as if they are all looking down the end of one towards me. Sometimes both, at the same time.

I've left the table rather abruptly, but when I get back, only one of my sisters notices. She claims I have a weak poker face "The worst poker face", she says. She has no idea how wrong she really is. If she can see through it even that much though, imagine if I had just started bawling in the ladies' room? Imagine if the one who puts everybody else's pieces back together - who can see that my brother's leaving is worrying my nephew and attempt to joke him out of it, who can see that the sister who tried to plan today's visit is poaching in self-recrimination (our first restaurant had been too small, too hot & unable to seat us quickly enough for my brother's patience; this next choice seemed to have no food options for our nephew with multiple food allergies) & try to give her a bit of a bolster (as the one whose plans USUALLY blow up in her face, I know that particular stew too well); who can see which little one is jealous of the baby and which big one is itching for his phone; who notices the fake smiles plastered on and rushes to fill the cracks in between - Imagine if she were to suddenly lose some of her own? 

It is not a thing that any of us wants to find out.

I know I don't always have to be the strong one, or the bossy one, or the one who notices, or the one who tries to help.  It feels like I do, but I don't. Usually, almost always, I WANT to be that one. I don't ever want to be the indifferent one or the one who doesn't care, or the one who walks away. Still,  I try to step back and give people space, and let others step up and fill different roles.

 But sometimes, like today, sitting in the Bertucci's bathroom, staring at those four tiles, trying to pull myself together enough to go back to the table instead of collapsing into a large puddle, I wonder "Why doesn't anybody ever put my pieces back together?"

I hope, some day, that there'll be someone I can depend on to do that for me. With me.

It's a lonely feeling, and I know it's not even 100% valid - I DO have people who care, who help, who fight with me to put my pieces back together: Even today, my sister noticed, asked, tried to help. But sometimes, just sometimes, it feels like I don't have that help, that I can't accept it. And that's a hard way to feel.

And if it took me a little bit longer to put my poker face back on, then I'm just going to have to be ok with that. Because I managed. I pulled through, and ate food, and coaxed smiles out of infants and adolescents and adults alike. I put a smile on my face that was semi-natural and I made it through. And we all made it home.

And that's today's triumph. And I'm going to take it.

Sincerely, NTE

Dear Internets,

Thank you so very much for all of your wonderful, fabulous, fantastic links on today, Harry Potter Day! I am quite enjoying them. So much so that I am going to share some of them here, in case anybody else has missed out.

Zoot, who wrote the original template I used for this blog, so I've been reading her for at least six years, and her older son are adorable here. Cheers for tolerant teenagers.

Jennie culls through the Collective's archives for some of the most amazing Harry Potter-related posts ever.

s. e. smith (posting at Tiger Beatdown) talks about accessibility - or lack thereof - and why it is a bitch for people who like things or want to be happy for a little while that nobody (with the power to change things) cares about it very much.

Gretchen Alice compiled the Harry Potter project, full of other people's stories about their HP experiences. (Which I meant to contribute to, but just didn't get around to)

and Tumblr, dear Tumblr is chock full of magic today as it is every day.

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Dear Chunkys,

You are not to be thanked for having only one 2-D version available (and pre-sold) for your midnight showings of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt2. Some of us require 2-D versions, and also really appreciate being able to sit in comfortable chairs for close to three hours. Yours is the only local theater that is truly accessible to me, on most days, and you went and ruined it by insisting on 3-D (which is completely inaccessible, unfortunately).(Please see Tiger Beatdown link, above.) Since I have to choose between a Fibro-flare and unmanageable migraine & dizziness, I'm going to go with the flare, and take my business elsewhere for the show. But bad call, Chunkys; bad call.


(PS - I will be attempting to take my nephew to the same movie sometime next month - see if you can figure this out better for next time, won't you?)

