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11:18 p.m. - 2004-11-07
Sleepless

Dad called this afternoon.

Mom's in hospital. I knew she'd been in bad shape for a while now, and not getting any better, but I haven't been admitting to myself how sick she might really be. I don't think she's been admitting it to herself either, but... it feels like, in being her daughter, in knowing how she is when it comes to herself, her own needs and health, I ought to have seen the signs sooner... done something, somehow, though I can't imagine what or how. Forced her to take care of herself instead of always putting everybody else's needs first.
It's easier not to think about it, not to worry - she's my mother, how could anything happen to her?
Or maybe more accurately, she's my friend - maybe my best friend - and I don't know what I would do if anything happened to her.

I want to believe that everything will be ok, to wrap myself in a cocoon of denial and false hope, because acknowledging that she's sick is allowing myself to believe also that she's mortal. Imperfect. Fragile.

Reality stratifies in so many translucent layers that it's hard to understand what I'm actually looking at, or how far away it might be.

If I had the choice, I'd give up my own health (and life) for hers, because, deep down inside, I know that's she's a better person than I am.
What makes that such a profoundly depressing realization is that despite her example I still managed to turn out so selfish, self interested, and self-destructive.
Fuck it. There's something here that's eluding me, word and thought, that would make this all make so much more sense if I could find it.
All I really want right now - knowing that I can't do anything for her from so far away... nor even if I were there beside her - is to sleep. Not lie awake worrying, or toss and turn through nightmares and tears, but just to sleep, dreamless, gone, to not be aware on any level at all that somehow all isn't right in my pointless little world.

 

 

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