It has been a while since I have written. In fact, as I write this, I feel a tightness welling up in my chest. It’s because when I write, I feel. When I write, I remember. I deal with stuff, and sometimes that “stuff” is incredibly painful. I have painful “stuff,” and I can’t say I’m ready to deal with it. I return because I feel a sense of duty to my children…because I’m afraid of forgetting important things or good things as life whips on by. For some reason, I imagine a day when my two boys might be curious about the musings that took place in their old mother’s head once upon a time. I want them to be able to read about themselves, to know what they were like when they were young, to see themselves through their mother’s eyes…to know how incredibly much they were loved.
This bring me back, even though I can sense that my fingers are stalling, my mind is tired and not ready to write about why I have been gone…and yet, how to move on if I don’t deal with the “stuff?” It’s like staring into a pool that is most likely cold, and you just don’t know how to bring yourself to jump into it. You know once you jump, there is no going back, and it is going to shock your system and send crazy shivers throughout your body…but then it will be over and you’ll be okay, acclimating to the water, ready to move on. Or looking at that three-day-old bandaid gripping the hairs on your arm. To pull slowly is more painful, but you need to take a deep breath before ripping it off because you know the sting that is to come. Only this is so much bigger than jumping into a cold pool on a cloudy day or pulling off a stale bandaid. No, this is true pain. This, this opening of a wound that I have to pretend I don’t have throughout the day in order to survive…opening this up and feeling it again in its entirety…this is fucking scary. Something happened tonight, something that would not be understood by many, but I feel compelled to write about it, and I can’t…not until I rip of the bandaid.
Deep breath…jump…rip…
My mother died.
I wrote it, I read the three simple and dreadful words in black and white before me; and I can’t breathe. My chest hurts. It’s all I can do today. The sting is too much.
maxneversleeps 