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Dear Other Movie Theaters,

I do not really like you, because your chairs are very uncomfortable, and I do not have the option of ignoring that. You are also often inaccessible in other ways, and to many people other than myself. I recommend that you read the Tiger Beatdown link above, as well, and try to remedy that ASAP. As for tonight, I would appreciate it if you did your best to not be so stinking uncomfortable that I am unable to focus on the movie... there is much crying and squeeing to be done, and - while I realize your place of business generally forgets that people like me exist - I want to do my share. Also, on a more positive note, thank you for adding 2-D showings to your midnight offerings - it is much appreciated.

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Dear Fibro-flare,

I know that you are making yourself at home, post-SisterCh's shower and family bad news, but I'd rather you didn't. As a matter of fact, should you choose to abandon me, I would be most grateful. In the meantime: do not mess up my very last chance to attend a midnight showing of Harry Potter... I would be most displeased. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

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Dear Readers,

Hello! Have you read all the fabulous Harry Potter posts the internets are sharing with us today? In case you were wondering, I am wicked excited about attending the midnight showing tonight, and super psyched about the whole thing. We've talked before about my Harry Potter love, but I'm going to try not to rehash all of that right now (in order to refrain from writing about how 'magical' the whole thing is). Suffice it to say that the fact that it is coming to an end - the original series and all that goes with it - is bittersweet, for sure.

My family has had a bittersweet week itself - SisterCh's shower was beyond amazeballs - a lot of hard work (SisterJ rocked it out of the park, SisterK really showed up at the last minute and helped us pull it out), a few cranky "I don't play shower games"-ers (neither do I - but if there are games, the least you could do is pretend it isn't going to infect you with something), and a mess I've barely begun to clean, but still - she was quite happy, and people were definitely impressed - I'm going to have to steal some of the pictures SisterJ took, because I'm sure the only ones I got were of present-opening, but trust me, it went really well, even if said Fibro-flare tried to make me miserable (Fail!). The bitter came, unfortunately, later that same day, when we found out that my uncle - who was quiet and funny and far away - lost his battle with brain cancer. He is the fourth of my grandmother's nine children to die in the past twelve years, and the only one whose death we were (mostly) prepared for, but it's still been tough. To sit with my grandmother, and hear her talk about being superfluous and wondering why "He" would keep doing this to her. To hear from all the cousins and aunts and uncles who are grieving and remembering fathers, mothers, brothers, gone. To live through it all, again & to know that there'll be more grieving coming, and just want to run away and hide, and not have to face any of it. It's not an immediate loss, for most of us - because he was the recluse of the bunch, for sure - but it's still a loss, and I'm sick of losing.

Ahem. So - The movie better be amazing (and I have heard that it is), because it feels like I've been waiting for-ever for it, and for the chance to go to the midnight show (sans costume, unfortunately: things came up - although I'd make a pretty good Bellatrix, if I just didn't brush my hair), but mostly because I just need it right now. I just need the magic (crap: puns, there is no avoiding them when it comes to this subject: sorry!) and connectedness and community and love. I need the fandom and the characters, and the knowing that there are a million other people sitting out there in the dark somewhere, tonight, crying their way through the Forbidden Forest with me.

Total bonus is that I get to go with SisterK, seeing as how she's moving away in a couple weeks and is all "being a grown up" now and stuff. She was younger than my Oldest Nephew is now when we (BigBrother & I ) took her to the first one. She was eleven - just like Harry - when she started reading the books. And I'm pretty sure she's the only one in my family (besides me) who is still disappointed that no owl ever showed up for her. She got her drivers license (way late) especially for this - well, this and the fact that she has to drive halfway across the country in a few weeks, but let's just say it was for this. And I'm going to buy really expensive popcorn and not care at all.

I've been seeing a lot of "Thank you, Harry!" or "Thank you, Jo!" type posts around, and I'm in love with them all. Because those are my people - people who get that books and movies are more than words and pictures, and that characters can be true friends and stories can be more powerful than you can imagine. People who understand that the gift of forgetting about your own life for a little while - no matter how good or bad it may be - is a treasure. And who don't take it for granted.

