So my old boss called me this afternoon and asked me to come in to cover the overnight shift tonight. Fine. Great. Wonderful.
And she also asked me to take the same tomorrow because the woman who usually comes in is in the hospital and no one knows when she might be released. Fabulous. Super. Happy to oblige.
And after work I have an interview at Kristen’s mom’s workplace. Fantastic. Cool. Bring it.
And when I get to work there’s a knock down drag out fight over whether or not the door should be left open in one of the rooms, futher complicated by a language barrier and stressing the already taut nerves of a group of domestic violence survivors. Manageable. Pithy. Taken care of.
And I’m sitting up in the early morning hours, chugging a 20 oz. Diet Coke and playing Text Twist on Yahoo.com, when my sister calls and asks me, So, how’s school going?
Anxiety. Panic. Disaster.
And suddenly I’m reminded of all the crushing pile of a million and a half things that I have to get done, should have been doing, should be done with by now. Making sure that the lawyer has everything she needs to finally settle my mom’s estate, getting my gramma to cough up her half of the wireless phone bill, meeting with an advisor at UC, coordinating with Kent State to find out how exactly this whole little switcheroo school thing is going to work, filing my taxes, figuring out if I have to also file some kind of tax-related items for my mom’s estate, getting my 3inch4 dog’s nails trimmed (and picking up some more dog food, too, now that I think of it), picking up some more dog food, stay up all night again, and again, and again this week. I feel overwhelmed.
And added to that is this recent fragility of useless thinking that sets me so on edge. I know it’s probably because I haven’t been sleeping. I know I’m probably just worn down. But I just keep feeling and feeling and FEELING this grief and it’s driving me crazy. And when I think like this, all I want to do is sleep.
I think, a year ago, my mom was on vacation in Florida, and this year, I’m not going to get a Valentine’s heart from her.
I watch The World’s Tallest Women on the Learning Channel and think to myself, Simon was tall.
I go to the store with my sister late at night and I see these hair elastics with fake hair in curls wound around them and think, I would have loved those as a kid, would I buy them for my daughter? And I realize that it’s not up to me anymore. I don’t get to decide what she gets for her birthday, she won’t ask me for a tshirt with some cartoon she likes on it. I see a blue Ford Focus in the parking lot with a baby seat in the back and think, That could have been us. I placed her for adoption because I didn’t want Mark around her, and I didn’t have the money to take care of her, and now I have the money and Mark’s moved to Seattle.
And I talk to Kristen on the phone tonight and she’s talking about how she misses someone and asks me, Does it ever go away? And all I can say is, I think so. All I can say is, It’s like alcoholism. You just focus on dealing with it and getting through today. And then tomorrow you do the same thing.
The truth is that you can’t think ahead. You can’t look forward in the widening emptiness that you feel without these people that you loved, that you depended on, that you were hoping for. Or, you can, but you’ll go crazy if you do.
Tags: back to school, Barbara Sue, insomnia, Natalie Grace, Simon, work
