tired, but I can't sleep
I'm too afraid to go to bed, afraid of the tears and the hopelessness that overtakes me the moment I lie down. The only way I can sleep anymore is to be so exhausted that I can't think anymore, to be in that zombielike state where I can't cry, can't feel anything. Then I sleep for a few hours until I have to wake up, and spend most of the day in a haze. What else is there to do, but wait?
"Don't worry, things will get better." People say that all the time, not realizing that it's the biggest lie ever told. Depression aside, it's simply factually incorrect. Things don't get better. Eventually, everyone we love dies, or we die first; either way, it's inevitable, and thus things will never stay better. Unless what happens after death is better - but none of us has any way of knowing that for sure. Even the best possible scenario, dying in your sleep at age 100 after spending the day with your family, rarely happens; it's all tubes and machines and families having to decide in a bare room far from everything their loved one called home.
And so, I understand why Marilyn hesitates, why my dad is having to convince her to even have the surgery and why she'd rather just spend her last days doing the things she loves. But they don't have to be her last days. She can fight this, and she can beat it, for at least a few years and hopefully much longer. She has to - if not for herself, than for her kids. A is already lost, and I fear there would be no hope of him finding himself if he were to lose his mother as well as his dad. R is on the edge...she watched her father die, tried in vain to save his life, and her grief is already eating away at her from the inside. There are nights she's terrified to be alone...who will hold her if her mother is gone too? Who will hold my dad on those nights when the emotions break through and he is able to cry for the enormous amount of pain and sorrow in his life? Life is hell, and there are no guarantees of anything, but she has to try, if not for herself than for those she loves.
I'm holding Kristi's baby blanket here on my lap. It's comforting, and brings back memories of a time when I didn't know how much misery life would hold. But they are ghosts of memories that never were for me, for the little girl whose first moments of life were spent dying, and hearing her mother scream as she was being ripped out of the womb by the doctor who turned the warmest, safest place she'd ever know into a death trap. I wonder if people who didn't have their illusions shattered from the start, people who had childhoods that were not filled with trauma, find life harder to take when it inevitably turns to shit. Or is it worse for those of us who've never had it good, because we feel cheated out of what was supposed to be? Well, there is no "supposed to be." There's the very few, really-fucking-lucky, and then there's the rest of us. We're the majority - but the big secret, the big lie, is the idea that we're not. And this lie has to keep being perpetuated, because it is what allows us to say that "things will get better" and delude ourselves into believing it.
Anne Frank said in her diary, "I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart." I wonder if she would have still felt that way if someone had asked her about it when she was dying in the concentration camp. Yet somehow, I think she would have, for the same reasons why despite everything, I keep going. There is SOME purpose to life, some hope, even if it is of catching a few brief moments of joy. I wish I understood it, but I know it's there, and it's not a delusion. And knowing that is the only thing that will get me through these days ahead, however many there may be before what comes after.
"Don't worry, things will get better." People say that all the time, not realizing that it's the biggest lie ever told. Depression aside, it's simply factually incorrect. Things don't get better. Eventually, everyone we love dies, or we die first; either way, it's inevitable, and thus things will never stay better. Unless what happens after death is better - but none of us has any way of knowing that for sure. Even the best possible scenario, dying in your sleep at age 100 after spending the day with your family, rarely happens; it's all tubes and machines and families having to decide in a bare room far from everything their loved one called home.
And so, I understand why Marilyn hesitates, why my dad is having to convince her to even have the surgery and why she'd rather just spend her last days doing the things she loves. But they don't have to be her last days. She can fight this, and she can beat it, for at least a few years and hopefully much longer. She has to - if not for herself, than for her kids. A is already lost, and I fear there would be no hope of him finding himself if he were to lose his mother as well as his dad. R is on the edge...she watched her father die, tried in vain to save his life, and her grief is already eating away at her from the inside. There are nights she's terrified to be alone...who will hold her if her mother is gone too? Who will hold my dad on those nights when the emotions break through and he is able to cry for the enormous amount of pain and sorrow in his life? Life is hell, and there are no guarantees of anything, but she has to try, if not for herself than for those she loves.
I'm holding Kristi's baby blanket here on my lap. It's comforting, and brings back memories of a time when I didn't know how much misery life would hold. But they are ghosts of memories that never were for me, for the little girl whose first moments of life were spent dying, and hearing her mother scream as she was being ripped out of the womb by the doctor who turned the warmest, safest place she'd ever know into a death trap. I wonder if people who didn't have their illusions shattered from the start, people who had childhoods that were not filled with trauma, find life harder to take when it inevitably turns to shit. Or is it worse for those of us who've never had it good, because we feel cheated out of what was supposed to be? Well, there is no "supposed to be." There's the very few, really-fucking-lucky, and then there's the rest of us. We're the majority - but the big secret, the big lie, is the idea that we're not. And this lie has to keep being perpetuated, because it is what allows us to say that "things will get better" and delude ourselves into believing it.
Anne Frank said in her diary, "I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart." I wonder if she would have still felt that way if someone had asked her about it when she was dying in the concentration camp. Yet somehow, I think she would have, for the same reasons why despite everything, I keep going. There is SOME purpose to life, some hope, even if it is of catching a few brief moments of joy. I wish I understood it, but I know it's there, and it's not a delusion. And knowing that is the only thing that will get me through these days ahead, however many there may be before what comes after.