Technically, I was 'too old'* for Harry Potter - it wasn't my childhood, or even my teenage-hood. I started reading them as they came out, but it wasn't until college. They've been important to me, just the same. Sharing it with my sisters, even though they were only kind of into it; sharing it with my nephew, even though he reads s o o o s l o w l y; battling my brother to get back my copy of the last book; laying on a bed with SisterK, trying to read more slowly so the day wouldn't end: these aren't things that I take lightly or will ever forget. It's good for me, today, this week, to have those things to remember & it's hard for me to believe that they all came about because one lady decided to start writing things down in a coffee shop somewhere.

To someone who loves words as much as I do, that is pretty much a miracle. That the writing down of words; the creation of a universe so different from our own, and yet fundamentally the same; the invention of spaces and spells and specialness; the journey of a boy and his friends, could come to mean so much, to so many.

It won't be the end of the world, when there's no more new Harry Potter movies, just as the world didn't end when George Lucas decided there'd been enough Star Wars movies (of course, some people rejoiced, but that's a little bit off topic), but that doesn't matter - it doesn't make it less sad that there's nothing new coming down the line. It's ok that it's sad - that's life. But the best part is, fifteen years ago, I'd never heard of Harry Potter, and neither had anybody else, really. So there's always the possibility that tomorrow, some other journey will start, and we'll all fall in love with somebody else. That's life too: exciting and surprising.

So I'll go tonight to the midnight show (my first! midnight showing!) and I'll try my best to have an amazing time & knowing that it's not the end of the world, and that it will be incredibly bittersweet. And I'll love every minute of it, and be thankful that I'm here to enjoy it.

Miss you! Be back soon!

Constant vigilance

Am imagining myself in Italy with Nathan Fillion, instead of lying here in bed, with a headache the size of that leaning tower he's probably posing next to right now. (Nathan Fillion is actually too cool to pose as if he and the tower are both tipping over, I'm sure, it was just the largest thing my poor tired brain could think of.) I actually had a pretty eventful day - wedding crafting with my mom and sisters, which went relatively well.

When it comes to my sisters - to any of my family, really - "relatively" is the operative word. Members of my family have long accused me of being "overly sensitive", and I probably am, but I feel like I am certainly not alone in that personality trait - none of us is particularly immune to the barbs and arrows that are routinely slung around here. Only, for the most part, I feel like they are all only sensitive to what's coming at them, not at what they're dishing out, while I have to be on high alert for everybody's issues. (Hello: I'm an adult child of three alcoholics: I like to try to stave off any emotional conflict before it completely & disastrously explodes - Pleased to meet you!)

But I am apparently the only one who is on hyper-vigilant putting-out-fires-before-they-flame-up duty, because it often feels like every time I tune into a conversation, I see somebody standing there, dropping another match.

It's like they can't see each other's tender spots - or when they do see them, they underestimate the impact on that person when they poke at them. When they're doing it it's "just teasing/joking/making an observation", but if it's done to them, then it's a deliberate insult.

I know people do bite their tongues, which makes me grateful that they have some internal sensors, but I don't feel like anybody else is as tuned into trouble as I have to be. Nobody else seems to see that looking to SisterJ for what comes next is probably putting more pressure on her than she needs/wants, or that continuously laughing at Mum's attempts to cut straight leaves her more embarrassed than amused. Perhaps there's more than a kernel of truth in these things, or in the fact that SisterCh would rather play with her her music list than make a decision, but when people keep poking the same spot over and over, I find myself waiting for the inevitable to occur, and for some to go just one joke too far.

And Lord only knows what happens then.

Part of my apprehension is, of course, this newly formed/found peace between SisterJ and SisterCh, which (it seems to me as a semi-outsider) is being constantly strained and tested by the multitude and magnitude of wedding STUFF TO BE DONE, and while I know it is not my responsibility to try to police their interactions, I keep finding myself doing exactly that. (And then writing super long, run-on sentences about it!) I hear myself re-interpreting something one of them just said to the other, trying to soften a verbal blow that I hope was unintentional, or have to physically stop myself from following after them when they leave a room together, worrying about what might happen once they are out of earshot. It's unreasonable, and I know it, but I haven't figured out how to stop feeling it yet.

