Sharing

Marta has been living in my head for almost a year now. See Marti (as she prefers to be called) is a character in a story I've been working with off and on.  I was horrible to her, you see.  I killed her love.  Sent him spinning down a mountain with the rest of her theater troupe.  It was cruel, but necessary. The story is about loss of self within grief so strong that reality fades. So to create the environment that would breed such despair, I had to go to such lengths.

Now I am afraid to touch the story.  Afraid that I will lose myself in Marti, and she will lose herself to me.  Am afraid her man will turn into T instead of being someone over there.  I will cry harder then I could imagine when I detail her receiving the news. It's just a bare outline now.  Not because I couldn't bear it, but because I couldn't bother originally.

How cruel I was, to kill off someone so important and not even grace them with detail.

I wonder if that is what holds me back from finishing.  The fear that I will lose my sense of distance.  Lose the last bit of separation between myself and my fiction.

I see her in my head, curled up on the corner of my bed.  She eyes me with curiosity and kindness.  She keeps quiet, plaiting the long grassy strands of our grief together.  Creating blue green baskets to hold all the memories.

We are already intertwined.  What use is fear now?

Anger

I am still angry.  Not at him, though.  At her.

So very much at her.

She was always this distant speck of mild concern.  Someone who could send him into a tailspin with a mere few words.  Which were usually about money she needed.

I knew he didn't talk much, but what I didn't know was how little she listened.  How clear that became in April.  That month of pain so sharp I couldn't breath with it.  Of loss so deep I still can't see the bottom.

I keep trying to understand what gives her the ability to command the last vestiges of him.  To literally throw away pieces of him.  To disgregard so callously those who have loved and treasured him.  Even when he was at his worst, even when he purposely lashed out and distanced himself with cruelty. Isn't that what makes a family?

I suppose she is just following his lead.  He callously disregarded us and left in a horrible manner, but him I forgive.  Would always forgive, could always forgive, because I knew what lived beneath the depression.  The illness that caused him to be blind to those around him.  Created such a world of isolation that he felt there was only one way to escape.

But what is her excuse?  Grief? Grief causes people to act in bizarre ways, I know.  I think the part that keeps coming back and keeping my anger alive is that April seemed to be less about him and more about her.

About how she was perceived, deceived and treated.  Nothing about celebrating the life of her son.  Letting a man she knew he loathed wear his clothes and speak at his funeral. Write his obituary.  The obituary that described someone I barely knew.  That man didn't exist except in her head.

I keep writing obituary after obituary. Wake up with it half finished in my head and I complete it on the way to work. Every morning.  I need to write it out of myself, but a part of me is loathe to even let that go.  I need to.  His birthday is coming up.  Maybe that will be my last present to him.

Ache

“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.” - Edna St. Vincent Millay

My brain is wrapped in gauze.

Puzzle #1

There is this puzzle I am working on. I know most of it very well.  But the older pieces give me trouble.  I remember stories, but they are not the truth.

His mother helped.  Ripped apart pieces of the past that he left.  So I can sit curled over many pieces of torn letters, drawings or anything else that is to be found.  I patch them back up.  Tape it all back together.

I have this hunch, that once it is all done, I will have rebuilt his form.

That is grief's lie.

Parts

He is spread out over my apartment.

Bits and pieces in bags and boxes.

Half handed over reluctantly for good image's sake, the rest scavenged at night from the dumpster.

We rescue parts of him

Only parts

Since I couldn't save him whole.

Ponderings

How many dreams have we given up as we grew up?  Simple dreams like what you wanted to be when you grew up.  Once I became taller then 4' 7" and could no longer be a jockey (no matter that I barely rode before) or when I realized that the majority of professional dancers have been learning how to do so since they were in elementary school and I just realized I would like to be one of the solid gold dancers on TV in middle school.  And, really, I knew the money isn't there for dance lessons.  Or when I realized that I pass out at the sight of blood so the veterinarian dream isn't going to pan out either.

So then I dreamed of the ivory tower, stacks of books and being surrounded by knowledge.  Researching, writing & publishing brilliance, right? Then reality intrudes of day to day living expenses and frankly, unused knowledge really isn't my bag.  Why talk about things when I could go and see how they actually work in real life.

I guess that is how I ended up on this path to be a social worker.  I just hope nobody bleeds on me.