29 September 2001
My brother Sean turned 27 today. And today we learned that Dad might not have had a heart attack, because the cardiologist went in to remove fluid around it and test it only to find there's nothing wrong with it.
We're given time. And time we'll take when we can get it.
.the girl who is not very 11:58 PM
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28 September 2001
Stories are usually made up of song lyrics, commercials, movies, and random things that you can't remember who said somewhere along the way. A friend once told me that she loved music so much because it was the soundtrack to her life and her biggest fear wasn't death but going deaf before she got there. How can you see music when all you've done is feel it for years and years and nothing else makes sense? she said.
I've always got noise. The TV's on when the stereo's up, when the computer's on and I'm surfing for some kind of second-hand wisdom somewhere out in the world. After awhile the earth just becomes code and you forget where you were born. Sometimes you look up at the television just in time to hear your favorite song over the concertos of war that unfold on the screen. Every once in awhile, you need a good depressing song, maybe a bottle of wine and a cookie, just to remember what doesn't make sense anymore.
And then you stop, because you forget what you were going to write. Suicide bombers kill more innocents, you are branded evil by someone you don't even know on the other side of the world, and your father is lying in a hospital bed, dying. Scared, you stay home because visiting him would just tear away all the years of memories you've ever held from your childhood to now. You just want to get it over with, say hello or goodbye to whatever spirits are making themselves known, close the door and sleep in the dark again.
There are no songs that fit this moment. There are no words that can help you. Friends who you love ask you what they can do, and there is nothing. Nothing. Even being at home feels like your parents sent you packing on a guilt trip. Out of control. Helpless. Sad. Pre-mourning. So close and yet it keeps pushing itself back.
I want to think I've been here before, but I've never seen anyone I love dying. When they wake up for that one minute and their eyes are so tired. They want to die, and you want to let them go, but hope keeps you both in stasis, and it won't budge. Hope may be bigger than the demons in hell, but itdoesn't make any less of a hell here on earth. Dad grabs my hand and squeezes so hard. We're going to get you out of this.
Crying seems futile. It would just make me more tired, and it just doesn't feel right inside. Something I can't name keeps me going. Maybe it's the Goddess. Maybe it's the fear that my father is going to leave me soon and those feelings of abandonment after my mother's death haven't quite left me yet.
All this has been inked on other pages, private pages where my handwriting gets progressively worse each line down the page.
Some people you just want to stop and ask them how they could keep living their lives and not even consider you. Other people you just want to stop and tell them everything so that they'll know why you've been missing for days on end, not talking to anybody. I feel like my life has just stopped completely, waiting for anything to happen and not being able to do anything else until it all passes.
You don't wear certain fragrances or listen to certain songs because they'll bring you back to that time, but you can't help but wear them or play them because they're memories in disguise, and sometimes it's best to remember where the pain comes from so that it's easier to put away. They aren't going to come home ever again, you think. The house you sleep in will never know them again, and neither will you. Whoever you are died when they did, taking a piece of you with them while they carry on in you.
Never again will you forget what you're going to write, because the words come to easily, running instead of walking in the haze of your head. In circles, they tell the story from then to now, of the unrealities of the material world.
.the girl who is not very 5:05 PM
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My ex commented to me once when we were going out that I never made a big deal out of anything. After your mother dies unexpectedly, everything else seems like bullshit, and really, most of it is.
Right now I feel like I'm in a haze, that things are just happening and my life is revolving around a schedule that I can't change, is really unstable, and seems neverending. And it's not that I don't care, I'm feeling like I did three and a half years ago when I feel like I'm the outcast again, where everyone else knows exactly that they're going to get up tomorrow, eat breakfast, go to work, and come home to their cats. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. I might be planning for a funeral. I might be smiling at the fact that everything feels okay.
Right now I feel like I've been coerced into waiting. Waiting for death to come, waiting for life to come, waiting for the rest of my life to start. Again.
.the girl who is not very 11:14 AM
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27 September 2001
Usually I'm writing in this every day, but the past three days have been hell.
I've written it so many times I don't want to write it anymore. I can't get the image of my father lying on a hospital bed linked to a respirator, and when he looks up at you you can just see it in his eyes that he's done.
I was telling Sean earlier this morning that I hate this feeling, that feeling that everything's out of control and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. It's as if I'm in this stasis of feeling horrible.
.the girl who is not very 1:52 PM
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24 September 2001
I think Brandon's ticked at me. He called me to ask about what was going on with
someone (not me) saying the band's definitely back together and writing new shit. He sounded a little irate at the comment and all I could say was "I don't really know. All I'm trying to do right now is live my life. I have no idea."
NyQuil. Drool. Sleep.
.the girl who is not very 11:09 PM
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Wil's National Guard group was made active today. Kim called to let me know.
It scares me. I already have one cousin who got Gulf War Syndrome from Desert Shield, and another cousin who lived in Turkey with her family, sometimes being harassed because they were Americans.
I don't harbor any malice towards the Middle East. I harbor malice towards oppression, however. If there are people who want to live their life, and someone is stopping them from doing it, frankly that's fucked up. The Taliban brands me evil because I think that way.
Like I've always said in a sing-song voice: Telling me I'm evil isn't gonna get me to convert...!
I mean, if September 11th is really the way people are trying to combat Satan ('cause everyone knows America's Hell's Hotbed on Earth) in this day and age, wouldn't you think education would make more sense than resorting to His tactics? Seriously. The Taliban is basically out to wipe out Christians and Jewish pracitioners. Can't you be like every other fundamentalist and just throw a book at them?
I'm already saddened that Pagans aren't even being represented in any of these "prayer services"-- even in a free country, not everybody agrees that just because it's free that it's accepted-- so why should I be involved with your silly little holy wars? For one thing, I think fighting over God is silly in the first place; second, I don't even believe in Satan or these peoples' definition of "evil" (basically not being like them); third, why would I want to fight in a silly holy war when it's all going to come back to me karmically anyway? I'd rather have these little petty stupid problems than look over my shoulder because we don't agree on how we worship.
It's like the Crusades all over again, just in a different disguise.
.the girl who is not very 6:32 PM
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People ask me how I am these days. The only thing I can say is shitty. Really.
Woke up this morning feeling somewhat rested-- the shot of NyQuil I took last night helped so much you don't even know.
Bad things really do happen in landslides, I suppose.
Today would be a good day to do work, get the week started off right. But first, eating would help enormously.
.the girl who is not very 1:17 PM
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Get home. Got post-nasal drip. Hate hay fever. Nyquil nite. Sudafed tomorrow.
Repeat if necessary.
.the girl who is not very 12:04 AM
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23 September 2001
I'm trying to keep some sense of humor about myself these days. But when nothing seems to make sense, keeping it is like chasing butterflies.
But when I catch butterflies, I make sure to wear them with pride.
Now, I'm sick. Again. I get hay fevers about once a month now, and it's especially irritating when the weather changes even slightly.
I'm having one of those months where I just want to go somewhere warm, near an ocean, and let the waves wish it all away.
.the girl who is not very 11:51 AM
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