Not much to say

A friend asked me how i was doing this evening. I've been getting that a lot lately, and I never really know what to say. When I do answer honestly, there's usually a bit of an awkward pause. Really now, what are you supposed to say to that? Generally consisting of "well, my entire life has been put on hold, and i'm going through every day trying to figure out how to live knowing my sister is gone". It's sort of like dropping a 10 ton weight on them, I don't expect them to know how to answer. On the whole, I don't really expect people to know what to say to me. After all, I don't know what to say to them, or to myself, there really isn't anything TO say. But it's the fact that they want to say something that really matters, and that tells me that I've got really great friends.

Shloshim

Among other things, today also marks the one month (in terms of numbers, not in terms of weeks) mark of the death of my sister. Nothing i can do with this information, just something to mark.

Big Damn Rocks

Today Mom, Chris and I trucked up into the mountains so they could look at more possible sites to get married in, come May. I think they've settled on one they saw yesterday, which is a very neat sort of lodgy place. Getting into a bit of nature stuff was very relaxing though, and I can slowly feel myself unwinding from the Holiday. Still can't breath in this State, but i'm okay with that at this point.

One AM is a perfect time for grief to come crashing in again.

Wrap up

The holiday is winding down, people are heading home and back to their lives. I can't help but wonder if this weekend didn't cause serious damage to my Dad's relationship. She didn't seem....thrilled to be spending time with us. To say the least. I think what irritates me about the whole situation is the seeming innocuousness with which a barb was sent out in some of the things that she said. Overall, I just want him to be happy.

This evening was dedicated to relaxing, and defragging from the week. We watched "Triassic Attack"....a deliciously terrible movie if there ever was one. Apples were also stewed.... one of my favorites.

Different Day

Not much to say today, except more of the same. Spent most of the day just hibernating, as I don't really consider myself fit for human company at the moment. I'm still far too snappish and tetchy...

Not talking about it

Happy Thanksgiving.

I'm still struggling to be thankful for things, but I'm trying. The family event today went pretty well, no fighting or screaming. I call that a success.

The only time I completely lost it was when we first arrived, and i found myself counting the chairs around the table, and knowing that she wouldn't be there, and that there wasn't a chair set for her. That pretty much did me in and I had to excuse myself from the room for a bit, otherwise, I more or less held it together. Throughout the evening, we all just avoided the subject. There were some memories brought up and a few stories told, but no one breached it head on. I'm still not sure if I think that was a good thing, but I think none of us knew how to deal with it, or how to start it.

Or if we wanted to.....then again, I suppose none of us even remotely wanted to talk about her death, but it might have been better if we had.

I continue to find myself very short fused, and stressed out in social situations. The only way I can explain it in words to people is "I hate everyone", which isn't true, but when it comes down to it, I just get so stressed out that words fail. The result is a very twitchy, snappish me or a completely silent me. I try and stick with the silent version, it results in fewer heads getting bitten off.

Hidden surprises

We went bowling tonight, and oddly enough, I really enjoyed it.

As mentioned earlier, I expected tonight to be incredibly uncomfortable and stressful for me. I'm very surprised, and pleased that it wasn't. I'm fully aware that tomorrow will have its pitfalls and moments, but for the time being, I'm thankful that I got to have tonight with my family.

Also, I stink at bowling. Baby steps.

Altered state of mind

Family is in town....let the Holiday begin.

Is it over yet?

Nothing in particular has happened, other than going to pick up my Dad and his girlfriend from the airport, but I'm already stressed out way more than necessary. I can feel my blood pressure rising, and my need to hide out in my room increasing. Nothing has happened, there's been no particular moment of awkward. I just find myself back in the position I was last month, of not wanting to talk to, or deal with anyone. I haven't been forced to be terribly social in the past month, it's mostly been my mother and I, and my two brothers from time to time. Nothing major, no events with a capital E. Now that Thanksgiving is here, I find myself wanting to hide in corner, or sleep even more than I have been.

Not helpful.