They're actually doing a lot better than I'd have imagined, but the potential for danger and chaos is frightening to me, and I know that it's kicking my control freak tendencies into high gear, leading people to tell me how bitchy I'm being, which, when you are really only trying to help, feels pretty awesome, let me tell you. So then I try to dial it back, and wind up seeming uncaring to somebody else. Balance: I need it. (You can't control other people, I keep telling myself. But knowing it and following through on it are two different things.)

What's really evident to me now, though, is how much it hurt when they were fighting - not just them, but me too, - and how powerless I felt during that whole thing. I don't want to feel that way again, so I am trying to throw myself on all the grenades I see now, before they blow us apart again. Of course, this is a stupid strategy, because A) maybe those aren't grenades to anybody else besides me, B) constantly watching for grenades is exhausting, as is trying to diffuse them before they blow up, and C) everybody involved is an adult, and I'm never going to be able to predict or control their behavior, so it's useless even to try.

I am well aware of all those points, and it helps, some, to calm me down when we get to spend a day like to day where there were three separate bouts of laughter-induced tears, two semi-completed projects, and a whole room full of very stubborn people who each gave the day their absolute all, but I have a feeling that this relationship repairing stuff is going to take a lot longer than I want to be on guard duty for, and am going to try to work on that.

It was strange: There was a perverse comfort in inertia.*

So I'm having a bit of a hard time lately, and I'll tell you, it is not becoming. It's one of those times when there's a lot of stuff just underneath , and you spend a lot of your time (or at least I do), measuring your words and acts carefully, because you're sure that what's underneath could come bursting through at any moment, and that it would not be a good thing if that happened.

Some of the underneath stuff is not my own, just mine to figure out how to navigate - all of that fun (and incredibly high-pressure, fast-paced) stuff related to putting together a wedding with a bride who has a bit of difficulty making choices (and then sticking with them); the trying to incorporate the opinions of everysingleperson ever, apparently; and two sisters with a tentative truce and a still rocky understanding of each other who are trying to collaborate on about 400 different aspects of a wedding in a little over a month. So there's that.

And then there's all my under the surface stuff, like the fact that Soon-to-be Sister-in-law sort of decided that it wasn't worth it to bring the kids up here anymore, only she didn't come right out and say that so I'd get up in the morning expecting them and instead find a text saying no one was coming. Although we've renegotiated for the summer, and she told SisterJ that she did it because she thought bringing them up here was burdening us, I was left with a bad taste in my mouth and the feeling that all the effort and time I spend with the kids (because I want to!) is not really worth all that much to her, while here I thought I was helping to raise them for the past eleven years. I guess I am more hurt by that then I let on, even though I know she didn't mean to hurt my feelings, and that - in general - they both appreciate the time we watch the kids.


And, of course LilGirl will be starting kindergarten in the fall, so that means our twice a week commitment with her will be ending anyways, so I was trying to pack as much fun stuff into the summer as I could, because once school starts, we're all weekend sleepovers, and that's just not as much time. LilGirl is not the only one disappearing come the fall - SisterK will be in Iowa to go to grad school in August (right after the wedding), and has been off gallivanting on trips to England and Vermont since she graduated so that I have barely seen her.

