lovaliss's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - It occurred to me just now this is one of the few safe places I feel I have left. That feels good. As I've grown older so has my anxiety, my social discomfort, my ability to play along. I am a child in so many ways. Somehow this is connected to my brother. I have theories, which is all I can ever have and as such are always changing. The theory is, my grief results in me staying where I am psychologically. I'm holding on. I'm good at holding on; nostalgic to a fault because it affects my present. If I move on into the adult world, if I marry and have kids and move on, I leave him, a part of him, a part of me, the little sister, and I've been holding on for so long. I'm the little sister waiting for her phantom big brother back in order to make everything right; only now I don't have a religious story that keeps me safe, that makes it possible, I'm just naked here in the winds of the universe, hoping for immortality, hoping for eternity, but not banking on it in any way shape or form. The summer is hard. I am always depressed in the summer. To me summer smells and feels like death and drownings and sad mom's and powerlessness and helplessness and feelings of being trapped because I could not go anywhere then to escape the suffocating grief of her, and him, and all of us and I couldn't make it better. I was only 11 and 11 year olds can't take away a mother's existential grief, a person can't even take away their own. For the first time I realized the connection I have made as a result of that for being unworthy of love, not good enough, not enough period when a mom comments all the time how she hopes the end is near, that the "second coming any day now" because she is too sad to live for me and the rest of us if she can't focus on the impending destruction of the world so she can have him back. That's heavy for an 11 year old, I don't think anyone can blame me for my floundering around when it comes to love and questions of deserving and questions of being enough and questions of possibly being abandoned at some point for grief or something unseen in the future, like an Apocalypse that might bring him back that my 29 year old self now knows it not happening, but was just a checklist fundamentalist belief so everyone including myself could carry on in denial. "Someday" replaying in our minds to fill the emptiness that loss left. I am always relieved to see the summer go. Fall is breathing. A deep, satisfying, crisp first breath. I just get through summer every year. Every other time of the year is marred with his memory and thus his absence. The Holidays? Remembering we are incomplete. January? His birthday. The Spring? Easter picture was the last picture we took. The Summer? Drowned, trapped in a log jam under white water with his face centimeters from the surface. But the Fall? It's just all mine. The loss is in me, a part of me, created me; it is there even when I ignore it, forget it, or cover it. It's an emptiness never filled, nor was it ever, though religion was the best second-rate filler I ever had. When I miss him I miss it. When I miss it I miss him. But it's like missing an old love lost, remembering all the good and forgetting all the bad when it was up close. The people aren't perfect but the people are all it is. It's a divorce, a heartache never gotten over, only less painful over time unless the moment strikes a fertile blow to the past. The sadness has made me. The grief un-quenched pushed me into foreign places with nothing to lose and that's where I changed my mind. I used to feel brave, now I just feel small. I say this all the time but it's because it's true. Answer: grappling with the grief. How long will it be? Answer: as long as it takes. But I want it to move quick. Retort: Grief doesn't move quick, it moves circular, coming back when you least expect it, triggered when you least expect it, and somehow in that you come to expect it. Will it ever be over? Answer: I don't know, but to the best of my ability to answer based off past experiences, it doesn't go away, it just becomes familiar, and familiar becomes normal, and normal feels okay, even if it's not okay. I think I'm ready to dive in. I think I'm ready to give up the ghost of the Litter Sister and live for myself. Wish me luck. I love you forever M. But it's time I grew up. 11:18 p.m. - 2013-11-01 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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