(no subject)
So. Yeah.
There's some shit going on.
I thought I had repressed sufficiently, thought I had put it all away, until last Friday night, when I watched "The Parting of the Ways," and when, if I wasn't biting my nails, I was crying uncontrollably. Not once but many times; not tearing up but sobbing. Wrecked. Utterly destroyed by this goddamn show.
And part of it was really fucking awesome television, and part of it wasn't.
Part of it was being 28 and pathetic. Part of it was this, and my mother yelling at me and calling me a weak candyass on the phone. I didn't know Cindershadow but I regret her loss. She seemed a lovely, kind, and eloquent person, and if I were to get all John Donne on your ass, I'd say we as an LJ community were diminished and I was too. Part of it was me being sick and hormonal, and part of it is that I'm losing my housing. And my job. And the shirt I thought was a deep rich cranberry turned out to be a cheap-looking, Vegas-y magenta, which...if that isn't a metaphor, I don't know what is. And, well...
The Jetsons are a family from my hometown. They went to our church, and Jane is the choir director and my mother's best friend, and we've been on vacation with them, and Elroy is friends with my brother, and stuff like that. And even if there's a big age difference between me and the kids, and I always kinda liked Jane more than Elroy and Judy, and nobody much likes George, they're still people in my life. Tertiary characters with the occasional B- or C-plot in The Story of Me.
They were out here in February, for the kids' school break. They rented a place in Venice Beach for a week and went on day trips to all the SoCal hotspots. I met them in Hollywood for lunch and the afternoon, and tried to act like I knew my way around a place I'd never been. We went to the La Brea Tar Pits, one of those places in LA that people who live here never ever go, and I had secretly wanted to see. It was surprisingly cool and hit my museum kink, my archeaology kink, my green-space-in-the-middle-of-a-city kink, you name it. When I tell people about that day, that's what I mention, not how odd it was for them to be here - like when your parents come visit you at college - or how strange it was to show them around a place that wasn't my own, or how glad I was that that was the only afternoon they could spare in their endless round of beach/Universal/Disney.
I wonder if he knew. Or suspected, even subconciously, that something wasn't right. It wasn't a month later that George was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Of the liver, lungs, who knows what else, sorry, thanks for playing, buh-bye.
I wish I could remember a time when he wasn't an afterthought to Jane or the two kids - a "oh, he's coming too." I wish I could think of a story about him that wasn't mean-spirited, that didn't leave my sister and I rolling our eyes or sniggering, that didn't highlight his social awkwardness or his tightwad-ness. I wish that I didn't feel so much worse about Jane being recently diagnosed with colon cancer, like, 'why this family?' instead of 'why this man?' I wish that I could be there for Judy and Elroy, kidnapping them to the lake or the movies, instead of on the other side of the country sending lame 'encouragement' cards. I wish that in every cancer patient, I don't see my grandmother wasting away in a hospital bed, or myself, somewhere down the road.
It scares me, is what I'm saying, and makes me feel almost impossibly small and paralyzed and scared. And sorry. So, so sorry.
There's some shit going on.
I thought I had repressed sufficiently, thought I had put it all away, until last Friday night, when I watched "The Parting of the Ways," and when, if I wasn't biting my nails, I was crying uncontrollably. Not once but many times; not tearing up but sobbing. Wrecked. Utterly destroyed by this goddamn show.
And part of it was really fucking awesome television, and part of it wasn't.
Part of it was being 28 and pathetic. Part of it was this, and my mother yelling at me and calling me a weak candyass on the phone. I didn't know Cindershadow but I regret her loss. She seemed a lovely, kind, and eloquent person, and if I were to get all John Donne on your ass, I'd say we as an LJ community were diminished and I was too. Part of it was me being sick and hormonal, and part of it is that I'm losing my housing. And my job. And the shirt I thought was a deep rich cranberry turned out to be a cheap-looking, Vegas-y magenta, which...if that isn't a metaphor, I don't know what is. And, well...
The Jetsons are a family from my hometown. They went to our church, and Jane is the choir director and my mother's best friend, and we've been on vacation with them, and Elroy is friends with my brother, and stuff like that. And even if there's a big age difference between me and the kids, and I always kinda liked Jane more than Elroy and Judy, and nobody much likes George, they're still people in my life. Tertiary characters with the occasional B- or C-plot in The Story of Me.
They were out here in February, for the kids' school break. They rented a place in Venice Beach for a week and went on day trips to all the SoCal hotspots. I met them in Hollywood for lunch and the afternoon, and tried to act like I knew my way around a place I'd never been. We went to the La Brea Tar Pits, one of those places in LA that people who live here never ever go, and I had secretly wanted to see. It was surprisingly cool and hit my museum kink, my archeaology kink, my green-space-in-the-middle-of-a-city kink, you name it. When I tell people about that day, that's what I mention, not how odd it was for them to be here - like when your parents come visit you at college - or how strange it was to show them around a place that wasn't my own, or how glad I was that that was the only afternoon they could spare in their endless round of beach/Universal/Disney.
I wonder if he knew. Or suspected, even subconciously, that something wasn't right. It wasn't a month later that George was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Of the liver, lungs, who knows what else, sorry, thanks for playing, buh-bye.
I wish I could remember a time when he wasn't an afterthought to Jane or the two kids - a "oh, he's coming too." I wish I could think of a story about him that wasn't mean-spirited, that didn't leave my sister and I rolling our eyes or sniggering, that didn't highlight his social awkwardness or his tightwad-ness. I wish that I didn't feel so much worse about Jane being recently diagnosed with colon cancer, like, 'why this family?' instead of 'why this man?' I wish that I could be there for Judy and Elroy, kidnapping them to the lake or the movies, instead of on the other side of the country sending lame 'encouragement' cards. I wish that in every cancer patient, I don't see my grandmother wasting away in a hospital bed, or myself, somewhere down the road.
It scares me, is what I'm saying, and makes me feel almost impossibly small and paralyzed and scared. And sorry. So, so sorry.