12-19

brandil79

no comments

December 19, 2015

Someone recently commented to me that they were glad I was “doing so much better”. It struck me as a rather odd statement coming from someone who doesn’t know me very well and for the fact that it implies that I was doing poorly and there was some visible improvment. To be fair, I had a very rough fall. However, I look at pictures and think there isn’t really a visible difference between the week after my mom died and the month after. And as for my mental health, I can tell you, nothing has changed. I’m not coping well at all. But I must be, right? Because this (basically) stranger has seen some visible change   in my state of being. This brings about a remarkable case of anxiety. It makes me think that maybe they saw something that day that I was doing right; something that made them more comfortable with my grief than previous. I can’t figure out what exactly I did that day to warrant that, so I stress about it. Am I failing to do better now because I can’t repeat that moment of betterness? It also brought about intense guilt. Surely I should not be doing better, right? Mourning is forever. And if someone sees me in a state of improvment? Well, that implies that I’ve somehow failed at the mourning process, right? 

I wonder daily what I could have done differently to prevent my mom’s death. I wonder if I had stayed, would she have woken up? Could I have said goodbye better? I wonder what people think when they look at pictures from September and I seem “okay” in them. Because I do. I look at them and I know that that was the day I had a 45 minute meltdown on the balcony of a hotel in Albuquerque. Or that was the day I slept on a friend’s couch, unable to move the grief hurt so bad. I see the smile and I see the tears buried underneath it. 

I guess, I look okay. I look like I’m doing better. But I’m not. The pain isn’t as intense, I’ll grant that. But I can see all the ways I’m broken compared to the person I was this last summer. I can see it. I feel bad for anyone who knew me then and knows me now and hurts because of the difference. I feel sorry for anyone who only knows this me; this is a sad and angry version of my old self. And it hurts to be told to heal. Or to see the relief when I don’t cry.

 I’m not doing so much better. And believe me, I wish I was.

12-18

brandil79

no comments

December 18, 2015

Another quick fiction friday. Not happy with it, but I don’t edit my fiction here, so it is what it is.

They unloaded their gear while a gentle snow fell. She was thankful for the added layer she had thrown on before they’d left, and that they’d packed extra blankets too. They hadn’t really talked it out, but they’d both over prepared for the cold. And both grateful for it.

He started a fire in the fireplace and the warmth spread quickly in the small space. She sat cross legged on the stone floor rubbing her hands briskly to warm them. He was sitting in a chair slightly behind her, sipping from a flask, coat open and flushed from the effort of starting the fire. Neither of them talking. Unusual for them. Usually so easy between them, the words. Now silence fell heavily in the place of the casual banter and it was clear that what they weren’t talking about, what they hadn’t talked about was exactly what they both wanted; why they had taken the extra day ahead of their friends. It was suddenly very warm and she shed her coat and heavy boots.

When she stood up, he did too. And it only took moments to find her way into his arms. It was where she’d needed to be for months now and it felt so right. So comfortable and safe. Her fears subsided. They’d made the right choice to be here, now. She lifted her face to his and their lips finally met. Not perfect, no first kiss is. But full of promise. 

Tides

brandil79

no comments

December 17, 2015

An idea floated in on tides of dreams. Enclosed in golden threads of thought and disconcertingly persistent. The waves of imagination lulled me to sleep and there was a moment, between the waking world and sweet slumber, when the idea was all and everything. “Sleep now,” she whispered “and wake with the light; a thing broken by the realization that the idea is gone, lost forever in the corridors of night’s embrace.”

12-16

brandil79

no comments

December 16, 2015

War. What is it good for? Something like that. I’m not a fan of war. It saddens me and makes me angry. I’m sure there are more than a few who share the sentiment. Recently I mentioned this to a friend who replied that there was some “funny shit” if you looked into wars. And I was skeptical and the topic was dropped. But I thought I’d ask “what’s funny about war?” during a conversation yesterday and he provided several examples that were indeed chuckle worthy. It isn’t that the wars themselves were at all funny. They were serious, devestating and world changing. But his stories brought to the forefront that tough times, war in particular, brings out the best (and worst) of human ingenuity. We get seriously creative (and yes, I realize, cruel) when our honor, soil or ideals are on the line.

It also led me to this conclusion; conflict is at the core of what it is to be human. It’s really a sad thing and means we are better off scrapping the whole plan and turning the world over to the dogs and cockroaches, but it is part of our fabric. We are angry and cruel in the same way we are passionate and creative. The thing that makes us believe in a thing so deeply that we’d die for it, is the same thing that drives us to create art and music and find ways to live longer and travel further into the stars. I know some of you are bucking against this right now. We can still be friends. I’m not absolute in my rightness about this. It’s just a feeling I have. A feeling that if you take out this component, we’d all lie down. One by one bits of the thing that is human would dribble out of us. Or maybe we’d take it away if we could. If we could breed out the desire to war, why not jealousy? Why not faith? Love? Hope? All of those things lead to conflict. They create a desire to possess or destroy or to bend others to our will.  

when the cruelest and most desperate of our kind rise up and try to take what’s ours (our security, our peace, our free will) we fight back. And we prove that we are a creative and passionate species, even when our creativity leads to a mutually assured destruction stalemate. War drives us to want the better life because it reminds us that it can be so bitterly bad.