Trying to be thankful

Thanksgiving has, unsurprisingly, snuck up on me this year. The entire month of November has basically been a write off, but I did get a lot of stuff done helping to clear my sister's things. I don't know that that ranks up there on the 'life productivity' scale, however. Suddenly, i'm faced with the prospect of Thanksgiving on Thursday, which somehow I wasn't expecting.

Shockingly, I don't feel terribly thankful this year.

This is probably incredibly ungrateful of me, there are a lot of things I can be thankful for. Her illness was relatively brief, we were all with her, the rest of my family is in good health and I've been able to work with most of the professors to make up my course work. I'm thankful for all of this. But just in general, it's pretty hard to feel in the Thankful-type spirit. The holiday is marching forward however, complete with all the traditional family plans. My dad comes in tomorrow, everyone's going bowling. Thursday we're going to cook (okay, everyone else is. I'm not allowed near anything flammable) and sit around the table....it's going to be painful, but i think helpful.

On a different, completely rage-filled note, my sister's jackass of an ex has re-emerged. In particular, today he texted this little gem, and I QUOTE:

"I want you to know that without a doubt IF i was still in her life she'd BE alive"

I can't even begin to address how many things are wrong with that, and how much it fills me to my very core with rage.

I am thankful however.

Thankful that he was no longer in her life, and that she kicked him out. Thankful that I will never have to speak to him again, and never have to be nice. Thankful that she knew she was loved, and that he was wrong about everything she said. Thankful to have had her as my sister, and to know that she loved me.

I'm Thankful.

Staring down the barrel

I meant to be asleep by now, but as I was brushing my teeth it hit me. I'm now terrified of death. Every so often, my mind wanders to wondering where my sister is now, what happened after she left that hospital room, and I'm terrified. Not for her, she was essentially a good person at heart, and I cling to that. But I'm terrified of what comes after, in a way that I wasn't before. What happens next? Where there previously was just some philosophical question, there now yawns a great void, and I'm terrified of it.

I'm also terrified of dying, because of what I might leave behind. If I ever discover I have some sort of terminal disease, or something of the like, I've found myself considering if I should just disappear, so my family never has to know. Probably not the best option, but my heart breaks a million times a day whenever I have to remind myself that my sister is dead, and that I wont ever see her again. Won't talk to her, won't ask her for fashion advice, won't bond over our parents or brothers being totally ridiculous.

On the outside, I think I appear fine, or perhaps even lacking in emotion. I just can't deal with it, it doesn't make sense. I find myself wanting to talk to her, and every time I see a change in something I go "She's missing this....it's the first X since she died". The fall colors, the snow, a sunny day. It keeps moving on.

Like I said in my last post - none of what i'm saying is new, none of it is something someone hasn't experienced before. But I still don't know how I'm going to deal with it. How is it that I manage to go through every day, clearing her things, functioning, making plans, even laughing some times...how am I doing all this? All I know is that at some point, one of us will die...and I'll have to do it all over again, or they'll have to do it for me...I don't know how to deal with that. How do I deal with being so afraid?

How do you write something like this?

I'm writing this from my mother's living room right now, where I am now living. Life has changed a bit, and I'm going to try and start writing some of it down, rather than keeping it bottled up. I'll have a fair bit more time now, as I've had to withdraw from the semester at University of Michigan. In short - after three weeks in the hospital, wherein we thought she was getting better, my sister suffered multiple internal organ failures and died around 3 am on October 28th, 2010.

There is no way to dress up the reality of the situation. I have to remind myself multiple times each day that this is real, and that I'm not going to wake up and find out this is all some horrible joke. I know that, in the end, this is what was best for her, that she experienced everything so intensely that it was overwhelming every minute of every day. But I still want my big sister back, and that's just not going to happen.

None of this is new, none of this is something someone else hasn't said before. But I'm doing what I can to deal with it.

In the mean time, today was the first snow of the season. I haven't seen a first snow since the snow storm in London a couple of years ago. Even then, somehow this seemed different, watching ridiculously fat flakes cause all sorts of chaos on the streets of Denver, even when there are still bright orange and red leaves on the trees. There was a certain beauty to it. I wish she could have seen it.