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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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dinner and death
Dinner with Sophistica last night. Thai. And what I really want to say is that I'm sad and sorry that I don't know how to be a better friend. I feel at a loss because I don't know any appropriate responses to sadness. I have spent so much of my life repudiating sadness that I have fallen into the habit of pretending that it doesn't exist. I recall my father, just after my grandmother�his mother�died, saying harshly to my mother: "Why is she crying? It wasn't her mother." And my mother snapping back that I was crying because I was sad about my grandmother dying. And it's always at the back of my mind that grief and sadness are things forbidden to me because I wasn't ever close enough to the person who is sad, the person who has touched my life and is gone. I have no idea how close I'd ever have to be to someone to have the right to grieve their death. My throat constricts thinking about it, and I can manage a few tears, but I don't feel as though I should. When my uncle died Christmas before last, I couldn't cry and I couldn't cry. I thought, he wasn't my brother, he wasn't my son, he was just my uncle and my grief, however real I felt it to be, was a sham. I thought the same things when my brother died. I wanted to mourn him, his short and difficult life, and I felt I could not. I felt as though I were circling true feeling, my sadness pretentious, while everyone else who knew him, had been touched by him, was allowed to break down and express what he had meant to them. But I didn't have that right because�Because he was only my step brother, we hadn't truly grown up together. Because I hadn't taken the chance to go and see him while he lay dying in a hospital bed in another state. (I thought then that I'd just be in the way. I thought that the trip�the trip and my presence�would place an unnecessary burden on everyone involved. I couldn't justify my being there in terms of my feelings. If someone had said, you should be there, I would have gone in an instant. But left to my own decision-making processes, I wavered. I was afraid that someone would see me there, saying goodbye to him and think, what is she doing here? It wasn't really her brother.) Even now, I had to wait until Max had left the house to post this. I was afraid that he'd see me crying and roll his eyes at my explanation that I was crying over deaths that happened over two years ago. He would never do this, but there's always the fear at the back of my mind which hardens me to the expression of emotion.
More lies:
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