I miss the days when it was so easy to remove someone from your life. Move to California, change your phone number, become non-existent to certain others. But now? You can do all these things. You can change who you are, you can change zip codes but now? Now it's like they're knocking on your door asking to come in. This damn Internet, these damn sites that promise connections with long lost friends but where's the disclaimer about long lost individuals you'd prefer to never find again. The ones you donated to some thrift store and now it's landed right back in your hands?
A name. Two simple names appear on a screen but it might as well had slapped you in the face. Days, months, years pretending like these people never existent. Like you and their past never crossed paths now here they are sitting with you in your living room while you sip your cup of tea. They here and quite uninvited like those damn carpenter ants you worked so hard rid your house of.
Go away you want to say. Go back to where I safely put you. I've moved on. I've grown beyond those years, you have no business here. But I can't do these things. All this girl can do is write, so she writes. And she sips her tea and listens to children play, her cat snore and looks forward to seeing her loving husband walk through that door. That loving husband who lives his life as if you have nothing to hide from.
I don't know how to start this thing back up but several of you have sent very sweet request for it to resume and I have taken your pleads into consideration.
It's not that I don't want to write anymore or didn't want to. I never lost the desire although I could very easily blame time as the main culprit. No, it is none of these reasons really. I stopped because I had to. I stopped because the things that were going on in my life needed to be kept private. The one thing I have learned in my almost 5 years of blogging is when to shut the hell up. What topics are privy for the reading public to know and what topics need to be swept under the rug. In the interest of healing relationships, I knew the healthiest thing to do was to close shop otherwise I would just write fluff, words with no meanings because the thoughts and concerns swirling around in my head needed to be kept between me and those people not me and all you lovely people. It was just time to stop.
I lay awake some nights, even in the past 8 months or so, with half written post swirling in my head, wishing I could muster up the energy to get out of bed and put them in writing but my long busy days win out and I fall asleep with all those well constructed sentence vanished in thin air by the time I wake up. I go about my day without a inkling of a thought about writing but yet return to the same spot each night, same thoughts, same post.
So, I don't know if this is me coming back or me granting all of you an explanation for my silence but I promise I'll think about.
There are moments I'm elated and feel I'm walking on cloud nine without a worry on my mind. I'm free and stress less and happy. All the pieces fit and I'm fitting with them. These moments, I relish them because I know how fleeting they are.
With no warning, no just an abrupt halt it all ends and at times I feel I'm slapped with the reality of some strange loneliness that haunts me. Like I'm in a crowded room but yet I feel I am standing alone. I crave a time when I felt gotten by people rather than the blank stares or awkward silence on the end of a phone line.
I've changed, I know and I'm happy with me and a point in my life where words like peaceful and tranquil could very easily describe how I feel about me but yet no one around me quite knows what to make of it. So at times I feel lonely.
I also feel relieved for finally feeling comfortable in this skin, even if very few really get me anymore.
But, those very few, and you know who you are, that do get me I cherish you. You are like precious treasures that I will guard and handle delicately because of you, my beautiful gems, I don't know where I would be right now, going through what I have these past few months without you.
It's 1 a.m. and I sit here unable to sleep thanks to my newly clingier 6 month old who decided at 11:30 p.m. that she wanted me. It's now almost 2 hours later and she hasn't given in to sleep. Instead she goes from sitting up in her crib, gripping the rails waiting for me, to licking her lovies in her crib while she considers going to sleep.
Sleep. It's the one thing I can't do when my girls are awake in the middle of the night. I somehow get a sharp ear and even when I try to fall back to sleep I hear their every move. It's just not worth laying there. By the time they fall back to sleep I'm so uncomfortable from tossing and turning that now I can't go back to sleep. Instead I get up, sit in the kitchen with my laptop and the glow from the monitor watching Rosemary. I won't go in as I want her to learn to put herself back to sleep, but I will watch to make sure she's okay. It's the compromise I'm willing to give on some nights.
