So I started working at the bank when I was 21. Several months later, they sent a kid from another branch to substitute for someone going on vacation. He was younger than me, and I didn’t fancy him, but he was handsome and personable. Turns out he’d started working for the bank a couple weeks after I did. He rocketed up the ladder and ended up a branch president five minutes after he earned his bachelor’s while I was still struggling to prove I was good enough to be a new accounts rep. He was sweet, and he had good taste in clothes. He had a pair of shoes that, on two occasions years apart, I complimented him on … and he wore them for the rest of that week. Ah, the power I have over men. (The only power.) I haven’t seen him since 2005, when I quit to work at the library. Like I said, I never had a crush on him, but every time I heard Sixpence None the Richer’s song “Kiss Me,” with its line You’ll wear those shoes, and I will wear that dress , it reminded me of him. The s
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at least I can stop dreading it now
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Back in September, I said was not looking forward to Christmas. For the most part, everything I said would happen happened. Social media is tough, because you see presents, trees, matching pajamas, and actual families getting together. The best things I experienced today were Chinese food and two naps. Dad talks a good fight in an attempt to make December 25 about my birthday. I appreciate his intentions. I cannot separate my birthday from Christmas in my mind, so a refusal to observe the latter just leaves me with an unprecedented sense of loss and loneliness. I managed to escape some of it yesterday by watching Man of Steel , which I think is a pretty good film, and Batman vs. Superman , which has its moments but is just weird. Even as I was thinking "This movie is so bad," at least I wasn't wallowing in my grief. I was eating junk food and disintegrating in front of the computer, but at least I haven't succumbed to getting drunk. If I ever started drinking alcohol
Christmas 2023: dreading dreading dreading
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I have a Christmas birthday. This year is a ends-in-zero year, so it's a milestone of sorts. It'll be the first birthday and the first Christmas since Mom died. Dad doesn't celebrate Christmas, won't wish me a merry Christmas, and sneers when I wish him a merry Christmas. I get a "Happy birthday," though he hasn't done presents in ages, and Chinese food delivered. Last Christmas, Dad and I went to church and then went to the rehab center where Mom was. Dad saw her unconscious and struggling to breathe and demanded a ride to 7-11 so he could get a lot of beer and get drunk. The next day, I got an earful of complaints about how awful it was for him to see her like that. I got to see her like that at least once a week. Yes, Dad. It's awful. When he was well enough to drive himself 250 miles each way to visit my brother in prison, Mom and I encouraged him to go and visit his son. Partly, it was to encourage him to do something he really wanted, but mostly,
Surprise! It's Grief!
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It's Mother's Day. Mom has been on my mind every minute today. She is most days, except when work keeps me too busy to think, or I've been able to lose myself while reading or watching something. I just went to the kitchen to consider dinner options. I opened the fridge and started sobbing. No clue where it came from; it just hit me like a train. I have a friend Ellie, who also works with the kids at church. Her mother died two weeks before mine. Their relationship was tough, due to her mom's abuse and undiagnosed mental illnesses. Ellie is the oldest daughter, so she did a lot of the work of raising her siblings. So her experience as a daughter was very dissimilar to mine. But she still has grief today, too. The men took over the kids' Sunday School hour today. No classes, just playing a version of baseball with the kids' singing determining their team's progress around the bases. Neither Ellie nor I wanted to be with the women being celebrated in the churc
Easter 2023: my worst day ever
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Mom died three days ago. Every minute feels like nails on a chalkboard. I deleted her profiles at Netflix, HBO Max, and Disney+ earlier this evening. I just went back to one of them and lost my breath when I didn't see her name. I guess it's going to be a lot of contradictions now. I want Dad to feel like he has more space and presence here, but everything I create for him takes away from Mom. Someone is coming to pick up her oxygen condensers tomorrow. I don't have a problem with that, but packing up all her medications for safe disposal? I wept. Oh, G-d. My mother, my wonderful, patient, sweet mother is dead. I couldn't stay long after all the monitors in the hospital went flat/zero. She looked less like Mom and more like something -- instead of someone -- every minute. The first time she was in a hospital and then a nursing facility was seven years ago. I felt like she should be smiled at by at least one person who wasn't getting paid to do it. It was almost alwa
a box of rocks
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Whatever I'm doing when I'm at home, it feels like I'm carrying a box of rocks around. Each rock is something for me to remember: a task to do, an appointment to write down, a medication to take, a timer to set. I walk around worried I'm going to forget something before I get the chance to accomplish it, or at least write it down. I am very easily distracted, and I forget stuff a lot. I walk into my parents' view, and it's like they think I blinked into existence just to do things for them. Don't forget to do my laundry. Since you're up, get me an ice cream sandwich. Have you emptied the bins yet? Go look in my bottom drawer for [thing] so you can clean it; I need it on Friday. The reason I emerged from my room was to do something that would lighten my own load a little. I finish a task so one of my own rocks will vanish, but every task they unload on me is another rock. I ask them not to unload it all on me at once because I will forget not only their s