I had the creeps this morning, though it passed by noon as the temperatures rose, and I’m not sure exactly where they came from. Something about the light. The way the shadows weren’t at all where they were supposed to be. Reminded me of dreaming. For a minute, I wasn’t sure I was awake. I wasn’t really sure of anything.
It was like everything that is wrong in my life, and there is plenty, came sharply under the focus of the morning sun- and for once there was nowhere to hide. I was hit with these memories that weren’t memories exactly- more like blueprints of thought; maps of what my priorities were long ago, my routine at the time, odd little hopes and goals and what it felt like before I went on to realize them, or change my mind about them entirely.
Occasionally they are warm memories of loved ones and cherished times, but these were less glamorous. Long images of dirty alleyways, sitting there thinking, waiting for something with nowhere to go. People I used to be friendly with and no longer know smiling sideways and laughing with their eyes hidden in shadow.
I feel my misanthropic tendencies rising. My brothers are both irritating me, in different ways. My entire family, in fact. This holiday weekend I have dinner with my mother and her husband and an egg hunt on saturday, then they travel down to His family’s for Easter sunday, and I have another dinner at my Uncle’s house then. First time I’ll not see my mother on Easter in 43 years. I get it. I don’t feel slighted. But I do feel quite disappointed, and in general abandoned by her since she remarried. It’s been two years (at least) and I’ve been to the house I grew up in maybe 3 times. Prior to that it was every day, at least once. The last two times I went, I knocked.
I keep having these flashbacks to the Godzilla showing she hosted as a favor to me on my birthday. Nothing about that evening lined up well or worked out. She tried to have a little party for all the grandkids with a movie afterwards for the adults, in theory, but everyone just left with the kids super super late, and I more or less watched the movie by myself when I was actually just ready to go home and go to bed myself by the time it was started.
She sat down to talk to me at some point but I couldn’t manage conversation with her. It was a little awkward small talk, followed by some more awkward silence, and then she thankfully fluttered off to help a grandkid with something or other. But I know she sat down intent on having the kind of familiar open lighthearted intellectually stimulating and humorous conversation the like of which we always used to, my whole life, while we were going to the movies together or playing racquetball or taking walks or whatever else.
My brothers disappoint me too. More and more I get the feeling that they are more in it for themselves than the team of us. If any of those guys needs help I drop what I’m doing and rework my entire day to aid the cause. Yesterday was the third time I’ve asked for some help since I was able to pivot from helping them to my own list of projects, and the third time everyone was just too busy. And what hurts is that I love helping them, and the fact that they don’t love helping me exposes a lack of something on their end, relative to me. Or rather, it exposes me for being over my skis invested in people who at best don’t quite rise to the same level. I get it. It’s just disappointing.
Nothing I want right now is even on the horizon. Normally I’m excited about summer but at the moment all I see are mangled trees with the tops snapped off and shadows that belong to another world. If I didn’t know what I wanted, I could pine and dream. But I do know what I want. It’s just too far out of reach. Everything else just feels dull, routine, and meaningless.
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