I have an uncle, who I am not very close to but still love, who is suffering from cancer and seems unlikely to make it to through the summer, and it also seems highly unlikely that I will get anybody to go up to where he lives with me, (and once there, I'm pretty sure I can't make it into his antique cabin because of stairs). Hell, I can't even get people to walk next door for me to deliver a pie I spent three hours baking (squeezing lemons is not in my skill set), which is another issue simmering underneath everything else. It also turns out that I am eligible for yet another social service program, which might change both my financial contributions to the house and the responsibilities that my mom would have when it comes to helping me out. Unfortunately, our current working relationship is not working out as it is, mostly because she's not been in the best health either (physically or mentally), and it is making it so that I don't always get the help I need. Having this between us, when we are so close, is hurtful, because I wind up feeling both resentful - not that she's not well enough to do something, but that she insists she is and then it doesn't get done - and trapped - we depend on the money my mom makes as my PCA, so if I try to give some of her hours to someone else who could do some of the less personal, errand running type stuff, then I'm taking away money that our family needs; and I assume that she feels pressured and misunderstood, because I am just not ok with the things that are getting left behind. It's very stressful, as you can imagine.

Along with that are some new health issues - not setbacks, exactly, but issues - that have kind of shocked me, and left me unsure of what to do next. It is likely that my body (jokester that it is) is just playing tricks on me, but either way, it's starting to seriously complicate matters, and that is not appreciated. Not to mention, although I hate hate hate the analogy of the biological clock, that certain ticking numbers, including my age and hormone levels (never mind my single & sick status), are making me wish I'd gotten knocked up at fifteen, before I got sick, so that I wouldn't have to worry about it maybe never happening now. (And even just typing that makes me literally sick to my stomach, which is why I am avoiding thinking about it as much as possible.) And of course, every one I know is pregnant. (Well, two cousins, two friends, a zillion bloggers - it just feels like everybody.)

And, if you've been here any length of time, you know that when I'm avoiding things, I take up residence solely inside my own head. Where I can either choose to zombie out - play a few "click a lot and blow things up" games, reread a series full of happy endings, Facebook stalk - or swim in the muddle and try to salvage some sense. Can you guess which choice I have been making lately? If I told you that the Bridgertons are doing just as well as they were the last time I read their books, and that I have a new high score on Big Money, would that help you out at all?

Yes, I've been zombie-ing out, which includes, of course, letting the blog fall semi-silent because "what the hell am I going to say that makes any sense to anybody?" But, as is often the case, it just took me a while to get things into place, just enough, that I could write about them some. So here's some of the stuff that's floating around underneath for me, thanks for letting me vent a bit.

I promise tomorrow's post will be full of ... something else. Hopefully a good something else. :) Have a great weekend you guys.

*Jeremy Groopman, The Anatomy of Hope

I kind of hate bridal showers

So, Miss Janice asked me the other day who was getting married, and it occurred to me that I hadn't written about SisterCh's wedding since she announced she was engaged, last New Year's Eve. The reason for that is that it was, until about three months ago, a nebulous sort of thing - "We're getting married in 2012, so we'll be married before the world ends" or "We're getting married next year, when we've saved enough money" are both actual quotes regarding when the wedding would be happening. And then, suddenly, around April of this year, a near nervous-breakdown SisterCh came to the house one day and just let loose - Why weren't we helping her? Why didn't anybody care about the wedding? Why was she having to do everything all by herself? There was some other stuff, of course, because we are a family, and there's always other stuff, but this wedding stuff was mostly out of nowhere, for me, anyways. I told her that the reason nobody seemed to be helping with the wedding (even though I felt like I was doing what I could) was because it didn't seem like there was an actual wedding to plan yet: She had a sort-of date, but no real plans aside from that, and that I kept expecting her to change the date (for the third time) because they weren't ready financially. When she insisted that the wedding was happening this August 6th (as in less than two months from today) even if it meant courthouse steps and Little Debbie cakes, I let her know that I was totally on board to help out as best as I could.

So here we are, with a little under two months to go, and we just finished the invitations this weekend. And now, SisterJ (who has made miraculous and tentative peace with SisterCh, thank the lord) & I have to plan a bridal shower pretty much immediately. Ideas are easy - it's the follow through that's tough.

The other thing that makes it tough is that I find parties where grown-ups sit around watching another grown-up open presents for an hour or so boring, intimidating, and anxiety producing. I mean, I've never had a shower, but I've been to my fair share, and I know that no matter what, you're expected to open the gifts right there in front of people. Which brings us to Problem A and Problem B.

