The doctor says that one of the main contributors to any individual's perspective of adulthood is the example of their parents. Sometimes, he talks about my parents and the lives I've watched them have, and sometimes, he just looks at my face, and knows from the expression there that I've seen something I don't want, can't want, to emulate. He tells me then, "It won't be that way for you." Over and over again, he tells me this; he keeps his other words away from it, spreads a space around this sentence with wide gestures of his hands. With hush. "It will not be that way for you." I forgot in December how those words sounded. I forgot in December how hopeful I can feel, believing them. Even as my throat stings with my fears, with what I'm afraid I can't escape, somewhere in me the notion that it's possible, that he believes this, that he says it as a fact... warms my heart. It sharpens the homesickness. I'm not made for this place. I have another life, unlike this one, to lead.
I haven't called, and I haven't written Dave...and I haven't written Jenna. I haven't eaten any yogurt pretzels, and I haven't drawn in my memory book... I'm used now to the idea that I'll never stop missing them; there's a certain comfort in the raw unease. It doesn't keep me from wanting to give myself a reason to miss them less (or a thousand times more) - to talk for a moment, to be in the same room, to do the thousand seemingly (but not truly) impossible things. I wouldn't care that it's abnormal, if it could be as real as something more concrete. I wouldn't care whether or not it's crazy, if I could have a set of papers like adoption papers, signed, promising. Your ours, Mary-girl, and that will always be. Oh, love, I've spent so much of my life feeling so strongly for people who couldn't relate back, and I don't want it to be that way with this. This is home and family, and I want it in writing. I want it in a finger that traces one tear off my face, an eye that looks me in mine, makes sure I'm looking back, and a voice that says through calm and dancing lips, "This one really will be always."
You don't know how the possibility of something else haunts me. They don't know. It was almost love. It was almost always.^ Almost always haunts me in a way I can't articulate. I need to write, just write. I need to call. All the Christmas cards and no one's answering. Abby's address is no longer accurate. Rosie hasn't written since Thanksgiving. I try to keep as calm as I imagine secure people can keep, but I'm scared. I feel every silence wondering if it's the final one. I don't think it when I read the letter or make the phone call. I don't feel it then. It's in the pauses. When Sara went into ICU after the overdose, I remember thinking that her last day at Rogers - October 10, 2001 - could have been the last day I ever saw her. Just like my own discharge became the day I last saw Tracy. It never crossed my mind. It couldn't. Sure, I felt like I was losing everything and everyone, but I couldn't really conceive of that possibility. I woke up in the same room as she did for two months, two months in a place where time works very differently, and I'd never see her again? It's preposterous. But I'll never hold her, never touch her, never see her face again. I can't put it together, once again. I think of the Tracy at Rogers, the Tracy who was saved, the Tracy who drank poison and didn't die, and I can't make her the same person who took pills and did. I don't want to. I look at her senior photo on my wall, her class year in the bottom corner, a year she didn't live to see... I look at how beautiful and alive her eyes are, and how sick her body is. Why couldn't I see that sickness then? Why didn't I see how pale and thin she was? Why didn't I wait to leave my last day, wait until she was off the phone, until I could say something real to her...why didn't I wait and have a real moment instead of a rushed one? Why didn't I write her or call her or do anything like that? I missed the wake, the funeral. I know why, and I can almost keep from persecuting myself on that front. But I missed her life, too, and that's back-breaking. I miss her. I miss her and her life.
I'm love. I'm made of this love. And I can feel my skin start to weaken, my body start to feel less than strong...when I go this long without them. On and on and on I go. On and on and on I stay. Laugh at me and let me cling to you. Let me stay hooked around your leg as you walk. Let me trip around your heels.
One of the things that JofA episode knew (if only I'd known how many things it would know, and how the reminders wouldn't leave after the night) is that you don't have to die to quit living. I just want to know I'll never lose my life, and all talk of codependency and that bullshit aside...call it attachment instead, please. Call it attachment; let it be healthy, let it be ok. I want to live my life, and my life requires my family, and my family feels so far away.
Memories taste like leftovers; these days I just need something fresh.
~me
^The Love is Gone