Semi-Random

I'm finally coming out of the fog of that shock and initial grief. I don't remember much from the first few days after Mom died, and I've spent most of the past three weeks kind of floating, unable to accomplish anything.

But on Thursday, I feel like I woke from a sound sleep. The sun was shining. I accomplished tasks. I went outside. Since then I have felt aware.

I feel desperate for a recent picture of my mom, and for the sound of her voice. I've dialed her phone number just to hear her message. Kind of pathetic, but who cares. I want to find a way to record it so I can listen when I need to.

I'm alone in Mom's house for the first time since she died. (This summer I had a very few moments alone, such as when she had to stay overnight at the hospital a couple of times.) I am enjoying the silence and solitude — I've lived alone for sixteen years, and for a lot of the preceding years. Having other people here, making messes and not quite cleaning them up, watching tv all day, checking with me every fifteen minutes to see if I'm doing okay has been distracting. 

It's been good for me to have people around during my fog; I doubt I'd have eaten if they hadn't been here. While I don't really know my aunt, and sometimes she bugs the hell out of me, she is fiercely protective of those she considers "hers," and now that Mom is gone, I apparently belong to my aunt. It makes me grin just writing that.

My best friend is highly annoying, but he loves me and he doesn't know how not to be annoying with me. With everyone else he is funny and charming and sweet. With me, not so much. I think that part of the reason he loves me is that he can be that way, doesn't need to be charming and sweet, and that I give it right back to him. No one else does that.

Over at Lucy March's blog, she is talking about being manipulative, in terms of trying to control how people feel and react to her. Being a people pleaser is much like that, too. Control issues often go back to major childhood issues, trust issues. I guess I've done that a lot in my life. But with my bff, I no longer do that. I can be myself, sweet or bitchy, smart or goofy, and he will always love me. He accepts all the weird, silly, moody, perverse parts of me. But I am still a recovering people pleaser, a "make them love me" manipulator, like Lucy. 

And there are huge aspects of myself that I do hide from people. There really are aspects that would be very difficult for others to be comfortable with or to accept at all. That's okay — very few people really need to know all of me. And, as a therapist once told me, honesty isn't the same thing as full confession.

I feel kind of sad that I'm not crying right now over my mom's death. I feel weird that I am feeling okay. Even though I've been through this routine before, it's different (it's always different). I am aware that I will go through phases, over and over again. I know that it can, and probably will, take a lot of time to pass through my grief and there will be times of peace. It still feels weird.

I kind of feel like I'm floating in the sea, alone, maybe on a raft or more likely on some kind of box (for those who have seen Joe Versus the Volcano, it's something like his luggage-raft). It isn't the dark, menacing sea of my occasional nightmares. I'm alone, the sky is light, the sea is pale green. No one else is there. And I am just ... floating.

I'm disappointed, but not surprised, that I've had no feelings of visitation or presence of my mom. I told her, in the evening and night before she died, to come to me if she could. She agreed. I'm sad, because I would like to see or feel her again. I'm not surprised because I generally believe (although I am open-minded) that when we die we simply disperse as energy or molecules into the universe, rather than maintaining our identity. But it would be comforting to think or have some evidence otherwise.

I'll be fifty years old in a few months. When I turned forty-five, my mom and grandma threw me a party (they were quite offended when I planned to throw my own birthday party and make it a potluck — I think it was a generational difference). It celebrated both my birthday and the new name I was taking. When I turned forty I was sad and disappointed that my friends simply invited me to share a party with some other people (who had had their own parties when they hit that specific age, I might add). I don't think they understood why I declined, nor why I chose not to attend their party. When I turn fifty, I may just go somewhere alone. Given that my friends have always been pathetic about throwing me birthday parties in general (sorry, but you guys really have been; perhaps my own phenomenal party-throwing skilz were just too intimidating to even try to emulate :) ), I may just keep this birthday all to myself.

It sounds like I'm knocking my long-time friends, but I don't mean to. I love them so much, too much I think. I have these unrealistic expectations and desires. As the Zen Buddhists say, having expectations leads inevitably to disappointment. Having none leads to contentment. I'm working on it. But now BOTH my copies of my favorite philosophy/meditative reading books are in storage. IN TWO DIFFERENT STATES. And there is no way in hell I can find the ones here in Oregon. My storage unit here scares me.

I am so afraid of the future — often have been, which has led me to my attempts to control my life and my future. I have to find work again. I have to find a home again. And there are private things that push at my center of balance, making my future less predictable. 

I have desires that I try to divorce myself from because they prevent me from feeling satisfied with my life. There is my fear that there will be no one to sit and hold my hand while I'm dying the way I did for Mom. (And I am so very grateful that I was able to do so.) I fear that my creativity has died within me.

But I am cheered when the sun shines and I smile at the waves when I walk on the beach. I am filled with grateful awe at the support I have been given by people who know me well and people who have never met me. And I am often amazed that life pulses on and that I can take so much joy (sometimes tinged with envy) in the knowledge of other people's lives and all the love and joy they have.

I really need to make more of an effort to write when I am happy. Just so no one thinks I'm only a doom and gloom sort. Really — when I am not grieving, I am quite a cheerful person. I've just been rather overcast lately. I look forward to the shiny moments in my own personal sun.