Problem A is not my problem so much as it is everybody else's, but they insist on making it my problem, which is annoying. I am a slow present unwrapper. On Christmas, I sit with my pile of presents and watch everybody else open theirs first, because I hate to miss anything. Then I start lifting the tape off of each end, and - without fail - at least one person will be complaining before I even finish that first present (sometimes before I even start opening that first present). When it's just my family, I figure "screw you" and do as I damn well please - unwrapping presents is almost as much fun as wrapping them, and why should I rush through it just to make you happy. Even so, I can't recall a Christmas where someone hasn't stepped in to 'help', and moved things along faster. But I think I'd be too self-conscious to take my time unwrapping in front of a larger group of people, who are all sitting there watching me, with no presents of their own to enjoy in the meantime. It would be wicked awkward.

Which brings us to Problem B, aka Why is everybody staring at me ? Seriously: at most parties, even birthday parties, there's a whole lot of mingling, a little bit of focused attention during cake cutting time (when it's dark, at least, while a roomful of people who can't really sing sing you a song as loudly as possible), and then more mingling and eating and then everybody goes home. Showers (baby or bridal, take your pick), are pretty much the opposite - a whole lot of undivided attention focused on that one person, broken up with occasional stupid games, nibbling of foods, or mingling with the people you're seated with. Too much eye of the storm for me, thank you very much.

And, thankfully, that is not a problem I have to deal with right now. Right now I have to figure out a date to have the thing, where to hold it, what to feed people, what to make them do while they're here. I have basically two ideas - a theme and perhaps the beginning of a family tradition? And I pretty much have to do all of that in the next three or four days, because there's very few weekends left between now and the actual wedding. So, I'm going to pin down SisterJ tonight, see if we can't get something started here.

Wish me luck.

And also feel free to comment on any non-boring bridal shower you've ever been to, because we could use all the help we could get.

(PS - Spell check? If Unreedemed is a word, why isn't unredeeming?)

I spent the week feeling like I was in the middle of an ocean, floating and bobbing along, attempting to eat crackers and drink ginger ale without having them revisit me. That's what I get for trying new drugs. And now that that is starting to truly pass (hey: I ate real, non-cracker foods today... this is a plus! Except do you know what happens to your stomach when you try to put non-cracker foods in it after a week of crackers? It does not take kindly to the intrusion, I can tell you that!), I get to have huge emotional upheavals instead! Hooray!

Seriously. Sometimes I think moving to Australia* might be the wisest choice. I'm starting to think of aliases, see which ones fit me best. I don't want to talk about it again, right now, but suffice it to say that I have both cried and cursed more in the last 8 hours then I have in the last three years. Easily. If you are guessing that the drama is somehow sister related, you would be correct. You would also be correct if you guessed that there was no actual resolution (peaceable or otherwise) /conclusion achieved in the final analysis of the day. In fact, while I think some very important things were said, I'm not sure if any of the important things that needed to be accomplished were accomplished. But I tried. God almighty, I don't think I could have tried any harder, and that's all anybody can ask of me.

By "anybody", I of course mean 'anybody but me ', since I apparently am not satisfied with having done my best, but instead am upset that I wasn't able to achieve miracles and (our little) world peace while I was at it, but that's just because I am kind of a jerk to myself.

I am going to go and find something completely unredeeming to watch on television, or some cracktastic type of book to read, or a computer game that will devour my soul for a few hours. (Or perhaps all three of those things at the exact same time.) Anything to not be me for a little bit.


I'll check back in with you all soon, and hope your weekend is full of bright spots that don't include crackers or drama (unless crackers &/or drama are your idea of happiness, in which case, have at it!)


*Bonus points for all children's lit majors who managed to find the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad portion of today's post.

Postage Stamp Island...

