Another Winter In A Summer Town

Everybody in my life is sad. 

And I'm a fixer, so, naturally, this feels like I am failing at every relationship I am involved in. 

It's ... overwhelming right now. 

I feel like the worst sister; the worst daughter; the worst friend; the worst acquaintance; the worst sudo-mother; the worst political participant; the worst everything. 

I cannot seem to spread myself far enough, wide enough, long enough, THERE enough for all the people who need me, and all the people I love, let alone the world at large and all the issues I feel compelled to address.

It seems like everyone in my life is wrapped up in a spider's web of something - fear, anxiety, grief, loss, separation, isolation, memories, wants, wishes, denials - and I can't seem to cut through their webs, or the webs that surround me, to get the connection we both need. 

Reaching out is physically painful, because the support isn't there - to give or to receive.  It never feels like enough. 

I'm doing all the things I can think to do...well, that's untrue - my brain can think of 900,000 ways in which I could be more participatory, but I can't find the time or energy or ability or words or breath to accomplish any of them.  I feel so overwhelmed by my own life - the situation I have somehow found myself in, this faux-mothering I'm doing is a million times harder than I could have ever imagined, and there's all these complicating factors, and I mostly just want to nap, or read, or zone out when I get the chance. 

I need to take those opportunities to reach out more, but I don't know how to force myself to do that, because I am physically exhausted.  I feel like all of my energy goes towards things I couldn't care less about - transportation here and there, cleaning up and cooking and tidying and straightening and making sure everyone has food and snacks and water to drink, and my own goddamn medical issues - that I have so little left for the people and things I care most about.  And that's backwards, so backwards, but I don't have the first clue how to adjust it, really.

Anyways, this is just to say, if you feel like you're failing everybody in pretty much every possible way, even though you're trying as hard as you can imagine trying? You're definitely alone.

I hope I'm not alone either. 

Literally a 5 tissue post. You've been warned. (YMMV)

There's a lot of things I'm in charge of here that I could not care less about: Making sure NLYNephew (now 14.11 yrs old, thank you very much) takes out the trash is one of these responsibilities.  I hate Thursdays, because it is a constant refrain, from the time he comes home after school until he finally takes the trash out (tonight he did it about 10 minutes ago, a little bit after 9 pm). Not from me - I really only remind him the once, or - if I feel like he's closing up shop for the night and it has slipped his mind - maybe right before he goes to bed (which always earns me a huge groan, no question). He knows it's trash night; his dad knows it's trash night; EVERYBODY knows it's trash night.  Why it has to be a big battle every week is a mystery to me, but somehow it always is.


--

I don't know why I started this post that way.  I really just wanted to say that sometimes things here are still really freaking hard.  Hard in ways I didn't expect - I really miss the jokey, sweet relationship that my nephew and I had before I became the one he has to check with to see if he can run to Dunkin Donuts with his friends after school.  Before I became the one who puts corn on his plate and expects him to eat it. 

Before I became the woman-shaped-person who's taking up space next to the giant gaping hole his mother left behind.

--

Do you ever write other people's stories in your head and try to figure out how they'd sound? Especially ones that include you? I've been doing that a lot lately, trying to look forward and backwards at the same time for the kids so suddenly in my charge.  Trying to use our experiences as predictors for theirs, when I know that won't work, but I don't have any other grand ideas.  Trying to see into the future and prevent their damaged hearts from being crushed, as if by magic.

 I wonder, sometimes, what role they've casted me in, or will cast me in, in their eventual memories.

  Is that a normal thing to wonder? I don't even know.

 But I can't help it: sometimes snippets of things pop into my head and I wonder: Is that the truth of how they see me now? Is that the story playing in their head?

 Recently, I had this moment of - I don't know - disconnect and not deja vu but an equally awkward "how is this my real life?" kind of feeling that left me off balance. And when my niece and her cousin walked in at half past eight, tumbling in all loudness and loopy from their grandparents' house down the road, I had this piece of narration that just popped into my head, as if I were seeing the scene from the outside.


"We were a few minutes late, and I could tell by the look on Auntie's face that she had noticed. She always noticed things like that, especially when you hoped she wouldn't. She was a constant looming presence now, with Mum gone, and seeing her there - usually spread across the couch with her laptop at a right angle, or twisted up as best she could to squeeze into our one, lone armchair: three pillows, a heating pad and the laptop's glow on her face - gave me the jolt every time I walked through the door. It wasn't her fault, really, but she wouldn't have been camped out at our house otherwise, and we all knew it. If Mum were around, she'd be back at Grammy's and our twice monthly sleepovers would still be something to look forward to, a nice change of pace where we played games all day and ate tacos. But here she was, and here Mum wasn't, and just like a switch, I remembered it all over again."



