(no subject)
i've been having a hard time dealing with death lately. which, really, is a hard time dealing with life.
i've never had an easy time dealing with death, but it's especially hard lately.
the idea that someone i care about is there, autonomous and in and out of my life at will, taken for granted, and then next they are not. they weave through your days the way you've probably weaved through theirs, varying degrees from monthly coffee meetups all the way to daily hangouts. and then they are just: not. they are erased from existence with nothing but facebook photos and tiny paintings and scribbly letters and fabricated THINGS to stand in for them. it's so... sad. of course it's sad, but do you ever just really, really think about it? it's SAD. it's the most penetrating sad you've ever felt. there is nothing but sad at its center, even with all of the positivity we find orbiting in the gravitational pull of that sadness. it's dense, heavy, black, black, black, interminable sadness.
and it's hard. it's hard because i think about jasmine like that and i know i shouldn't. it's hard because my brother is somewhere in-between being real and being no longer real. how can there be souls, though i know that there are? if there are souls, where is his? walking the tight rope between his body and that bullet, microscopic fragments that he only kept part of. but then again i don't even know. have you ever had to help a nurse you've just met put Pampers on someone who used to put Pampers on you? i guess that's irrelevant, but i just keep thinking of his vague eyes and his twitchy not-there-ness and then sometimes those long glares into eternity where he almost seemed to be studying the act of studying and, then, all of the nothing that became apparent when i realized that he's not studying anything he just IS. i don't know if the fish that is his soul is belly up floating in his fish-bowl head, i don't know if some of it got scraped out when the bullet blew through, i just don't know. i don't know how that stuff works. it wreaks of death, it stinks of sadness, and those aren't the only things i think and feel but for fuck's sake this stupid fucking internet journal is the only place i could think of to allow myself to explore this negativity and desperate sadness because no one else will want to hear it. people want you to want to tell them what they want to hear when they know that you're suffering with stuff like this. they don't know what to say. i don't blame them. i don't want them to try. when they try i have to try to make them feel like they've done a good job.
this is all still happening. there's so much.
and it's hard. it's hard, too, because i see my own death. i'm getting nervous. i don't know when it's coming but i'm feeling it in the air. i feel like it's coming. i'm trying to ignore it but i'm also trying to do things that i know i'd like to do before i die but i'm not doing a very good job and today i found out i have high-risk HPV on top of everything else and i know it's just a matter of time before those cells start churning themselves into the cancer that will kill me. the parts that make me a woman and that make me an animal are the parts of me that will kill me. there are too many things wrong with my body. there are too many mysterious ailments, too many inexplicable symptoms, and it sucks, it FUCKING SUCKS because it's not fair because i'm trying to turn my life around and nothing i can ever do or say will allow me passage out of my body. how do you do it when you know you are a time bomb? with no clue as to when the time runs out? all the progress i could ever make is external and i hate it and it's unfair and sometimes all i want to do is fucking cry like a two-year-old child and have someone ball me up in their arms and tell me that they're feeling what i'm feeling and that they'll feel it for me and that they love me and i want to be cooed and encouraged to voice myself but it's always this struggle with people and the ones who don't make me struggle i'm too fearful to allow to see me that way because i know how easily people can get scared and leave. and the ones that i love i fear for because don't they realize that they'll die, too? don't they realize that they will? it's not paranoia, it's just the simplest truth: we all fucking die. it is not absurd to remark that death can show up unheralded. it does, every day. i know you can't live that way, fearing and waiting and constantly glancing over your shoulder, but how the fuck do i deal with all of this? in the midst of it all i'm always fighting for stasis, for the things that i desire most that are so simple but so hard to find for me. i'm still waiting for that time when i can look over the details of my life and feel content about what i'm seeing. and it's really fucking hard to push myself get there. and it's really fucking hard to imagine that i never will. and there are so many people in the bleachers booing and telling me i'm doing it wrong but they don't know. they really, really, absolutely just don't know.
i'm really keeping positive most of the time, but just because i'm good at finding silver linings doesn't mean i can disregard the motherfucker of a black cloud over me. i wish i didn't have to hide it, or tone it down. i wish i were allowed to express these things. but grieving in the wake of disaster or in anticipation of forthcoming disaster turns out to be one of the more socially unacceptable behaviors i've encountered.
man, do i hope i'm wrong. for someone who spends so much time trying to learn how to be right, i really fucking hope i'm wrong. i hope i live until 40 and have years behind me of giving myself the opportunities i deserve, the ones seemingly hidden from me now. you know: fall in love and create and build and enrich and expand myself. i hope my brother gets the pieces of his brain back that make him work so that when my mom commits suicide after my stepdad dies he won't get thrown into a nursing home to wallow in his shitty Pampers in front of a tv for the rest of his life with nothing to look forward to but miracle bread and refried beans. i hope my dad never dies. ever. i hope i don't have to keep all of this inside forever, i hope i don't scare all of my friends away by going through all of this. i hope i don't start dying before my parents do because i would feel too guilty. i feel guilty that i might die. the guilt tears me apart. i hope i can get rid of that, i know i don't deserve it. i hope i'm born again when i die and that all the love and desire and adventuresome thirst for existence that i have is cumulative.
