April 13, 2005

In an effort to please my therapist, who insists that writers write every day (who would have guessed), I'm just going to jot some random stuff down. I don't have a theme or an overriding idea, just stuff.

April was and has been a terrible month for my family. My mom's mom died on April 5, 1961. She was born 95 years ago today, April 13th. My uncle Ernie died on April 13th, 1994 at the age of 86. And even though I hate to put this in the same category, my cat Peeper died on April 6, 1997, age unknown.

Sometimes I just get tired of fighting. My mom has been gone for nearly a month now, and I just feel like I am slogging through life, no purpose or energy, just kind of a blind, meaningless trudge like they did in Stephen King's novella, "The Long Walk". I get up, get dressed, go to work, eat, come home and do stuff, boring stuff, eat again and go to bed. It's kind of like I did before, except now there's no wind in my sails, no fire in my belly. I exist rather than live. I think of a dozen things a day I have to remember to tell Mom, only to remember quickly that I can't do that anymore, or that at least she can't answer when I tell her. I have bills, people to meet with, things to wash and matters to attend to. But to what end? At the end of it all, I am still alone and alone in a way that isn't likely to change very much. It's sad to think that I expect anyone else to be like my mom was to me, and I don't, really. It's just that after an entire lifetime of experiencing a certain kind of acceptance, love and security, you kind of get used to it. And you don't really know what to do in its absence. I can't look to others for that type of relationship, that's unrealistic. But I can't just deny that that has been a big part of what has made me who I am today; what do I do, then? Just sit and howl at the moon in agony? "Why hast though forsaken me?"

Decisions that I don't want to deal with beckon. Do I stay here, in this house, in this town, at this job? Do I go back to school? What for, exactly? Do I drown myself in activity, or do I fall back into my familiar pattern of introspection and brooding, and hope to decipher some type of meaning and direction from that effort? Most days all I REALLY want to do is just lie in bed and sleep. I don't even want to dream, because I dream of the way things were before and then waking up is so painful. It's like a splash of cold water on your face, or more like a hard punch to the gut to wake you up. My mom was security blanket; she used to say it was me and her against the world. She was right, I think. I just wish we both had had more allies because it was inevitable that when one of us was gone the other was going to be overwhelmed by the task of facing that world alone.

It's nice out tonight, maybe I'll take a walk. I love cool sunny nights. My mom got to where she did too. I'm a lot like my mom in a lot of ways. Most of the good things about me I got from my mom. That's not to say all my dad's stuff was bad; I attribute most of my bad qualities to no one other than myself. Everyone's parents screw them up a little and do right by them a little. It's unfair to blame too much of the way you are on them. God knows both my parents loved me, and tried their best to be good parents. That's a lot more than I can say for a lot of parents. I've heard the saying that 90 percent of life is showing up; my parents certainly showed up. They made me too big a part of their life, but I suppose that's preferable to having me be too little of their life.

Well, I gotta go pay some bills. Maybe I'll be back.