But being awake at now 1:15 a.m. comes with it's downfalls as I sit here making list after list in my head of all the things I need to do to feel caught back up. Ever since Pam's death I've been quickly slipping away from my comfort zone of organization. No matter how much I've tried I haven't seemed successful in doing the things necessary to make me feel like this place is in tip top shape, the way I like it. I'm just getting by each week with the bigger things while those little things just pile up. Those little things are becoming bigger things and all I want to do is pause time, make everything stop expect for me so I can get them done. Actually, I would much prefer to rewind time to that day in June when we lost Pam and have a redo of that day then she'd still be here and we all would be better, this would just be some horrible dream that we'd wake up from.
D and I were going to find a new church this summer. We want Camille in church, regardless of our view on the church, we want the girls to be raised in it, how hypocritical is that? We haven't gone to church since the Sunday before our trip to visit my Dad in early May. Every other weekend we've traveled since then and neither of us have been able to muster up the energy to go. I don't like new people and new churches. They make you talk and introduce yourself and seriously, why bother with all that chit chat if I'm not going to be coming back.
There's that song that says "He gives and takes away....my heart will choose to stay". These past two August have been challenging for me. God has really been doing some work in my life, I don't like it, but apparently He thinks I need it, I disagree. My sister says our family has a black cloud over it and that God has it out for us. I can't view it that way. Instead I just have to believe He's doing a great work in our life and if we hang on tight enough, we'll be able to see the fruits of it. I have to believe because if I don't I think I'd become a bitter and angry person and turn from God. I don't want to do that. If there is one thing that has always held true for me, no matter where I was in life, right or wrong, my faith in God has always been strong. I didn't say my faith in the church or my faith in people, but my faith in God only and that is what always carries me through.
Right now I am feeling mentally drained. Of course I feel like a big cry baby when I say that because if I'm feeling this way, I don't even want to imagine how my father is feeling. Sometimes I feel like I have no right to complain about my pain with Pam being gone and all that it brought me when he's sitting there alone without his best friend.
This is a strange journey I am on but I'm hopeful, like I've always been when tragedy and strife hit, I'm hopeful and I hold on tighter to my faith because it's always the one thing I can trust I will have left when it's all said and done.
If anyone would ask me what it was that made me fall in with D, I would immediately tell them it was his mind and the sound of his voice when he spoke; the words that came out of his mouth have always been like a symphony to me. I do love the sound of his voice and sometimes that competes with the love I have for the way his mind works.
We met when were just teenagers; I was 17, he was 16 and he wasn't like any other boy that I had ever met before then. He had actual thoughts that provoked 3 am discussions that would only be ended by the a looming alarm that was about to go off in just 5 short hours. I never found any other boy in high school as attractive as I found D. They couldn't think or utter a thought that would compare to D. We clicked the moment we met and you would find us driving around many Friday nights just listening to music and talking after abandoning the friends we were supposed to be spending time with. We found them quite annoying and obnoxious, we found comfort and compatibility in each other. Throughout college we dated others and would complain how neither of our choices compared to the intellectual stimulation we received from each other. Granted, we don't have similar interest all the time, but we find each others distinct likes something to admire. So it was not a shock, those early days in October 2000 that finally vocalized what we were afraid to admit out of fear of a fracture friendship our love for each other. I can't imagine my life without him and I know, with out a shadow of a doubt, that if anything ever happened to him, I would not be complete again. There is just not any other man that would be my perfect equal as D is.
For these reason, for all these things, I ache and pain for my father. Pam was his perfect equal. My Mom, as amazing loving and kind as she is, was not his equal and he not hers. But Pam, she understood him and accepted his quirks because she too had amazingly strange quirks also. I understand his pain and hurts because, putting myself in his shoes, I know how it feels to just not click with any other human being as you do your spouse. You realize what a rare commodity it is to, being off the bell shaped curve, to find someone who's hanging out there right with you.
My Dad is lost, he just doesn't know which way to turn and I can't do a damn thing to make that better for him. I can't fix it. I can't be to him what Pam was. My friendship does absolutely nothing for him because I can't be there at 5:18 pm on a random Tuesday when he has a question about a plant and turns and she's not there to answer. I can't be there at 5:18 pm on a that random Tuesday to hug him when he realizes shes just not there anymore. I can't do anything for him and that hurts because I to am a strange bird who has found her perfect match and know how absolutely lost I would be without my D.
