empty bottles

Yesterday might have handed me a clue about today had I been paying attention.  I have exceptional skill in avoidance.  Yesterday I fought through mud to do the things required of me and yet still managed to end up face down on the trampoline trying to get warm in a patch of sunlight in the middle of the day.  

“Don’t tell me you are cold?”  BC had asked when he found me sweatshirt fully zipped, hood pulled tight, ski socks on…  

“Just tired.”  I lied after all he said not to tell him.  

I sat alone at gym with a splitting headache.  I stood through the parents meeting feeling the ground sway ready for a fast exit if I needed one, stalled to drive home unsure about my overall quality.  When I got home BC took away my sunflower seeds told me I looked very jaundice and handed me a beer…

Today what was bent broke.  I wrote 13 pages, I read 3.1 chapters to Beach, I ran 5.1 miles, I cooked 3.5 meals, and did all the other stuff and points.  There are a million bits to this nosedive I am taking.  It is like a box of Legos dumped out on the floor kid worry, farm work, gyms stress, friend stress, money, construction, family, ex stuff, navy recruiters, but the one piece I need is missing.  May 2 nd was my sister’s birthday and I suppose it doesn’t really matter after all the dead do not get older.  I suppose it is a huge step forward that I forgot it, only to realize it the next day. 

But if I am being honest about my mental well being; only part of me believes she is dead. I see her everywhere in cars, on the street, through the windows of restaurants.  And part of me thinks she may have never existed that I made her up.  But the part of me that was her little sister knows how real she was and that part understands all too well that she is dead and what that means. 

Maybe I have forgiven myself for giving up on us and maybe I have forgiven her for doing the same but mostly where she once haunted me I am now haunted by the absence of her ghost.  It makes me wonder if there could be layers of death that perhaps ghost die and become shadows of ghosts and those shadow ghost die and become memories of shadows of ghosts, until there is nothing.

I’m sorry I forgot your birthday but you might be happy to know in that small window of time I also had forgotten your death.  With very little effort I can see the hole I spent the better part of 2 years in.  I can feel the way I did in an instant.  I can see in the space around me over flowing with the images of you I collected and played. I can feel the weight your passing placed on me.  

You death created havoc.  

Your life was chaos, beautiful and sad.  

I don't know many things but I do know this: you would have hated being old. 

I was your sister.