Here I am, alone again. Not that I’m complaining. Sitting in a motel room. I was, have been, continue to neurotically arrange things. It’s a coping mechanism, I guess, but it’s also pretty fucking productive, for the most part. Categorising, packing, and repacking. Trying to make sure that later, when I am ungrounded again, that I will be able to find things. All my life I’ve known that when I start to lose things, it’s time to check myself. It’s a very clear sign that I need to slow down. But in times like these, full of decision making, trusting my intuition, away from home, and processing my grief, it is hard to slow down, to trust timing. But I must listen to myself in silence, to hear it. I must find the nothingness in which my quiet little voice can be heard, can speak to me, reassure me, comfort me; it’s my mother child voice. There is a weird synthesis of the two, like a turning yin and yang, a wagon wheel of hurt and holding, pain and comfort, fear and reassurance, need and care. I could go on, but again the time feels so short. It’s learning how to prolong the moment, feel it so deeply that time does stop. I am present, here, now, relaxing into my body, feeling the spiritual shivers of anxiety and fear subside with every breath. Acceptance. Joy is there too, but she’s a bit sleepy, like a rainy day. But today, in the real world, the sun is shining, and it is a good day. I let myself feel that too. A friend said to me last night, there is nothing better than vitamin D, that’s the stuff. The sun is shining, here I am.

So nobody’s coming. At this point I don’t even know, was it an email or a conversation that told me? All essential information – data, logistics, admin – seems meaningless and is just being compartmentalised into one part of my consciousness so that I can deal with everything all at once. My phone call anxiety is gone, partly due to the fact that I can speak in my native tongue, partly due to the fact that I don’t have it in me to care to be anxious anymore. I want to be in a higher level of awareness now, and though these essentials are well, essential, and I just don’t care. My care is being oriented towards a higher purpose right now, keeping my mom alive, again. Fighting for her, advocating, checking, communicating with the docs and nurses to make sure that nothing is overlooked, no chances missed. She is not the patient in 6114, she is my mother. My god. My link to my past and my history, my story, the only thing left before me. I cannot lose her yet, it is not her time. That brief era is coming very soon, and we are not quite there yet. God grant me the wisdom to know when we arrive. Give me a sign, let the curtain fall, so that we may go into that space that exists in the world that goes on in one’s mind when the play is over, and live that epilogue in a dreamland together. Please Lord give us this gift.

My sister has recently told me, and not lovingly I might add, and repeatedly, that everyone in the family thinks I’m crazy, narcissistic, and toxic. So that’s been fun. I honestly never thought that we’d get to where we are right now, yet here we are. Like a big, wet, mouldy, piss-drenched moving blanket it lays over me like a heavy piece of hell. I know she’s spun out. I know that rage all too well, it is in me too. I have unleashed it many times, on my husband, on my kids, on too many loved ones in the past. I know how it feels to want to escape from it in any way possible, including having suicidal thoughts. It is not because you want to die that you are suicidal, it’s because you want to disappear completely.

So nobody’s coming. Not our uncle and his wife, not our aunt. Probably not our brother either, as our uncle advised against it. Don’t worry, I said to him, I will absolutely make space for him to see our mother before she goes. I would never do anything to prevent that from happening. This is the real stuff, the make peace or lifelong regret stuff. Does this offer my brother yet another excuse to demonise me? Another chapter in his story of how I am the devil incarnate? Abso-fucking-lutely it does. Well not today homey, not today. This is your decision to make, not mine. You decide if you want to see your mother before she leaves this earth, I’n not standing in anybody’s way. I will not be blamed for your bullshit and shortcomings, fear and self-loathing. Fuck you. I’m managing my bullshit, you manage yours. If you, either of you, any of you, want to call me a crazing, controlling, over-bearing, narcissistic cunt bitch, go right a fucking head, but keep it to yourself. Talk amongst your fucking selves. I’ve got other shit to do right now, and nobody else is coming.

.

That there
That’s not me
I go
Where I please

I walk through walls
I float down the Liffey
I’m not here
This isn’t happening
I’m not here
I’m not here

In a little while
I’ll be gone
The moment’s already passed
Yeah, it’s gone
And I’m not here
This isn’t happening
I’m not here
I’m not here

Strobe lights and blown speakers
Fireworks and hurricanes
I’m not here
This isn’t happening
I’m not here
I’m not here

How to Disappear Completely, Radiohead