As much as my brother-in-law might laugh at me for attempting to rap (or, more accurately 'sing a rap song',) my current life resembles nothing so much as the line from Grandmaster Flash's The Message "Don't push me, cuz I'm Close. To. The. Edge. (I'm trying not to lose my head)"


My pain has been turning it up to eleven lately, following a couple of infection setbacks and my dumb insistence that I do not need as much down time as my body thinks it requires (because "downtime is boring!" ... So is suffering, you ass). Because of that, I am living with the near constant feeling that my muscles and bones are attempting to burst through my skin, as if I've taken some excess Skele-gro* without the accompanying broken bones. You know how on the Hulk (original TV show Hulk), his eyes would glow green, and then his clothes would start falling to pieces as he just expanded into this terrifying green monster? Yeah, it basically feels like that, complete with bonus "Hulk Smash!!!!#!@!" anger because who the hell wants to feel like that? It hurts to breathe, or move, or put clothes on - I literally cried the other day, when we had to leave the house and I had to put on a bra. (And yes, I know it is beyond stupid to put whether or not you look good over whether or not a piece of clothing makes you hurt so much you cry, but I can't get over it: Leaving the house without my bra makes me feel naked and not in a good way.) Sleep is a joke, because rolling over in bed is as dangerous as rolling through a field of landmines, and the other day I just got up and baked cookies at 2 in the morning because if I laid there for one more minute, I was going to flip out.

This is usually the point where my readers who don't have chronic illnesses say something like "Why don't you call your doctor and tell him/her that you're hurting so much?" And I appreciate the thought, I really do, but here's the thing: My doctor's know. They know, and it's not that they don't care, because they do - it's that they don't have the answer for me. They just don't know it. They keep trying - I am, in fact on my third new medication trial in as many months - but if you don't know the answer, you just don't. So calling them and telling them that I feel like the Hulk, it doesn't get either of us very far. "Give the meds more time to work" they say. Or "Did you take the narcotics I gave you - you don't have to be a hero" Right: because wanting to be present, even vaguely in my own life, is heroic. No - I am medicated to the gills, as much as I can be without just being completely out of it (and I can't guarantee that either, sometimes), but (so far), we just don't know the answer.

So there's that. But it's not just that: I feel near the edge on just about everything.

While I won't be homeless if the government decides to go offline this weekend (as I know some will), if it continues for any length of time I will be medication-less, which, for me is quite a serious condition. (I depend on my government to allow me to breathe: what do you depend on it for?) There's no way I could afford the $400 required for a 30 day supply of one of my medications, let alone the over a thousand dollars that would be their sum total - and that's just for the basics, not the 'optional' things like the stuff I use to treat my allergies or the cream I use when the allergy stuff doesn't work. Financial worries would start building if the government was shut down for any length of time, but that's biting off more worries than I need, at this point. But we're there - at the edge.

I'm at the edge with my family, with sisters who are so hurt and angry and frustrated/ing that I just feel like everything I do is wrong. With my mom who's obviously hanging on to her own edge, but won't admit it. With my dad who's having problems at work and thinks it's funny to come home early and say things like "I got fired." (Hint: it is not funny.) With pregnant cousins and non pregnant me, with sisters moving to freaking Iowa or getting married (with no plans, yet!) in the fall, and brothers who don't see the glory of their own children. With a grandmother who asks you for help picking out her funeral clothes when you go over to visit her, in the same breath that she tells you how well she is doing. ("It's not morbid: it's practical. I'm going to be 94." Well, let's be the opposite of practical, then, shall we?) With best friends who don't call or write, and with myself for not calling or writing.

I'm just so close to the edge that it feels like everywhere I turn, there's another edge. Like I woke up on an island, all of the sudden, instead of a continent. Like there's no place safe.