i've never had an easy time dealing with death, but it's especially hard lately.
the idea that someone i care about is there, autonomous and in and out of my life at will, taken for granted, and then next they are not. they weave through your days the way you've probably weaved through theirs, varying degrees from monthly coffee meetups all the way to daily hangouts. and then they are just: not. they are erased from existence with nothing but facebook photos and tiny paintings and scribbly letters and fabricated THINGS to stand in for them. it's so... sad. of course it's sad, but do you ever just really, really think about it? it's SAD. it's the most penetrating sad you've ever felt. there is nothing but sad at its center, even with all of the positivity we find orbiting in the gravitational pull of that sadness. it's dense, heavy, black, black, black, interminable sadness.
and it's hard. it's hard because i think about jasmine like that and i know i shouldn't. it's hard because my brother is somewhere in-between being real and being no longer real. how can there be souls, though i know that there are? if there are souls, where is his? walking the tight rope between his body and that bullet, microscopic fragments that he only kept part of. but then again i don't even know. have you ever had to help a nurse you've just met put Pampers on someone who used to put Pampers on you? i guess that's irrelevant, but i just keep thinking of his vague eyes and his twitchy not-there-ness and then sometimes those long glares into eternity where he almost seemed to be studying the act of studying and, then, all of the nothing that became apparent when i realized that he's not studying anything he just IS. i don't know if the fish that is his soul is belly up floating in his fish-bowl head, i don't know if some of it got scraped out when the bullet blew through, i just don't know. i don't know how that stuff works. it wreaks of death, it stinks of sadness, and those aren't the only things i think and feel but for fuck's sake this stupid fucking internet journal is the only place i could think of to allow myself to explore this negativity and desperate sadness because no one else will want to hear it. people want you to want to tell them what they want to hear when they know that you're suffering with stuff like this. they don't know what to say. i don't blame them. i don't want them to try. when they try i have to try to make them feel like they've done a good job.
this is all still happening. there's so much.
and it's hard. it's hard, too, because i see my own death. i'm getting nervous. i don't know when it's coming but i'm feeling it in the air. i feel like it's coming. i'm trying to ignore it but i'm also trying to do things that i know i'd like to do before i die but i'm not doing a very good job and today i found out i have high-risk HPV on top of everything else and i know it's just a matter of time before those cells start churning themselves into the cancer that will kill me. the parts that make me a woman and that make me an animal are the parts of me that will kill me. there are too many things wrong with my body. there are too many mysterious ailments, too many inexplicable symptoms, and it sucks, it FUCKING SUCKS because it's not fair because i'm trying to turn my life around and nothing i can ever do or say will allow me passage out of my body. how do you do it when you know you are a time bomb? with no clue as to when the time runs out? all the progress i could ever make is external and i hate it and it's unfair and sometimes all i want to do is fucking cry like a two-year-old child and have someone ball me up in their arms and tell me that they're feeling what i'm feeling and that they'll feel it for me and that they love me and i want to be cooed and encouraged to voice myself but it's always this struggle with people and the ones who don't make me struggle i'm too fearful to allow to see me that way because i know how easily people can get scared and leave. and the ones that i love i fear for because don't they realize that they'll die, too? don't they realize that they will? it's not paranoia, it's just the simplest truth: we all fucking die. it is not absurd to remark that death can show up unheralded. it does, every day. i know you can't live that way, fearing and waiting and constantly glancing over your shoulder, but how the fuck do i deal with all of this? in the midst of it all i'm always fighting for stasis, for the things that i desire most that are so simple but so hard to find for me. i'm still waiting for that time when i can look over the details of my life and feel content about what i'm seeing. and it's really fucking hard to push myself get there. and it's really fucking hard to imagine that i never will. and there are so many people in the bleachers booing and telling me i'm doing it wrong but they don't know. they really, really, absolutely just don't know.
i'm really keeping positive most of the time, but just because i'm good at finding silver linings doesn't mean i can disregard the motherfucker of a black cloud over me. i wish i didn't have to hide it, or tone it down. i wish i were allowed to express these things. but grieving in the wake of disaster or in anticipation of forthcoming disaster turns out to be one of the more socially unacceptable behaviors i've encountered.
man, do i hope i'm wrong. for someone who spends so much time trying to learn how to be right, i really fucking hope i'm wrong. i hope i live until 40 and have years behind me of giving myself the opportunities i deserve, the ones seemingly hidden from me now. you know: fall in love and create and build and enrich and expand myself. i hope my brother gets the pieces of his brain back that make him work so that when my mom commits suicide after my stepdad dies he won't get thrown into a nursing home to wallow in his shitty Pampers in front of a tv for the rest of his life with nothing to look forward to but miracle bread and refried beans. i hope my dad never dies. ever. i hope i don't have to keep all of this inside forever, i hope i don't scare all of my friends away by going through all of this. i hope i don't start dying before my parents do because i would feel too guilty. i feel guilty that i might die. the guilt tears me apart. i hope i can get rid of that, i know i don't deserve it. i hope i'm born again when i die and that all the love and desire and adventuresome thirst for existence that i have is cumulative.