Roses

When I was six years old, in the daycare or preschool or what program I may have been in before we moved, we were waiting for lunch one day, and two boys were jumping up and down in their chairs.  And I don't know how it started, or why, but I just started crying.  And I couldn't stop.  It wasn't anything they hadn't done before, but for some reason it hit me and I couldn't stop.  That was the first time I can remember crying for no real reason.  It's certainly not the last.

Until I was ten years old, I would cry over anything.  Someone stepping on my toe.  Not seeing a ferret my mother pointed out to me on the train.  Even the tiniest thing would make me cry my eyes out and I couldn't explain it.  I think now that maybe it's been a result of my emotional instability, due largely to the problems with my brain when I was born.  Possibly true, possibly not.  Regardless, it's always been a problem, even after I learned to control it, to not cry no matter how much I wanted to.

It hit me last night, as I was going to bed, that I couldn't remember the last time I cried.  For any reason.  Valid or not.  But I didn't think much of it, because what could I do?  Maybe it was good.  And then I was walking back from work this afternoon, and I remembered something.

I haven't thought much about my grandfather, particularly not since he died probably seven years ago now, maybe eight.  But the other day, my grandmother was telling me the importance of bringing a woman flowers.  For holidays, for anything and nothing.  And she told me about how her husband, my grandfather, brought her flowers for every holiday.  And how for the last time she visited my family, when she was coming back, he wasn't supposed to walk.  But he walked anyway, he went to get her flowers, and he fell on the way back, and when she got there, he had to be wheeled in, and he still brought roses.

And I remembered this when I was walking back, and I couldn't stop crying.  And I don't know why.  It's not because of the flowers.  And it's not because I didn't know him as well as I should have, even though it brought back that piece I wrote, even though it only took a few hours, but that's not what made me cry.  I don't know what was.  And I couldn't stop.  All I could think about was this man I should have gotten to know better and how I can't get to know him now.  I wish I believed in a heaven.  I wish I could make this up somehow, even though I was young and clueless when he died.

And I can't talk about this.  I can't say anything.  I wanted to say something, but there are things in my life that I can't talk about.  And only sometimes can I even write about them.  But I wanted to say something about this, and I couldn't.  And all I can do is sit here and cry and I don't know why.  I don't know why I can't say anything or why it finally hurts, but I know it has to.  It has to hurt because I don't know what to do if it doesn't, but I don't understand.

I don't know how things pass with time.  The way they say time heals all wounds. And it does.  Because I don't cry every time I think about certain places or things, no matter how hard I cried that first time.  But there's always something that makes me cry afresh.  There's always a new wound.  And I don't know where they all keep coming from.  Scar tissue is weaker, but it also doesn't feel as well.  I don't know how it's possible that I still feel anything.  But I'm glad that something can get through.  That I can feel something.  Occasionally.

Release

I need this.  I honest to god need this.  And I hate that.  I hate that I'm clinging to existence because of this simple release.  I keep wanting to write and not knowing what to say.  I want something to hurt.  I need it to hurt.  But I can't do that.  So someone else has to.

I think I finally learned to respect myself.  Or something.  Because if this is respect, then I wish I'd never found it.  If this is as good as it gets, then I wish it hadn't gotten this good because at least I used to feel something.  I don't feel anything anymore.  It doesn't hurt.  It doesn't feel good.  It just feels empty.  And I don't know how to fill that emptiness with anything other than hurt.  I don't know what it's like to have happy feelings that last more than a few days, if that.

Every day, I'm growing more distant.  It gets harder to talk to people.  I don't know what to say or do.  I don't know how to fill free time, now that I have it.  So all I can do is sit here and wonder why this isn't working, wonder what the fuck happened to my life that I don't know how to have a conversation, that I can't even find something that interests me enough to become a hobby.  This couch is starting to mold to me, to the precise way I sit on it.

Where did my motivation go?  I manage to get up every morning, to do things that are good for me during the day.  But why can't I function?  Why can't I speak?  How is it that I have absolutely nothing to say anymore?

It'll change eventually.  I know it will.  It always does.  But I don't know when.  And I don't know how.  And I don't seem to be able to do anything to hurry the process along.

I just wanted to say...

You don't get to tell me not to die suddenly.

Because you almost did.