inkgrrl's inkblog

Late last Summer I wrote this, and I couldn’t say anything further for a very long time:

I am holding my brother’s death in a very fragile bubble in my mind, or perhaps in my heart. If I come out of my hermitage and speak to anyone about it, then that bubble will pop and he’ll really be be dead. If I pop that bubble, then I really did see his body lying in a casket in the middle of an Illinois summertime, draped in an American flag and attended by not only the Patriot Guard but also so damned many other people come to pay their respects that we lost count after the first hour. He’s not just deployed somewhere without a decent phone or email connection. He’s not just having some life drama he doesn’t want to hear my opinion about. He’s no longer of this world. No longer with the living. An ex-parrot. He’s dead. Continue reading

“I try so hard to convince myself that I am not ill, that I am not truly suffering, that I am keeping it all together. This is the opposite of compassion, is it not? This denial only keeps me from taking care of myself. It is the “push through” method, and it doesn’t work.”

–Blisschick

I would so very much like for the “push through” method to work. It did for years, to an extent. And yet, crazy = doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. Expecting the results I want instead of the results I’ve gotten so far, doing the same thing over and over again, hammering away at every problem like I never learned how to use a paintbrush or a suture needle or a rotary blade or a shotgun. I’m afraid. What if I put down the crazy hammer of denial and have nothing to pick up in its stead? Been a long damned time since I studied Shotokan, or even Bujinkan. I prefer blades for their surety to easily broken fingers, but the lack never stopped me from punching at all the really hard things, no matter how much it hurt. Which takes me right back to my default.

Mom: I haven’t heard from you in over a week.

Me: I’m recovering from having my neck zapped, remember?

Mom: Well, you could still call your mother.

Me: Well, you’re a nurse, you should know better.

Mom: Not about that.

Me: You knew I had a painful surgical procedure that leaves me screwed up for a few weeks afterward. That calls for a pretty generic response in the “How To Be A Mom Who Is Also A Nurse” handbook, and your phone works fine, so there’s no reason you couldn’t have called me in the last TEN days to see how I’m doing.

Mom: … (starts yelling at my stepdad to put the dog down)