Feeling it

feeling |ˈfēli ng |
noun
1 an emotional state or reaction : a feeling of joy.
• ( feelings) the emotional side of someone's character; emotional responses or tendencies to respond : I don't want to hurt her feelings.
• strong emotion : “God bless you!” she said with feeling.
See note at emotion .
2 a belief, esp. a vague or irrational one : [with clause ] he had the feeling that he was being watched.
• an opinion, typically one shared by several people : a feeling grew that justice had not been done.
3 the capacity to experience the sense of touch : a loss of feeling in the hands.
• the sensation of touching or being touched by a particular thing : the feeling of water against your skin.
4 ( feeling for) a sensitivity to or intuitive understanding of : he seems to have little feeling for art.

I stopped feeling a long time ago. It's been so long that I don't remember the last time I really felt. Anything. It became so easy to switch it off, that I just stopped turning it back on all together. Is it too late? It still seems to leak through somehow. In the wee hours of the morning, when I am alone, when I am the only one who can see it. I'll remember for a minute or two. His fragile words, laid out so quickly, not carefully, not planned, just honest, and my first thought. Just shut my eyes.

I can always shut my eyes. When I wake it's off again. Let's just pretend.

Taking in the reins

I've slowed myself down a lot. I can stop and enjoy the moment now. There is no sense of urgency to get the next check mark on my list. I've still got a list. You have to keep that list, something to keep you moving forward, I just don't have to put a time stamp next to that check mark anymore.

It really is all about the journey. No matter how often you heard it before, no matter how many times you said it before, when you do finally get it, it's gotten, forever. I can recognize other people that get it too. I like to think we are all aware of each other, silently acknowledging our own awareness, nodding to our friends who say they get it, but are so far from it... we were there once. One day they will get it too. They will turn silent too. They will look back on when they swore they knew, and smile at what they thought was missing all this time.

Speak

I had a scare last week. I thought my mom was starting to lose her mind. I took the rational approach and started thinking about what needed to be done. Would she have to be put in a home? Could I afford that? Could I afford the house payment? Where would we all live? What about the pets? After an hour or so of rationally freaking out, I realized that I should get a professional opinion before I commit to anything (even if it is just a hypothetical commitment).

I think most of her "mind slips" as I shall call them, boiled down to stress and end of the year (school year, she's a teacher) stuff. However, she is going to be 62 this year and I can't help thinking that my grandmother, my mother's mother, was 69 when she died of a stroke. She was in peak condition too. After the stroke it only took three days for her to go. Is it better to go so unexpected and quickly? I think I could handle that better than loosing someone slowly. Watching their mind and health leave them day by day. How would my sister handle it? She has such a short fuse, I never know when she will blow.

Over the years, my sister and I have grown accustomed to my mother's lengthy stories. She tends to take stories that would be relatively interesting if she stuck to the main point, and turn them into 10 minute ramblings that rarely end where they started. Usually its just rambling about things my sister and I have no interest in what so ever. We have two strategies when she gets going on one of these, either tune it out and nod your way through it or stop her as soon as she gets off track and tell her to wrap it up! Either way she tends to get upset. Yesterday, in the middle of a ramble about traveling from one store to another and not being able to find more green Martha Stewart garden fencing to match what we already had, I realized that it didn't matter that I had no interest in green Martha Stewart fencing, or matching anything (its rare that my socks match), it was what was bugging her and she wanted to let it out. So I responded, "well green and brown look the same from far away and colorblind people won't be able to tell the difference." She was amused that I had joined in for a second and then she continued on to the thrilling conclusion; she settled on brown fencing that was the same height.  I was glad that our conversation about nothing of real importance was the heaviest conversation we had had in recent days. 

I tend to forget formality (hi, how are you?) and speak to the point. 

I am going to the store. Do you need anything?

Bread. Creamer.

Ok. 

Oh wait, bananas.

Ok.

When people first meet me, they think I am shy. This couldn't be farther from the truth. I am a watcher, an observer. When I do speak, I speak with knowledge. I speak with purpose, often the purpose is to make you laugh because then you will like me. I speak to give directions. I speak to protest. I speak to explain. I speak so much that when I get home I fall silent. I am the anchor for all that is in the middle and rational in this house. I carry this life alone, next to my family, and alone. To find peace my sister flees the house and I hide in my room, and my mother leaves us to our own devices, afraid that she has failed us. Even now I am hiding, typing away what I won't say.  I will speak the burden and heavy thoughts that my sister and mother will not, but not until I have to. For now I will type. My heavy thoughts will go back on the bottom of the shelf. The next time I speak, it will be with purpose.