I’m not sure what this ramble is all about. As much as I’d like to raise my child in a world without conflict, conflict makes us. We either rise and prove that we can engineer a solution, be it violent or peaceful, or we roll over and die. That’s the  funny thing about war in my mind; we need it to prove our humanity.

12-14

brandil79

no comments

December 14, 2015

Losing a friend is somehow the worst thing. I mean, I’ve suffered a big loss this year and I’m not diminishing that. Losing someone to death seems inevitable and unpreventable though. We are all going to die. Sorry to burst that bubble for you. And we don’t get to choose when or where or how.

When a friendship dies, that’s a choice. Conscious or not. At some point one or both parties made decisions that slowly ate away at the delicate strings that hold friendships together. We pick our friends. They might fall into our lives randomly but we decide that “yup, this one sticks”. Friendships can develop with lightning speed, surprise both parties beyond belief and last lifetimes. Or they can creep along slowly, setting up with effort and hard work and end as abruptly as a crash test dummies career. Regardless of the type of friend, the level of friendship, the effort and memories and laughter you share; when a friendship dies, it kills a piece of you.

We can try to look back and pinpoint exactly what went wrong. We cns try to blame the other person completely. We can try to ignore it; pretend it never existed. That a piece of us wasn’t complexly tied up with a piece of another human and that we never gave bits of ourselves to someone who, in the end, owed us nothing and reminds us of that every time we see them in public. We can blame ourselves and wonder what was wrong with us that this other human just couldn’t stand us anymore. And worst of all, we can mourn. Mourning a living person may be the hardest grief we can bear, because we are reminded that they aren’t gone by random whims of the Fates  they have chosen (or we have) to go. 

I find, as I examine the friendships I’ve lost, that more often than not, I could have saved them;? For a time. It would have been short, frustrating, borrowed time. And That’s why I try not to let it hurt too much. I struggle every day not to let the hurt and feelings of betrayal get to me and bleed over into the new relationships that inevitably bloom on the grave of the old. That’s the hardest; opening yourself up to new people when someone has left you, abandoned you. But if you do, you may begin to realize that the hole that was left when the old thing ended, isn’t as deep as you’d thought. 

It hurts when a friendship ends. It can feel like the worst thing. I can honestly say that sometimes it is for the best. I think this time was one of those times.

12-12

brandil79

no comments

December 12, 2015

The alarms went off at 6:30. On a Saturday, this is a big deal. It meant a few minutes of “omfg imma gonna die” heartbeats before we were actually out of bed. Quick showers, a run to the gas station for coffee and eggs (they had none) and we were loaded and out the door just in time to see the first snow fall. We questioned our adulting skills; low on gas, no spare food, taking the car into a canyon that occasionally floods or ices over or gets too muddy to exit. Would the excursion be worth it? The answer was yes. We spent two hours plinking away at targets in rain, then snow, ankle deep in mud, sitting on the wet ground, soaked through head to toe. And I loved every effing minute of it.

  

12-11

brandil79

no comments

December 11, 2015

A short fiction for your Friday.

The road to the campground wound through several miles of dense ponderosa and aspens. Fall was firmly set and the first dusting of winter snow billowed in the wake of the old pickup as it made its way up the hill, chugging faithfully along despite its age and need of an oil change. 

They weren’t talking about anything particular. Sipping their coffee, commenting on this or that scene along the way. It was comfortable. It was familiar. 

He turned the truck up the last of the switchbacks and the snow thickened in front of them. They inches through it cautiously, aware that the previous rains could have left a layer of black ice buried beneath the few inches of delicate snow.  The campground turnoff showed no signs of tire tracks, they were the first to arrive. As they’d planned. They pulled down the old, rutted dirt road to the clearing. At some point the forest service had put in a picnic table and a small metal ring for fires. But that was it. It wasn’t much more than a vacancy of trees Butted up to the start of a snow capped mountain range. S few more weeks and they’d never be able to get this far.

What most people didn’t know was that there were a few old forest service Cabins settled beyond the tree line, tucked directly against the base of Red Mountain (ehich was not called so because of its coloring but because of a local hunter, Red Hammet, who lost his life during s failed attempt to poach elk that led him slipping down a ravine where he slowly bled out for three days waiting for a rescue that was never to come). They are small, one room affairs each with a fireplace equipped for cooking and little else. Three Id them were too far gone to be habitable, but two had stood against time and weather and were used often enough by those who knew of them that they’d been carefully repaired and tended and added to over the years. Even the normal mischief hounds who would happily vandalize their own mothers house treated the cabins as sacred and they were left alone most of the time for those who needed a place to go. Like now.

Neither of them had been sure where to go, when they’d first started to realize what was going to happen. And it had never been directly expressed that they were actually both on the same page, but when he suggested the cabin as a way point to their destination, she’d snatched it up as the opportunity she hopes they’d both been looking for.
That’s it. That’s as far as I’ve gotten today. Now im too full to think, let alone write, and it’s the time for child picking up and dinner making.

Happy Friday, even though I can’t be all the way happy. Because it’s Friday.

Blog at WordPress.com.