angry and sad and confused and tired

Most days are the same now. Even more so than before, when I had a job. Because now, I stay home most days… and stay in bed an extra half hour after I’m really awake… wondering what I must do first.

Usually, I think of something that I want to look up online, but then I think that I should eat first. And then I get stuck wondering what I should eat… and then I drift off and think about something else, until something reminds me that I shouldn’t be in bed but be working but no wait I have to eat first. What should I eat?

Then I finally say to heck with it and get out of bed and open the fridge and open cabinets and drawers in my search for a suitable breakfast. I usually settle on something that needs a little preparation and something to tide me over while I prepare. Usually, the preparation requires another trip through the cabinets and drawers to find something else to add.

Once breakfast is finally ready and I’m at the table, (beginning this week) I watch some TV while I eat. If I’m early enough, it begins with the last bits of Good Morning America. If not, it’s Regis and Kelly then The View.

I go through breakfast slowly… partly because I’m distracted by the tube and partly because I don’t have as big an appetite as I thought I did when I made so much breakfast. So breakfast turns into brunch which turns into lunch and pretty soon I’m wondering why I’m watching Jerry Springer, soaps and court TV.

(Answer: because there’s nothing else on while they’re on commercial break from the live coverage of the police chase in East LA)

My computer is usually having breakfast/brunch/lunch with me. I work a little bit on my website, surf a bit, etc while I eat.

Soon it’s time to scramble to do a few household chores before everyone comes home. Usually it’s just dishes and making rice but a few nights a week, I actually have to make dinner.

The meat is likely to be undercooked because I’m impatient. But the vegetables are likely to be overcooked and mushy because I forget about them. It’s very depressing. Lately, I’ve felt the need to make sweet things too… like I *need* to… like my life and sanity depends on the fudge.

I made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies on Friday. Except I didn’t have enough oatmeal… only 1/3 of what I needed… and I didn’t have any chocolate chips. So I used only 1/3 the amount of the oatmeal that I was supposed to and melted some Hershey’s dark chocolate in the microwave oven. They came out cake-y.

Anyway so… when dinner’s done, I eat it. Then I get back on my computer…

—

And here I am. Today I am angry because the pork wasn’t done and the sauce didn’t come out like it was supposed to and I suck. But I know that’s really not why I’m angry because I know that I’m angry for no reason.

Initially.

Only initially because now I’m angry that I’m letting myself be angry for no reason.

And then I’m sad because I can’t help being angry and I want to know why. But I’m confused… because I don’t know if I should even wonder why or if I should just stop and how I could just stop. And then I’m just tired.

And I wish I could just stop. Stop thinking about everything that needs to be dealt with because I don’t want to deal with anything. I only like responsibility when I know exactly what to do.

Sometimes when I’m afraid to do something or when there’s something holding me back, I say heck with it and just do it.

—

My dad just came in and said good night. I kissed him and said good night and ‘love you and he sort of grunted… made a “noncommittal sound” as he walked out and pulled the door closed behind him.

And I thought to myself this is so not the time for him to do that. So I cried a little. But then I had to look up “noncommittal” to be sure I had the right term and the tears faded.

I could think about it some more but I don’t want to deal with it.

—

I don’t remember what I was going to say about just doing it.

This wasn’t it but… it seems to be becoming harder to just do it.

Oh I just remembered something that I’d wanted to write about earlier today.

—

Sometimes, when my relationship with God is going well, I think that it would be a nice time to die because I knew that I was on good terms with Him. Doesn’t happen very often but still.

Sometimes I say to myself that I want to die because life seems unbearable but I know I don’t mean it because just as afraid to die as I am of facing my problems.

But this morning, I remembered that my sister was gone and that the only way I’ll ever get to see her again is when I die too. And I thought …

—

because it needs to be written

He was born out of wedlock, but his parents were in love with so much conviction that everything that was “wrong” about their relationship: that they were too young, that his father was younger than his mother, that they didn’t know each other all that well… none of that kept them from getting married.

It wasn’t with quite as much conviction a few years later when his mom emerged as the dominant half of the couple. His dad would be the childish one, who didn’t take many things seriously, and it frustrated and angered his mom. And so she would scream and yell and because he was his father’s son, he got screamed and yelled at too.

It was probably not either one’s fault. They just didn’t fit together as well as they thought, and maybe they didn’t think it was an option to admit it.

Ten or eleven years old, his dad leaves. He’d found someone new. His mom is shattered, but she struggles to keep him fed and clothed and clean. Still, she’s impatient and frustrated and still she screams and yells.

She may have found some peace as a single parent. Maybe she realized that she didn’t need to scream and yell.

It was almost four years that it had been just the two of them, when she died suddenly.

It was a matter of great deliberation for his maternal relatives as to where he would be brought up… with them or with his dad. He agreed that his mom would not want him to live with his dad because his paternal relatives had a tendency to spoil him, but he said that it couldn’t happen because she’d taught him well.

So now he lives with his paternal grandparents. His dad visits every so often. He hardly ever goes to see his mother’s family. When he does, he is distant and seems to be itching to go home. He seems to have changed in the short span of time he’s lived away from them.

On the day they were to bury his mother’s ashes, he asked to reschedule on account of a rehearsal for some school presentation. It was discovered the following week, that there was no such rehearsal.

At a casual dinner out, in honor of a close family friend, when all but two were done eating, he announced that he’d asked to be picked up by his grandfather. His grandfather was to drive about an hour from the area where he lives, pick him up at the restaurant and drive the hour back to the same area, where he was to play video games with an uncle.

—

They’re afraid he’s too old to learn.

You’re never too old to learn and you’re never too old to find a willingness to learn.

If only he knew to look. If only I knew how to tell him.

Help.

story

She worked with him. Probably on the same team. It may have been inevitable that they would grow close.

Who knows when he’d begun to feel differently about her? Who knows when he’d realized she was more special to him than all the other coworkers they hung out with so much? What mattered was that he did and that he told her so.

And she wasn’t sure how she felt about it. She wasn’t sure for many months.

Until she almost was. Until all it took was one thing to make her sure.

Why did it have to be leukemia?

—

Epilogue:

It took him a few months after he was diagnosed.

In the months that followed, she found comfort and understanding in his very best friend. And his best friend, in her. And so they have, for three years now.

It seems this is how he would have wanted it to be.

wallpaper

She traced the blue dots on the wall. They ran down the height of it, over and over around the yellow room. She wondered why she couldn’t feel the dots, wondered why she couldn’t understand why there were so many people in this little house.

People with sad faces, who looked at her with pity-filled eyes that quickly looked away, murmuring to each other, shaking their heads.

She stared at the dots and squinted her eyes so that they looked like solid lines instead. Then she looked at the people and imagined they were just one big mass of person. One big person she could reach out and hug and cuddle.

But her eyes refocused and it was all strangers again.