Fraud

FOR TEN MINUTES, I'm going to let the pressure out. 

I'm so scared. I realize now that I am a complete fraud. Every time I've comforted someone who's lost a loved one, every time I've cried over someone's death, none of that compared to this. Every single word I've said.

My mother is the most incredible woman in the world. I love her so much it physically hurts. It is painful. And this week I had to face the possibility -- I can't type it. Every time I try, I sob so hard my body bucks forward and I have to gasp for breath.

I've been so lucky. No one I know has ever left me in a permanent way. I wondered about it for the first time when I was quite young, and the longer it lasts, the more I worry. When someone leaves me I don't know if I'll make it. Given how I'm handling this now, I'm not too optimistic.

She looked so awful today. Her whole face was waterlogged, puffy to an extreme level I've never seen. She seemed so frail. My mother. Force of nature. The strongest woman I know, the person in the world with the most fire in her. SHe was helpless. Everything I say is wrong. I wanted to say it nearly killed me, but I can't. Oh god. This is too much.

I feel like I can't talk to anyone about it. Everyone I know has gone through real loss in a way I haven't, and I have this fear that, no matter how genuine they are in their care for me, they will resent me for it. And I can hardly blame them.

I felt her eyelid today. It was puffed out twice its size, filled with fluid from the swelling in her brain. It felt like a tissue-thin water balloon.

There's too much. I can't let it all out it's going to choke me and drown me and I can't take it. Ouch. Oww. I am silently screaming, hunched over, abs crashing into each other, back curled over my keyboard, mouth wide open, eyes squeezes shut, silently screaming. That is exhausting.

I don't feel resolved, but I do feel drained. Turns out the advice I gave my dad about setting a timer for ten minutes and letting the fear envelope you for that time isn't half bad advice. I'm still terrified and overwhelmed, don't get me wrong. But I feel drained. And starting now the pressure will start building up, and I'll do what I did today: everything I can to keep moving. I cleaned my room in a more thorough way than I have the entire time living here. I even cleaned my dresser. I just couldn't stop moving. I kept telling myself that I was being absurd, but in my head I knew I had to keep moving, for fear of what would happen when I stopped.

Now my eyes are dry. My face is a work of science. The skin that still has the night cream I use on it is stiff, but the rest of it is covered in streaks of saltwater that wiped it clean.

Times like this make me understand those people who completely shut themselves off from the world and lock out all emotion. You know, the people who DON'T believe it's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. Right now, I understand the logic. I still don't believe it, but I can see why people would.

And I feel like a hypocrite. They say she'll be fine. She's supposed to be swollen - she had brain surgery. She's supposed to be out of it - she had brain surgery. I believe she will recover. I worry she won't, and I think of our conversation about GD, and I'm going to need to push that down again. Shove. Smush. Push. Close. Lock. I'll explore that with my ten minutes tomorrow.

Monday Night, Midnight, 2/15/10

REMEMBER * book idea * book of letters, book of dear ____s *