Last night I came home, and called almost everyone I love. Nobody was home or answering his cell. I had never felt so lonely or uncared for, though I knew it wasn’t true. People have lives and their lives go on when I’m not around.
It’s just that everyone, including me, wants to feel special, and for a brief moment in time I felt particularly unspecial, unloved and uncared for.
We can’t read each others minds. I guess I was waiting for the welcome home phone calls I usually get.
I hate this time of year. September into October used to be an exciting time for me. I could live with the memories of 9/11. It’s history and horrible, and everything everybody has said more eloquently than me.
I have a harder time living with the memories of my mother’s death. Was I a good daughter that month? Was I bitchy or nasty to her? Why did it happen so fast?
When I walked into the funeral home and a woman screamed out “it’s the wrong daughter,” I felt it as a metaphor for my future though I knew that was irrational. I had never been the wrong daughter and certainly couldn’t have been after death.
But I began to understand why people stay with people they no longer love, and why people have children. Children make you go on and give you something bigger than yourself to care about.
It’s just that every September through October now I feel wrong; as if I were put on this earth by accident (I was) and have remained one despite all the good times I have had, and the people who have loved me.
I want to regain the joy I used to feel at the little things in life. I want to be me, but an even better version. I want to do worthy things; I want to do stupid things. I just want to do, and not feel hurt or pain at every little thing every September 11 through October 14.
Now I find it easier to stay in a shell this month so as not to offend people. I’m tired of that. I can try to change my behaviors, but the feelings stay.
I’m tired of making excuses for the friends who deserted me when I needed them so desperately three years ago. Yeah, we were all hurting, but my mother died and it was so not cool for me to mourn.
I’m tired of writing about this. I sound like a 33 RPM record scratched and played at high speed. I want to sound like I’m in a sound studio.
I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m jet lagged.