I realize the scene itself isn't particularly charitable to me - although I don't feel it's unjustly harsh either - it's just that sometimes I can see it on their faces, the re-realization, and I h a t e being the impetus for that, the thing that highlights their loss all over again.
 --


 I'm having a rough couple of days here - It's not just me: there's a lot going on in our family that's good and bad and horrible and up-heaving and life-altering.  And I feel a little lost, sitting here on this couch, with my charges in bed - one of them upset with me because I'm making him do chores, the other listening to her TV because she finds the quiet unnerving, even all these months later. My brother, snoring away upstairs as he's been since right after supper, and he'll probably be awake at three in the morning, and off to work, and another day will start all over again.

 And I wish that the end of the day felt like I'd accomplished something more than surviving.  I wish that I was able to make them happier, or healing, or at least not argue with them about stupid shit that neither of us really cares about except Oh My God Why Do You Have To Act Like A Teenager Right Now??? Could You Not Be Jerk To Me For 10 Minutes, Please???

And the thing is, my nephew is a sweetheart, and I KNOW that. And most of the time, he continues to be that - he's a good kid, with a good heart, and he's doing so great and trying so hard.  And neither of us really understands my role here or our new boundaries and ... it's fucking hard.  It's hard for me, and I'm a grown-up woman, who lost her sister-in-law and misses her, but who won't ever understand what it's like to be 14 and have your mom taken away from you so brutally. 

I know he doesn't blame me, but he kind of also does.

Because I moved in when she got sicker, and she just never got better, and I just never left, and I'm the one who told him it was never going to get better, and I'm the one who made him understand that that was her last day and he'd regret it if he didn't say goodbye, and I'm the one who's STILL HERE and his mom is NOT.  And sure, he's 14 and he's smart enough to know (in his brain) that that doesn't make sense, that I wasn't a cause for that effect, but I also know it doesn't feel wrong, because sometimes he looks at me like he hates me, and it breaks every little piece of my heart.

And I can't show it, because I know that grief doesn't make sense, and I know that he doesn't like feeling it any more than I like seeing it, but, god, what I'd give to go back to a time when looking at me didn't hurt him.

 I know he loves me, and I hope - with all my heart - that this is one of those things that time can fix - because I've loved this boy with my whole heart since the day he was born, and yes: I'm the one who told him his mom was gone, but I'm also the one who snuggled with him through every nap-time and sick day; the one who taught him about the joy of pretzels dipped in fluff; the one who showed him the miracle of bubbles; Who gave him sink baths and solar systems and learned the name of every maritime disaster in the last 100 years; the one he used to call when his parents were fighting and he was frightened. 

I know, eventually, he'll remember those things too, but right now, on a night when he looks at me and sees all that he's missing, what I wouldn't give to trade places with his mum, to let him have her back, to let her fight with him over the damned trash.


---
Well, now that I've bawled my way through that... I gotta go turn on the dishwasher, and lock us all up safe for the night.  Hope whoever is reading, wherever you are, that you're safe and sound tonight too. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

I took a couple of days off there, to deal with the flare from the steroids, and am finally beginning to feel more human again, so I'm back.

And I'm back with a jumble of thoughts (which is so unlike me, I know) and some interesting (to me, at least) revelations. 

While I was gone, I had a rheumatologist appointment, that was basically a waste of time, energy & spoons, but that left me feeling like "why do I even bother?"  The doctor was very nice, he managed to cross another scary diagnosis off my list, but, in the end, as always, he just said "Well, it looks like your doctors are trying everything that we know to try.  Unfortunately, Fibromyalgia is just one of those things were there's not a lot we can do for you."  He did add "which you obviously know," which was a nice recognition to get, but still: in the face of the worst pain flare I've had all year, it wasn't a lot of help (neither was his examination, which I managed not to cry through, only to burst into tears the minute he left the room.  Attractive.)  Anyways, I try to wrangle December into being as appointment free as possible, because of all the other, happier chaos that manifests itself around this time of year, but between the emergency room visit and this rheumatologist, I wanted to cancel ever appointment I have between now and ... forever, just because.  I didn't, because I've got the dermatologist next week (need non-steroidal answers for allergic reactions and eczema, please) and then I'm clear till the New Year.  At which point I have to psyche myself back into attempting physical therapy again, but I'm in no mood to try that yet, so I'm not going to think about it right now.

Speaking of not thinking about things, ahem: here are the revelations I was talking about:

 So I realized a few, kind of important things the other day, in the midst of the flare-that-made-me-want-to-murder-things.  First was that I'm glad I remembered enough from my college cramming days to plan ahead with my NaNo word count.  I managed to pad myself well enough on the good days, because I knew over the course of the month that I would have days when I physically would be unable to write - not to mention that there would be just regular bad "oh my god where have all the words gone" days - to have hit the 50,000 mark a few days before November 30th.

