It’s Christmas. Actually, it’s almost over. Twenty more minutes. I don’t know how long it will take me to write. I feel like it’s going to be a long rambling post that doesn’t really take me to any specific destination, but one which will wander and twist and meander through my mind and maybe help me figure out some of the things I want answers to. Maybe it will help me figure out what questions I should be asking so I can begin to know what answers I want to find.

 

Last Christmas I wrote a sixteen page explanation of Joe. I wrote about why I don’t like gifts. Why they hurt me so much. Why I feel obligated to repay those debts because that’s what I think gifts are.

 

I’ve gotten better about that mentality since writing that post. I’m happy about that. The thought of Zane getting me the free weights doesn’t make my chest tight, as if I’m having a panic attack. My breathing doesn’t speed up. When he offers to buy dinner I graciously accept his offer and thank him rather than hastily saying there’s no need and paying for myself or both of us.

 

I’m not the best, and there’s still some things that bother me and make my brain seize in the moment. But this is one thing that I am getting better about, and noticing the change within myself makes me happy. I’m learning to let go of some of the things in my past. Negative things, which shouldn’t be allowed to poison my thoughts anymore.

 

This Christmas is different than last Christmas.

 

I’m in my own home. My apartment.

 

I didn’t have a home to go to for the holiday. Mom doesn’t have the house in South Carolina anymore. She’s in Vegas with my older brother and sister in law. John was over in Germany. This was the first time that it felt like I wasn’t with family. The first time that it felt like I couldn’t go somewhere to be with them.

 

It’s silly really. I feel like I shouldn’t be feeling like this. I shouldn’t feel detached from them. I just saw my mom for Thanksgiving. I know if I really put effort into it I could quit my job and move out there and be with them. I could find a way to make it work.

 

But right now I feel very alone.

 

My mom sent me a Christmas box. I wasn’t allowed to open it until today. It has been sitting on the kitchen table, waiting for this day for almost two weeks. When Zane went to sleep last night a little after 12:30 I stayed up. I opened my box as he was going into the bedroom.

 

There was a piece of printer paper on top with big green text saying “Merry Christmas” and a message from my mom saying how she wanted to send me a “box of nonsense” to let me know she loved me and was thinking about me.

 

I couldn’t even begin to go through the box because I was already crying, and I couldn’t make it stop, sort of like now how the tears won’t bend to my will. They just keep coming and there’s this ache over my heart because I want so desperately to see my mom and have a hug from her.

 

Every object I pulled out of my box made them start again. Made the ache that was trying to fade come back. Just like now. And it makes continuing to write so hard. It makes me want to stop because stopping is easier than trying to figure out why it hurts. Or acknowledging why. Confronting why.

 

Why can’t I just stay blissfully ignorant? Why can’t the pain just not be here? Why can’t I go back to my little secluded world of pretend where everything is ok?

 

Because that’s not life. That’s not reality, and as much as it’s nice to pretend every once in a while, as nice as it is to forget, I don’t want to live a lie. I want to accept the world around me and to figure out how to function with the facts of my life.

 

I honestly don’t care about my death. I accept that I will die, at some point. I accept that one of my earliest memories is thinking that I will die young. And to some extent I have accepted that I will always be on the outskirts of society and mostly alone.

 

I cannot accept my mom’s death. I cannot bring myself to be ok with the thought that she is getting older. That she had a stroke and that I do not know what the next steps are, or what I can do to help. I cannot accept that I am powerless and there is nothing for me to fight, to destroy. I cannot accept that there is not an enemy I can face and yell at and hate.

 

I think of one scene from Game of Thrones, and I’m not going to feel bad about being a nerd and using it as a reference.

 

“There is only one god, and his name is Death. Do you know what we say to death? Not today.”

 

That is what I think of every time I think of the stroke. Every time. Not today. I say it inside my head. I say it big at first, like I’m powerful, like a mean it. And then, the more I think about it, the softer the words get. Not today. Not today. Softer, until I’m begging those words to some faceless force. Begging until I’m screaming those words like a helpless child.

 

I curled up on the living room floor last night, holding my box to me, my head resting against one of the sides, huddled around this thing of processed cardboard and cried as silently as I could so I wouldn’t wake up Zane until my head hurt, until I couldn’t breathe properly, until I had nothing left in me to cry. No more tears, no more pain, no more anything. My box of cardboard was the closest I could get to my mom. Holding a box with “Priority Mail” tape all over it was the best I could do to give her a hug.

 

Every object in my box was her love. The little bag of chocolate wrapped up as coal. The adult coloring book I had mentioned along with a 12 pack of Crayola pencils. The little stocking full of candy that I like. Things she knows I enjoy. The bag of Swedish Fish, which are actually made in Canada, and it’s silly but that’s one of the reasons I like those things. Because you would think that Swedish anything was made in Sweden, but nope… It’s Canada of all places. Not even anywhere in Europe.

 

There was a box of chocolate covered cherries and there was a separate message taped on top of the box saying how she knew they weren’t going to be as good as “mom’s” chocolate covered cherries, but how she couldn’t stand the thought of me not having any for Christmas so she had gotten them for me, and that she would make it up to me next year.

 

Why! Why do I have to have this fear that there won’t be a next year?

 

Why couldn’t it be me? I would be ok if I were the one who was sick. I could accept that. I would make peace with that. But it’s so hard right now. I don’t want to make peace. I’m still, still, after all this time, angry and hurt and scared. And anything that reminds me of my mom, of her love, of how frail and quickly it could all fall apart and be taken away from me, undoes me.

