If I could tell anyone how I felt in my non-internet life without making them so, so uncomfortable, I wouldn't be here right now blogging. It seems ironic; when life sails along, the ups and downs that look so small in retrospect seem to loom so incredibly large just at the time. Then something real, something so hard you don't know if you can survive it comes along, and life is divided into Before and After. You measure time by this. You think, "Oh, that happened Before The Thing That Broke My Heart," or, "Gee, things are so unimportant now that The Thing That Killed My Happiness happened."
The Thing That Wrecked Me. The thing that made me question who I am, whether I was a good person, as I had always thought. The thing that made me wonder if I deserved any happiness at all, if I was to blame, if I could have done something different, been a better person, offered more, done more, to prevent it. If I had paid attention. If I had noticed something was wrong. If I had.
Someone in my life is gone from me, but they aren't dead. On a good day, I don't ask myself whether that wouldn't have been better and more merciful. On a bad day, I wish that we had both died in some catastrophic accident, because then I wouldn't still be here, trying to pick up the pieces of a life that will never be mine again and getting half of them knocked out of my hands with every new phone call.
I feel empty. I feel trapped. I feel like a relic of the life I had, and because I am still here and the one I love is not, I feel misplaced, like I don't belong here, like I am pretending to be a part of an existence that is half-defined and meaningless.
I'm just a phony. I'm a cardboard cutout, holding a place until those under my care can safely move on to the next stage of their lives. I'm a smiling, nodding wind-up toy, only in motion when observed. Only existing to be the wall against which others' lives can echo.
I'm so fucking angry, and there is no good, solid noun against which to direct my anger. There is no one person, place, thing to hate. Except myself, for being such a selfish asshole that I could be angry about it. I was wronged, yes, but only by circumstance. How do you express anger at blind, dumb, senseless circumstance? You can't, not really. There's no target there. There's nothing to punch or kick or fight back against. So you stand mute, smiling, nodding, saying, "Yeah, I'm pretty bummed out but I'll be okay. It just takes time."
Goddammit, I don't want to sit through the time it's going to take for this pain to fade. I don't want to have to exist through the misery that is my portion before I can wake up okay again. I am so unwilling to deal with all the suffering I get to see in the next however long, but that's what I have to do. I have to for the ones I love, and I have to for myself.
I know the day will come when I'll feel all right again. I know there will come a morning when I open my eyes, get out of bed, and live my life without feeling more than bittersweet pangs over what was. And you know what? I despise that. I resent that. I loathe the idea that someday I'll feel okay with the apocalypse I'm experiencing now. I hate that bitch for getting over this. It feels like I'll be grieving for the rest of my life, and like that is good and right and proper, the way it should be. But one day I'll be okay. One day I'll just be Mel again, happy and quiet and content and not sad and afraid and angry.
I wish that day was tomorrow. I wish that day was today. I wish I didn't have to think about that day at all. But since I do, I'll keep on smiling, nodding, saying, "I'll be okay," until the day that I am.
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