February 2015

I started a new journal over the holidays. I hadn't finished the old one, but I needed to feel the weight of the new book in my hands. I needed something that represented what I'm starting now, not who I've been over the past three years.

From the time I was 16 I started numbering and dating my journals. To remind myself what volume I was on, I turned to the beginning of my previous notebook - the one I started when Mom died.

I couldn't help but read the first entry. And I wanted to share it now. If my apartment burns down and I can't get to my journals, at least I'll have this captured here.

~~~~~

Friday, February 13, 2015
San Francisco, CA

Mom died yesterday. At 6:30pm Central Time.

There are so many things to say, but so few I feel I can say. I feel like I should talk about what happened - how she's not suffering anymore; how she chose this; how she went on her own terms...

But that's not what I'm thinking right now. What I'm thinking is that my mom is dead.

MY mommy is gone.

I will never call her again. I will never fight with her again. I will never hear her laugh again. I will never buy her another diet coke.

I am alone in this world.
I am an orphan.
I am homeless. Truly, achingly homeless.

The truth is this: I am my mother's daughter. I am a product of that house in Ozark. And everything I am today is because I fought for my love of San Francisco.
With all of those things gone,

Who am I?

~~~~~

I've spent the last three weeks or so feeling caught between my mom's world and my own. Kind of the way Mom has been caught between the world of the living and the dead. I have been so anxious I couldn't work. But I haven't been able to cry, either.

I wished for this. I wished for Mom to pass so things would finally be over. But now - now I'm not caught between things anymore. Now I don't feel all that much of a tether to this world. I just feel heavy. Or sometimes too light. Like I might float away.

Like I am no one.

difference between what I know and what I believe

There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it.

~Annie Proulx, Close Range, "Brokeback Mountain"