 

It reduces me to the begging child inside of my head.

 

I know this will most likely make me sound like an awful person, but there are very few people I would be devastated over. I would feel bad. I would be sad for a little while. A week, maybe more, maybe less. But I would cope with it. I would accept it as part of life. I would know they would want me to move on. To keep going. To live my life.

 

Nothing overly bad has happened. She has already basically recovered from the stroke. She has feeling back in her arm and with physical therapy is gaining more and more use of her hand back. And yet I am stuck.

 

I’m constantly dreading, fearing, imagining a world without her. And I can’t seem to stop it. Whenever I think of her I think about how much it is going to hurt. How much I’ll die with her. She’s not even gone and it already feels like I’m morning. That part of my brain has already stopped living.

 

And of all people, out of everyone in my life, and know she’s the one who would want me to keep going the most. She would tell me that it’s ok. That she loves me. That things will get better and be ok. But inside my head I scream that it won’t be. It will never be ok. And that’s so fucked up because it hasn’t even happened yet.

 

It makes me feel like I’m wasting my here and now. Like I’m not respecting and cherishing the time that I do actually have. But I don’t know how to stop. I don’t know how to change. I can’t move past this place where I’m at with this issue. And I’m not even sure where that is anymore.

 

Can you both accept and deny something at the same time? Because that’s what it feels like I’m doing. I accept that the stoke has happened and that my mom is mortal, while at the same time denying the fact, raging against undeniable logic that one day she won’t be here. I can’t accept it. I don’t want to accept it. I want to say it’s not fair and for that to mean something. For that to do something.

 

It’s not fair. Make it right. Just this once, please. I don’t want to hurt. I don’t want this to be true. I want my best friend to always be there for me. To listen to me when I do something stupid. To encourage me when I being to doubt myself. To laugh with me. Cry with me.

 

Please don’t take that away from me.

 

My Christmas box is the most valuable thing I have right now. More valuable than my bike, which is technically Zane’s but I’m going to say is mine because it’s mine… More valuable than my car. More valuable than my computer or any of my art supplies.

 

This silly, stupid, cardboard box with a single sheet of paper is something that I would trade my very soul for if it were taken away from me. Not because of what is inside of it. But because of what it represents. It’s her love for me. It’s symbolic and right now I can’t throw it away.

 

I know I need to do a lot of soul searching right now.

 

I seriously haven’t done much of anything since Friday other than cross stitch. I got the commission finished. I’ll be posting pictures of it before too long, but it hasn’t left me with much time to do a whole lot. I haven’t left the apartment to workout. I’ve slept in four hour blocks. I’ve been putting in all my time to make sure this project got done. And it did, and I’m pretty happy with it, but now the hard part of my vacation begins.

 

Birthday is over. Christmas is over. Most obligations have been met.

 

I need to figure out me now. I need to figure out if I still want my job. If I still want to work on my degree. Am I going back to my dojo in February? What are my goals and priorities right now? What do I want to do this coming year? Where do I want to go in life? What’s really important now?

 

Priorities change most around major life events. I am pretty sure this counts as a major life event. Especially with how I’m not gracefully handling it. I am thrashing and even on good days there’s this core inside me. This knot that I don’t want to untangle. I don’t want to look at it. I don’t want to touch it. I won’t want for it to be there at all.

 

But it is. It is, and it won’t go away, and no amount of wishful thinking is going to will it away either. I know it’s going to hurt. Just admitting to it being there hurts and makes me feel weak and helpless. It makes me want to give up and quit.

 

My biggest fear used to be financial instability and right now that seems like child’s play to me. If only my biggest worry was Zane not being employed. If only my biggest question was how am I going to afford groceries and gas as the same time. It makes me laugh, a sad, hysterical sort of laugh, which slowly dissolves into tears because I would give anything for that to be my fear again. Anything.

 

I’m so, so sorry that I was shallow and that I thought money was important. I’m so sorry that I made a big deal about it and that I made bills a priority. I’m so sorry. Just please let my mom be ok.

 

That’s what goes through my head. This helpless desperation because I know that nothing I say, nothing I feel, will change it. All I can do is love her back. All I can do is be there. And it doesn’t feel like enough. It doesn’t feel like it will ever be enough. I can’t fix this. Any of it.

 

And as much as I hate acknowledging this part of myself, there is a part that wants to pull away. To stop it now before it gets worse. To estrange myself from my family. I know I don’t seriously want that, but there’s still the thought, and it still needs its moment. It’s a quieter moment, a calmer moment than the desperation.

 

The desperation is frantic. It leaves me drained every time. It leaves me ragged feeling. Torn. As if I’ve been trying to handle a wounded cat and it has bitten and clawed me to shreds in my efforts to help it.

 

That’s where I am now. Having written through the tears, the tidal waves of emotions. I’m empty. Tired. Exhausted. I have no more tears to cry right now. I’m sure there will be more tomorrow, but right now I’m empty. Right now I have no more in to write.

 

I wonder if this is self-pity? I wonder if this is natural and I shouldn’t give myself a hard time? I don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t think I’ve answered any questions. I don’t think I really figured anything out. But for whatever reason, I do feel better. I do feel calmer. Like I’ve purged part of the darkness that was tied up in the knot.

 

I know there’s still more. And I know this is still going to be a rough week of healing. But right now it’s calm. So calm. And I like that.