And yet, between me and those edges are little girls with curly hair who say things like "My tooth is loose, even though you can't feel it move," because the girl down the street got money from the "Tooth Bunny". There's 11-yr-olds who direct their own 60 second movie clips on low res digital cameras, that include such action packed sequences as "Fort elephante & how it crumbled!" There's three derpy fluffy bunnies made out of pom-poms and googly eyes, named KC, Sunshine & Band. There's meringue cookies at two o'clock in the morning, and the fact that I can make them sans recipe. There's the fact that the nurse at Zack's office, the much loved Maryellen, worked for five days to get the approval I needed for this latest medication, even though the MassHealth people were being assholes about it. There's Facebook statuses from people far away that I miss very much. There's the fact that my window is open right now, even though it's freaking April. There's all these words typed into little boxes all over the country that show up on my screen, right here on my bed. There's a lot of stuff that pushes me back, and I try to remember it.

The edges are still there though, and my island's getting smaller.


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*Shout outs** to Harry Potter, the Hulk, KC & The Sunshine Band and Grandmaster Flash in the same blog post? Yeah, I'm complicated.

** Using the term 'shout-out'? No, you're really not.

"I don't want the world to see me, cuz I don't think that they'd understand when everything's made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am"*

Day 13 : A Band or Artist that has gotten you through some tough-ass days

Dear City of Angels Soundtrack (Specifically songs 1, 2, 6,7,8, 13 & 14):

I've always been one for music, but can't remember any special allegiance to a particular band or artist. There's been a lot of tough times in my life, and music has helped me through them, sure enough. But never any one group, never any one artist that stood above the rest.

However.

Do you remember that period during my sophomore year of college, and the summer immediately following it, when my educational advisor advised that I think about a "career other than education"? When the resident advisor advised me that I would "have to live in a building without an elevator: everybody has to!" and that I wouldn't be able to get an earlier number in the housing lottery "just because I wasn't feeling well" ?

When two out of four of my sisters weren't speaking to me because I was ruining their lives by demanding that they not spray perfumes in the house, or because they had to be quiet over the weekends, while I was home resting? When my Grandfather died, and my alcoholic father was a jackass to me at his funeral?

When I really was so sick that I thought, for sure, I wouldn't be able to go back to school come the fall? And I was literally bedbound to the point that watching Jeopardy with my mother and Nana became the highlight of my day because it was the only time I could be involved in something that didn't require me to move at all but was still entertaining?

Yeah: that was a pretty tough time for me. And the tv was too loud and too bright and it hurt my eyes and my head, so I couldn't really turn there. And the radio would get boring after a few hours, or I'd get too fed up with the commercials. And there you were, sitting in a stack of my sister's CDs.

I managed to catch her on a good enough day that she said I could borrow you, and I think I kept you for about 5 years after that. But it was that first year that really mattered. That first year were I felt like "This is music that understands that not all the world is awesome and happy. Thank god." Because I really, really, needed something that wasn't sugarcoating it, and something that wasn't going to ignore the very real pain I was in.

Looking back, it seems kind of absurd that all those songs about angels and spirits and a cheesy Nicholas Cage/Meg Ryan movie could possibly have meant anything, but they did. They were just the right amount of melancholy for a girl who felt like the whole world was moving on without her, who was mourning the woman she was supposed to have been.

"the news that truly shocks is the empty empty page
while the final rattle rocks its empty empty cage
and i can't handle this"

Truth.

"For a break that would make it okay
There’s always one reason
To feel not good enough
And it’s hard at the end of the day
I need some distraction"

More truth.

"God has got his phone off the hook
Babe, would he even pick up if he could?"

Truest yet.

So thanks, purloined soundtrack from a movie that I only watched once and couldn't bear to sit through again (sad. Sad movie.): I appreciate the angst of your songs just enough to listen to you on repeat, endlessly, for the better part of a year. Life was kicking my ass, and (while it has not yet decided to stop) it was nice to have a partner in my malaise, somebody who understood that world was HARD, and SAD and it was ok to feel it. Thanks for letting me stew in my funk for as long as I needed to, because eventually I came out the other side (mostly).

*Iris, Goo Goo Dolls
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Day 01 Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself