09.Dec.2003
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amnesia destroyed
So, for the past four months, my mother's been in the hospital.
Everyone knows this. You've read about it, poked at it, sniffed it, offered condolences or sneered from your jilted, shadowed positions. Whatever. It's not your battle and it's not your experience.
After three major surgeries and four minor operations and every day hearing and seeing her fluctuate, it's starting to rip at my already frayed seams.
The holidays are here. Halloween was a total flop, because I'm a fucking emotional whore. Thanksgiving was different, but there's always a touch of pensiveness to everything I encounter. I live in fucking Oklahoma. I'm a family-oriented person. I'm your pseudo-genius spoiled brat. I recognize this and I value it. I've made due not to take or at least try not to take anything for granted, therefore every tiny thing that happens to me is just that much more intense because I freeze-frame the moment and stare at it awkwardly in the hopes I can burn my retinas on something meaningful.
That's just who I am.
So, Christmas is coming. You may be cynical enough already. You may be toasting your cocktails or your pills by the glimmering fireplace alone. You may be weighed down in your shitty apartment making amends with former paramours because everyone comes equipped with that element of encompassing neediness. You may be trudging along bitterly, or, conversely, wrapped up in familial warmth because Christmas is, in fact, still coming.
My relationship with my mother has been tempestuous and intense, at best. I use "tempestuous" on a daily basis, because it's the best way to describe any meaningful relationship I've ever endured.
For a little over two decades, I have feared, loathed, worshipped, adored, idolized, defaced, misunderstood, and cherished this woman. She introduced me to music nineteen and a half years ago, and it's prevailed exponentially. She was the first thing I ever hated as well as the first thing I ever loved. Two-year-olds have no idea what "paranoid schizophrenic" entails. It's really quite simple.
Sometimes, I hear her laugh echo in the deepest caches of this house, or I hear her instructing me when I slam my fingers over my Wurlitzer's keyboard, or I hear her weep, or I hear her demands, or I merely just hear her, and I'm sweeping the traces of her eidolon from the corners, and I call the hospital and talk to the real her, and she's drugged and tired and hoarse and dwindling and there's nothing I can do about it.
And tonight, with my archaic cell-phone pressed into my ear, she coos "darling" weakly from the other side, and I feel something shatter and I survey this house and I survey this impending winter and I survey the spaces where she's not and I squint away this forlorn rage that manifests itself beneath my sternum, but she says it again and I break down and start to cry.
And I said, "I miss your voice so much."
And I said, "I'm really very sorry."
And I said, "I really do love you."
But I always cherished this woman.
Because I do not believe in valuing life only when it starts to die, and I will never understand others who do.
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Christmas is coming. Elations and releases have been delayed. I'm out of money until the 15th, but I will be toasting my cocktail and my pills to my fireplace, and I will be sleeping alone, but it only makes me pause that much more, and it only makes this experience that much more intense.
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time & machine