 Which turned out to be excellent, because the 29th is the day the steroids worked their vicious magic, and I have contributed nothing meaningful to the novel since then.  So, Hooray for the paranoid pro-active part of me that remembers that when there's a deadline for things, my body usually has a way of saying "fuck that!" at the exact wrong moment.  (Witness, pretty much every semester of college, ever.) 

The second thing I realized is that the whole endeavor of writing a novel - which turned out to be a overwhelmingly positive experience for me, in terms of creativity and confidence and just the power of setting a goal and accomplishing it - was basically a huge, spur of the moment diversion for me.

That's right, people, let's just take a minute to bask in the glory of this statement: the power of my intense ability to procrastinate is such that I SPEED-WROTE A NOVEL in order to not think about what was actually going on in my life. 

Which is both sad.  And Awesome. 

I had no idea, on October 31st, that I was going to start writing a novel the next day.  I was wandering around the internets, doing my usual Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Amazon, Reddit, YouTube, I could major in the internet routine and came across someone else's "I'm going to be writing a novel, starting tomorrow" post and it pushed a button in my head.  I knew about NaNo, of course, and have spend years making the face of someone who wants to write but doesn't understand why you'd pick NOVEMBER, aka smack dab in the middle of the craziest time of the year to sit down and start writing a novel with speed and ferocity.  It's always seemed illogical to me, knowing what a regular November is like around here, that NaNo would be something I could ever participate in.  And, I think, if I had given myself the chance to talk myself out of it, it wouldn't have been something I ever participated in.

Instead, fueled by my profound need to not be where I am right now, not deal with the people around me right now, not feel the way I'm feeling right now, I just plunged right in.  I signed myself up on the NaNo site and introduced myself as a newbie on the messageboards.  I read all the posts about people who'd been plotting out their novels since last November, and shrugged: it wasn't like I didn't have 14 different books rattling around in my head at any given time, waiting to be written: Of Course I could do this!

And, the amazing thing to me is that I did do it: even though.  Even though the bronchitis and the wedding and the house guests and the sinus infection and the allergic reaction to nothing and not seeing the kiddos in forever and Thanksgiving and the crazy ass tension in my house and the family members who still aren't speaking to each other and the worst flare I've had in a long time.  Even though all of those things happened, I still managed to write a freaking novel.  (Or, if I'm honest, 9/10ths of a novel: but, still 50,000+ words, and that was the goal, so I'm going to claim it as my own precious.)

The fact that I was writing, here and with the book, and all over the internet any time I had a free minute, as a way to avoid my house, my family, my health, my issues, my sadness?  It's not that it didn't occur to me at the time, it's more that it didn't feel like a huge deal while I was doing it.  It gave me an excuse to sit in my room for hours with the door closed, clacking away at the computer without having to worry about who was worrying about me, or how things were not progressing the way I wanted them to outside of the computer. 

And the thing is, even though it's kind of sad that I have so many reasons to want to escape the here and the now, the awesome part comes in where I don't really feel guilty about using it as an escape.  I don't feel like taking those hours to myself hurt anybody, even me, and that's a change in my attitude, that "This is my time, and I can use it to write a book if I want, even if everything else continues to crumble."  Me writing the book isn't selfish or passive-aggressive (although I've probably been both of those things lately, in other ways): it's mine.  And knowing that I deserve things that are just mine, even if it is words on a screen and a huge sense of accomplishment, that's new for me too.  It's something else I'm working on.

Now that the flare is on it's way out (thank the lord and hallelujah: may i never have to take steroids again), I'm going to start claiming that time again, just for me.  I'm going to incorporate writing goals into my daily schedule again (less hectic ones, for sure, but still), and I'm going to keep that feeling of "finally: something I'm capable of" flowing, as much as I can.

Without the words to work on this past week, I've also realized just how sad I am.  I mean, really, having to swallow a lot so you the lump that's sitting there doesn't make me start bawling level of sad.  Heading into Christmas without Grandmother, and actually feeling just how much I miss her is overwhelming.  There's a lot of little things, tiny moments during the day where I just get that needle prick of grief, and all the happy, 'let's gear up for the holiday' spirit I'd been cultivating just ebbs out of the hole it leaves behind, like the air dribbling out of a balloon. 

Just little tiny things, like a book she gave me for Christmas that's part of the decorations I'm putting up.  Or how she didn't set her manger up till the 15th, because 36 years ago, she was setting up her manger when my father called to tell her my brother was being born and she left it there, disassembled, to rush to the hospital.  Or writing out the Christmas card to Uncle Jack, and none for her.  Little bubbles of grief come at me, unexpectedly, and then I remember that she's really gone.  I remember how hard those last months were for all of us, how much I wish it all could have been different. 

And I'm still SO ANGRY.  That's another realization that just snuck up on me, because I don't particularly think of myself as an angry person, but I'm so angry lately.

