States of Reality

 

These days folks are reflecting on the changes we've embraced from the pandemic.  The losses of life and reality and the things we don't need in our lives are abounding.  Aside from the obvious things of more time and less stress, friendships are certainly at the center of this discourse.  I, like so many others, am no different.  What shatters me is how things woke--for lack of something better--and how the endless exhaustion caused within and after has left me.  As I wake in a reawakening world, and I set my feet back into patterns of semi-regularly, I'm left with new losses that can't be memorialized or precisely quantified.  

I didn't hide the fact that ten months ago my sister passed, that eleven months ago a good friend died, or that family and friends died from age, life, or COVID-19.  I thought someone was dead, and I learned that he was merely playing dead for me and living his life happy along the way.  He doesn't understand why I'm angry, and he certainly doesn't understand why he's dead to me now.  Yet, I still lost nine people--actually dead--with a metaphorical tenth one gone--last year.  Yet, as a year turned to 15 months, and life rolled on, a friendship died when I finally stood my ground.  

Without going into all the details of 20+ years, the truth of the matter is that in grad school, I was ditched when one of us got a funding line and the other didn't.  Then, a few months later, she came to me to say she was sorry for ignoring me and shutting me out.  There was talk about priorities or such.  I forgave, as I do.  A few years later, after a wedding and life evolved, my brother passed.  Radio silence came again; I got one. "I'm sorry, but I can't help you."  There was a scurry so quick to get off the phone, all these years later I can still feel the gust of air.  I wasn't asking for anything.  Though I will say when your brother dies by his own hand, and you lose those closest to you, it is heart-shattering.  Months later, I got a call.  Something happened; she needed me.  I forgave her.  I will say, though, that I didn't exactly forget.  After all, something like that stays with the soul.  

Things evolve, but as life goes, we tend to forgive more than we don't.  We tend to hold onto memories and people long after they've proven they aren't as fulfilling as they once were.  In many ways, it's like ordering the same thing from the Chinese menu as it's our so-called favorite.  We still do it, eat it, and writhe from the bloat and half-satiated feeling of being greased out.  Yet, we aren't full from a well-balanced meal, rich with flavor.  Instead, we are full of grease and cheap seasonings, GMO food, and fried goods that give a momentary flurry of splendor, but they always leave us wondering why we did it after the fact. Relationships are like that.  Ones that leave you on edge spend hours a week with vents and one-sided dialogues, being asked about you and having the narrative turned against you or changed within minutes to spend the next hour on someone else, to see therapists dropped when they want someone to work on the problems and ask "if you aren't going to do the work why are you here," therapists I've seen, off and on, have asked me about the relationship and why it continued.  I had no answer.    

Last spring, when I found out my sister really was dying for real this time, and in the middle of the turbulence of life and our relationship, I was gobsmacked with the "you need to let the sister thing go,  Nothing will come of it." My sister and I had our complexities, but losing her--the way it all happened--was awful.  In all these months, I haven't been able to shake that comment.  Things have arisen since, and I'm finally done.  I deserve more.  I've always known that, but I think this pandemic life has made me reawaken to that.  

There's more.  So much more, but in the end, there will be a day I want to remember again.  So, I'll keep my good memories safe.  Though I can't say I'll return a call again after being ghosted, ignored, treated as such, and then blocked on social media.  We all know that's the ultimate fuck you.  When the only thing I'm there for is to vent and have family members berate me, it's not okay.  Though, as I wake from the loss, I also look around to people who leave me chasing them, turn the tables and place the blame on me for not seeing them or calling them (when, ya know, they don't bother to initiate), the one who makes you feel small, the ones . . . the ones, that after a year of tangible loss and fear, constantly displace you and your needs.  Telling someone, when he or she gets home from the hospital "do you have a plan on how to survive and care for yourself?" is foul.  As in, meaning, you can't count on them for anything beyond a text message (and only if it's convenient).  

So, yeah, I'm not that open these days.  I'm not that trusting.  Yet, parts of me are lighter than they've been in years.  The heart breaks, as we all know, but it always mends.  I can't say it looks the same, as I'm not the same.  The scissors were handed to me, and I cut you out.  I would imagine they were intended for me to cut myself.  In that regard, I changed the game.  

I've made no secret that I've been redesigning life, since late 2018.  In Jan 2019, after a week in the hospital with double pneumonia, I was frightened to my core.  I altered and changed things.  This time around the change is not different.  Cold and callous, double standards, holding me to higher (and different standards), silence, and sheer disregard aren't something any of us should take as normal.  They aren't, on any level.  They are just another form of gaslighting.  Yet, they are a gaslighting coming from a place deep within that strikes harder than from those you haven't willingly allowed into your sphere.  

As we emerge from our cocoons, I can't imagine I'm the only one shocked from my own awakenings of things I've long, secretly known.  Yet, even while metaphorically not alone, it still feels that way sometimes.  That's a part of life that happens.  Being forced alone, in thought and action is a different matter altogether.  On that note, as the pages unfold and we all find ourselves again . . .