The Bust of 2012

I miss feeling. I miss writing. I miss running. I miss consistency and routine. The fits and starts that began the year never materialized into a movement. And here I am halfway through November with little calendar completion and even less words. I suppose - what I did not count on or understand or read about - was that after the numbness wears off, the depression digs its heels into you, spotlighting with 20/20 clarity the understanding that life will never be the same again. Your emotions begin to play tricks with time and context. It is as if I did not want to get on with my life, as if I was intentionally squatting on my own dreams and future because I was very unwilling to give up my mother. 

I found myself, unbeknownst to myself, unwilling to move, knowing that each single step forward would be moments in life that my mother would not see. For months I would stop and start -  just a tiny toe into the new motherless world, but the pain seared through me. It was too intense; so I retreated. After all the suffering, the years of abuse my mother’s body went through as the disgusting disease ravaged her insides, I still just wished she were here.  And it all sounds like platitudes and common moments, no more special than anyone’s, but it honestly felt as if no one had ever gone through this particular hellish pain. 

All the while I was casting myself in stone - preserving the life - the only life I had ever known.  Right down to the very core of my being, I was not moving on. I picked up dozens of books only to make it 2 pages in. I started numerous projects only to abandon them within days. Sleep left me by even larger degrees, and I stopped - just stopped - being me. I stopped running consistently, living healthily, and loving with my whole self. I recoiled from the everyday to enter my own cocoon of self pity, angry at everyone who still had a breathing mother. I found myself terribly upset when encountering women over the age of 64, still alive while my once vibrant mother was swept away. Several times I remember thinking - I should be feeling this more - I should be taking this in and learning -  but I just couldn’t muster the energy to complete that sentence. 

Now here I am, waking up after the storm, wondering where the last 14 months have gone?  While going about the difficult task of developing the new context of my relationship to my Mom, letting go of the external one, I’m beginning to realize that it hurts to be pinched again. And here underneath the exhaustion, the anger, the depression echo the stirrings of a deeply determined ultra-marathoner - crawling her way back to relentless forward motion.