 At my dad, for being an asshole, then, and for doing things like daring to talk to me, now.  At time, for continuing to pass.  At the world, for not stopping to let me grieve.  At my family, for not realizing that I'm still grieving and that it still hurts, all the time.  At Christmas, for coming without her.  At her, or Nana, or other people, for being dead in the first place & reminding me that everybody I love is going to die, eventually. At all of my pregnant friends, (which is basically 99% of my friends, at this moment) because they are, and I'm not.  At myself, for being angry. And sick. And sore. And stuck. 

And then I'm surprised that I tried to escape into a fantasy land of writing a book?  With all these feels, I'm surprised I haven't started trying to learning German or how to play the harp or something equally intensive - anything at all that does not require FEELING ALL THIS SHIT. 

But, here I am, stuck with all those feelings, making it through, minute by minute.  And trying to feel the happy moments as they come, trying to hoard them and enjoy them and make as many of them as possible to just get me through to the New Year.  Being glad that the steroids make my pain flare, as opposed to my anger, because otherwise, I would've Hulked out by now. 

I'm going to go to a birthday party on Saturday, and get a tree early next week, and work on feeling the happy.  Feeling the everything, just a little bit at a time, if I can manage it.  I hope your December is bringing you the happy, too. 

A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray*

I started this post a week and half ago.  Here's what I wrote last Sunday, immediately after a moment of Grace ~

In the middle of transitioning her from her wheelchair to her bed after this morning's bathroom break, she suddenly stopped what we were doing, looked at me and said "Goodbye dear."  I wanted to hurry her along, get her safely in bed, so I started to joke, would normally joke "where are we going?" because lately she'll say just about anything at anytime, but something about her tone was different, so I looked up from what I was doing.  I looked right at her, and she was there.  She was in there, somehow, in the midst of enough drugs to be hot air balloon-high, she was lucid enough to offer me this.  "Have a good life", she told me, reaching for a kiss.  "And no matter what, no slander from you, no slander from me.  We'll just be happy for the life that we had these three months."  I swallowed back my tears and said "Yes ma'am. Never: I love you."  "And sometimes say a prayer for me."  "Always," I said.  It was all I could say, even if I could have managed more (and there was so much more I wanted to say: I have nothing but good things to say about you, forever.  I'm not going to let these last few months smear your memory, and I know in your heart you know how much I love you.  I'll miss you.  Don't go.) she had closed her eyes again, and you could see the cloud was back. 

Now this is not miraculous, you might say, but you would be wrong: for days, in the rare moments that she hasn't been completely knocked out, we've been talking about eating butterflies and dinner parties that happened in 1969; she's been (her version of) cursing out my Uncle and I for holding her prisoner here, when she just has to "go or I'll scream"; she's been in near coma-levels of sleep for the most part, waking only when her anxiety or pain levels break through what the meds can control.  She hasn't really been lucid in over a week, hasn't been aware like she was for those three minutes, in weeks to months, really.  So those three minutes?  More miraculous than any other I've been lucky enough to live through.   

Tiny miracles: I'll take them. 

Especially now ~

 My grandmother, a great lady, wonderful mother, open-hearted, strong-willed, surprisingly versatile woman, passed away on Saturday afternoon.  She had been having some trouble breathing earlier that afternoon, so I adjusted her oxygen, gave her her medicine, offered her a weak smile: "Don't give me that fake smile", she whispered in her all of the sudden raspy voice, "You look exhausted."  "So do you," I said "Get some rest."  And then she went to sleep and I laid down on the couch maybe 5 yards away. 

A half an hour later, my uncle went in the room and called out to me: "She's not breathing; I think she's gone."  Her hands were cold, but the rest of her was still warm, that's how recently she had passed.  Within a half an hour from the time I had been holding her hand, getting scolded, giving her a kiss.  She went quietly - I never heard even the tiniest gasp - a peaceful end after all these months of drama and unrest. 
 
 Thank you all for all your support these past months: I can't express just how much it means to me.   For listening to all the ranting about dementia and how much I hate it; about the pressure and the heartache and the loneliness.  I know it's been a dark blog as of late, because I had very little else to talk about, and I appreciate all of you who said even the smallest words of encouragement - I needed them more than I could say.

I don't really know what happens now: I'm feeling such a mixture of relief and sadness and numbness that I can barely get the simplest of tasks accomplished... I know that'll wear off as the days go on.  Her memorial is Thursday & the funeral on Friday, and I'm trying to get everything organized for all of that: it's good to have things to focus on... a project to complete.  I'm going to do that for now, and think about how lucky I have been to have her in my life, for as long as I did, even through these last hellish months.  To have held her hand right before she left this world, well, that's not something I'll ever forget. 

*Trees Joyce Kilmer: a line from Grandmother's favorite poem.