A week ago I had a Very Bad Day.

Very Bad Days happen to everyone, I know. I'm the first to hold my hand up and say that my life, it's a bit of a roller coaster. When the cart is at the top of the hill and the wind is in my hair, then there is nothing that I cannot do, nothing that I cannot survive. And when the cart is headed for a trough in the coaster, my hair streaming behind me and my heart in my throat, all I can do is hang on and hope that the slope slows down and that I don't careen off the tracks.

I'm not sure what happened last Thursday on my Very Bad Day. I'm not sure really what triggered it, and I don't know how to prevent it from happening again. All I can tell you is this - Thursday evening I poured myself the hottest bath that I could stand. I was sobbing and trying to scrub my skin off because I felt there was no one I could be clean. I was sobbing and trying to jump out of myself with pure and utter desperation, an alcoholic off the wagon, a drug addict buying an illicit plastic packet. In the end the only thing that calmed me down was to sit there and violently shake my head from side to side as hard as I could. I did it for ages, sat in the hot steaming bathtub, crying.

There I was at the bottom of the roller coaster falling apart.

My therapist told me this next round of therapy would be harder. I can't really imagine anything harder than what I went through last time, to consider what difficulty means this time is rather destroying. But I roll my sleeves up. I nod. I accept that I've got work to do separating the wheat from the chaff inside of me.

My family has recently hit a point where the dust will settle and I will no longer take the map out, wondering which direction to go. My mother has moved from Dallas, packing everything up (including the Grandma) and moving to another state. She was reluctant to tell me where she was moving. No one told me my Grandma went, I had to do the investigating myself. My mother - in a very businesslike manner - informed me and my father that she would be shipping several boxes of my things to my father. I can't remember what those things might be. I've been thinking about those boxes a lot, wondering what part of my life is in there. A small part of me doesn't want to know. A larger part of me does. Perhaps it's irrelevant as my family had a massive falling out and I don't think the boxes will ever make their way to me, anyway. Maybe my mother never sent them. Maybe she threw them away.

My family moved away and now I know - I won't be going to Dallas again. I have nothing left there. My secret hopes of reconciliation are gone, that won't be happening. My Grandma's gone. Kim is dead. There is nothing in Dallas for me now but dust and dreams and the feel of copper under my fingertips. It's a finality, but a good one. That door closes and I'm good with that.

The family one is harder. I struggle with family. Six letters in a word that defines so many of us. Six letters. The same amount of letters as strong. As misery. As depend. So many people read here that are estranged from their families, and I don't know if it's because as a unit, we no longer need family in the way that generations past did. Maybe the internet calls lost souls to it like a siren call, and we all congregate together and feel better for being one of Those People, the bad ones that have split families.

My sister and her husband have blocked all contact with me, but I don't really care. Not anymore. I don't actually expect I'll ever see her again, not even at family funerals (apart from my father's, when no doubt she'll be tetchy about inheritances and such). We were close, once, but that closeness did not hold. She is not my family, not anymore, not ever again.

I had hopes for my mother and I, but too much has happened. The latest is too much. I wanted her to be a part of Nick and Nora's lives, but I don't think that will happen. I wish I was better at this. I wish I was a better person. I sent some emails a few weeks ago out of sheer exasperation and hopes that we could be united for 5 children. They backfired in a way I could never have anticipated. I give up. I'm not going to try anymore. This is the way it's going to be.

I've had my anti-depressant medication adjusted. Tonight I trek into London to be therapatized. I am so looking forward to it while dreading it at the same time. Alastair and I have been talking about it a lot, and I am really having a harder time of it this time round. I feel somehow more exposed, more raw, more vulnerable.

I will put my soul to the side because I don't need it right now, and deal with everything else.

-S.

PS-Secret Scripture Book Review next Friday. Be there or be square. You don't need to have finished the book, either. I'm going to gather up questions for it now, so please email/comment on what questions you have for the book club.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 08:29 AM | Comments (20) | Add Comment
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