He needs her back. He needs her to just come back and she isn't coming back. She's gone and she left him alone and I can't ease his pain.
When I was pregnant with Rosemary, D and I were pretty adamant that she was going to be our last. Days leading up to her delivery my Dad would joke with that I wouldn't let my sisters beat me and I'd have that third child. I scoffed at him and told him unless someone else was going to be carrying that child, Rosemary would be my last pregnancy.
Then I went into labor. And it was easy. Well, easy compared to a 36 hour event followed by blood transfusions, antibiotics for double pneumonia, Post Partum Depression and let's not forget pumping for 6 straight months until my milk dried up. So, yeah, easy. Like, 14 hours of labor easy with only 2 of those hours being painful, easy. No blood transfusion, no illness, no depression and a baby that latched right on from the moment she was born and has nursed perfectly every since (can I also mentioned that I've never had an bleeding or soreness with nursing her?).
Days, weeks, and months following her birth I've found myself holding her tighter and longer hoping she doesn't grow up to fast. I've been trying to just absorb every single moment her babyness. With Camille, it was a different mix of emotions. Once I got through the Depression and began enjoying motherhood, I looked forward to what each new month would bring us. I wanted her to grow up quickly because I was so excited to see what was around each new bend. I still feel that way about Camille. Each milestone is so exciting to watch, especially since I'm solely responsible for these new things she is learning. I don't feel sad when she turns another year because I know with it will be new adventures for us. With Rosemary, I want to hold her back as much as I can.
While driving down to my sister's for the holiday weekend, D and I were talking about our future and where we wanted to be in five years (we have these discussions at least once a month). D, being more adamant than I about the size of our family, shocked me when he revelaed his desire to possibly want another child. Before, my teeter tottering always landed on just two because I knew he wasn't going to change his mind. It allowed me to keep that door closed and not even consider the possibility. Now, with his unsureness, that door now has a few cracks in it.
I go back and forth. A third means so many changes and brings so much uncertainty. I'm one of three kids and know the unique make up that brings. At times, being the youngest, I've felt like the odd man out and the the two older ones sometimes pit themselves against me. But on the flip side of that, I always had two older ones who pit themselves against anyone who was against me! I think of Rosemary and how another child would affect her and her standing in this family. That darn middle child syndrome haunts me and I begin to wonder how much validity there is to it.
I look at my two girls and I become so thankful for healthy children, two healthy pregnancies, why temp fate? We've lucked out twice, but is three times really a charm?
There is that list of emotions that you are supposed to feel when someone dies, there is a order to it, you check it off your list giving you an indication when you will begin to feel better I guess.
My grief isn't typical, I don't follow this list to the dot. The circumstances surrounding this isn't typical so why should my emotions be any different.
I still haven't cried.
I'm sure I could cry if I sat down and really let myself but I just can't seem to allow it to come. It almost happened last Wednesday while I was exercising. I was jogging with the girls listening to my Zune, Fort Minor's, Where'd you go to be specific, and for some reason I felt the emotions bubbling up hitting my tears ducts as they tried to force their way out. I know the song is not about someone dying, but I'm certain at this point in time it could have the even had the Flight of the Concords playing and it would have struck that nerve seeing how raw they are right now. I didn't allow the tears to escape though. I just pushed them back down, shook my head in disbelief (something we all have been doing since that dreadful Tuesday 3 weeks ago) and hit the pavement even harder, a little faster.
My Dad got remarried so long ago that I was surprised when I found it had been over 20 years since his wife was brought into my life. She never was a step mother to me, she was my friend. She just respected my quirks better than most, maybe because she also had quirks that made many people puzzled, that could be a good possibility I suppose. I never had one bad memory of her, never an episode where I felt threatened by her presence in my Dad's life. She gave us our space as we grew and never forced her way in. At our monthly visits she didn't fight for that valuable time we had to spend with our Dad, she gave that to us freely. I don't think it was until my college years when I truly understood how useful she was in my life. She gave me invaluable advice and an even more a valuable ear.
Yes, a friend indeed that will be missed so deeply.
I don't know why she is gone. I will probably never understand. But for the time being I've not only found myself speechless, but even more so, tearless in disbelief.
