Blue Ruin

When is it time to downsize the clutter, in doing so, reliving old memories, good or bad. I've tamed all the papers into one file drawer, but I have to work at it weekly to keep it from growing. Do i want to go through old cards, and bring up feelings from the past? People I no longer keep in touch with, by choice or not. People I miss. People who hurt me. Notes and letters that hurt. But also happy memories, birthday cards, notes from friends in high school. Sad that I'll never have that intensity of friends like I did back then. Or the cousins. They still exist, but now they have families of their own. My brother has his own family, kids or not. 

All those movies and books where they tell you you'll never have friends like that again - Stand By Me, Now And Then, Derry Girls, Gilmore Girls, Friends, etc. I tried so hard up until my 20s, but then suddenly I was estranged from everything, and when I came back, people were getting married and had real families, and I was estranged - by choice? not exactly. By a wall. Not invisible. More like a window. Fiona Apple described it well. After my great Aunt Regina died, the priest told me there was just a veil between us. She could see me, but I couldn't see her. I nodded, but the problem wasn't that she was gone. The problem was that people leave. and people get sad. and it's hard to see my uncles in pain, my aunts in pain, my mother in pain. I won't have to see all this after I'm gone. But it's weighing on my heavily. AND I WANT IT TO. I don't want to be in denial. I didn't ask to be born, and now I'm going to leave a huge chasm in several lives. I'm devastated that this is the price of love and family. This is a huge design flaw. This is what religion tries to patch, but religion cannot solve a problem it didn't create. The problem is that we learn to love and then one by one everything we loved gets torn away, or fades away, or walks away, or drops dead, until you have what you started with, plus a whole lot of pain where the bonds were. Stop telling me it's worth it- you don't know that. How can you know?

written March 29

title from "real bad News," aimee mann 

Labels: bad news, cancer, chasm, fear