when will this feeling of impending doom pass? the doom has come and gone but i am still unable to shake this feeling of teetering on the brink of something terrible. it's only been two weeks and i've spent these 14 days in a fog of harsh reality mixed with disbelief and profound sorrow. my mom can't actually be gone right? she'll be picking me up after work at the train station and i'll laugh with her about something stupid i read on the internet when i was supposed to be working. we'll have dinner, laugh some more and my life won't feel so empty.... right? RIGHT!? and even though she was sick for months those old habits don't die easily. her decline was so fast it hardly left time to adjust to each new terror before it unleashed an entirely new and unthinkable shit storm on our lives.
kathleen told me that she feels like the shock is wearing off and it's getting harder to deal. this is horrifying to me. if i've only spent these days in shock and i have something worse to look forward to then how will i ever get out of bed and live again? if there's some new and terrible low for me to plummet into i don't know if i'd ever be able to climb out. this pain is so complete and so consuming that i fear it will devour the light and the humor that mom left behind in me.
i'm still struggling to believe that there is some consciousness after this one. i want to believe that my mom is somewhere warm and safe with the people she loved in life who passed before her and i can almost get there. i can almost let that thought turn into belief but that particular comfort dissolves just as soon as i let my reasoning mind take over again. the warmth of feeling certain always escapes me and i'm left chilled by the thought of my precious mom being meat in a locker and nothing more.
sleep is tricky. i quit drinking and i'm naturally prone to night owlness so sleep is hard to come by until i'm dead tired and unable to hold my eyelids up. i've always been a night time pessimist. when i'm laying awake trying to fall asleep my mind always jogs to the nearest negativity... these days it doesn't have to go far to find something to keep me from drifting off. nightly i relive the last day. waking up. finding mom gasping like a fish. knowing we aren't going to call for medics. knowing she can't go on like that for long. thinking about how hungry i am. then she's just gone. her face.... oh my god... her face. all slack and distorted. that's what is etched into the backs of my eyelids. that face is what robs me of sleep. i kissed her cold cheeks and let go of her, but will that be what i'm left with forever? that alien face that is not my mother at all forever burned into my brain?
