Late night sadness

It's May of 2007. I am 24 years old and I am finally receiving my associates degree from community college. I'm excited and happy over this small victory. My parents have come out to visit me and all of my friends are out and about for the celebration. We have a week planned of all sorts of great things to do together. I'm feeling on top of the world.

Fast forward to the second to last day of my parent's visit. I am at fisherman's wharf lagging back with my father as my mother drags us through more stores than I have ever wanted to visit in one day. I'm freezing cold from the wind, and my father looks just as annoyed as me. That's when it hits... a Bomb goes off. I can't see anything, and can barely believe it is happening... Only it wasn't a bomb at all. It was the sound my heart made when my father explains to me that my grandmother is not going to get better this time, and that she has decided to stop treatments. My eyes swell with tears, but I can't let them go. Not in this public place- not in front of my mother and father. I have got to get out of here. I need to get out of here NOW!

It's the next day, and I just dropped my parents off at the airport and return the rental car. I board the F-Line from fisherman's wharf to head downtown to go to work. As I board the train my phone rings - a frantic call from my sister. she demands to know if they told me or not... Apparently she has known all along. she tells me stories of "do not resuscitate" orders that now hang from my grandmother's freezer and bed post. I hear about the stranger from hospice care who has taken up permanent residence in my grandmother's home - in the bed that i used to sleep in when I spent the night as a child. My head is spinning and my heart is racing. I can't breathe again. Tears welling up... I can't cry here. I need to Get out of here NOW! I try to calm myself with reminders that my sister is a hyperchondriac and she is probably just stoned again, but it's too late. Tears are pouring our of my eyelids and collecting in a shallow pool at the rim of my plastic sunglasses. I'm broken.

Fast forward 1 year and 8 months later. It's may of 2009. I'm sitting up in my house in Hawaii. It's 3am, and I am recalling every single memory I have of her and every detail of how I ended up here. Surprisingly there is an old blog of mine that commemorates every feeling I had through the process. A feeling of apathy has taken over my body. Laziness has held me in its firm grip for a month now. I feel ugly, and think I am visibly gaining weight. I couldn't land a summer internship because of this broken economy. I'm heading to visit my family 2 weeks to celebrate the christening of my beautiful new niece. My positivity is fading more and more by the day. I somehow started to feel something for a man who is completely wrong for me, and although I know he is wrong I can't help but wonder if I looked more like a barbie doll would he have been more interested in me? I'm not broken, but I am bruised. Right here in this very moment, all I want is a glance of her smile, and a word of encouragement. I want to feel the anticipation of going home to see her. I want to sit up for hours at the kitchen table talking and laughing with her. I want to see the excitement in her eyes when I come home for the first time in months and she knows that she is the first person I came to see.

I want to feel the acceptance of someone who, unlike my mother, honestly has my best interests in mind. I want to be able to make a decision without receiving unwelcome and unsolicited advice from someone who has never taken an interest in my life but has no problem with demanding that I live it the way she would like. I want the motivation to get out of this desk chair and do something with my day other than sleep and eat. I am fading out, and I'm worried for myself, and I don't know how to ask for help.

I have nightmares about strange things and my dreams continue to refuse to let me sleep through the night. I buy books on self fulfillment, and meditation, but I don't read them. I call to reserve a storage unit for my belongings but I don't finalize it. I think about how much school work I have to finish, but I don't do it. I'm lost and I don't know what to do. I feel complete and total loss of motivation, and I can't help but feel overcome with the sensation of loss and missing her. Sometimes, even after all this time, I still feel like I lost the only person who will ever understand and know how to speak to my soul.