Guilt

I wish I could take a sponge and soak up my thoughts and squeeze them all out on to the page.

I think it's probably futility to try to really express myself in words, perhaps any medium. Vulnerability and honesty are enough, I suppose. Enough that you might be able to translate some of these pictures into a relatable story.

I don't why I'm about to say what I am, maybe I need to feel in control, maybe I just want you to get me. Either way, what I want to say to you is this: please let go and flow with my words. Don't try to understand them, just let them evoke whatever image comes to you from the arrangement of common words I've made. Okay?

The thing I feel now is guilt. There is a line in "The United States of Leland" when a girl tells Leland that she doesn't want to hurt him and he replies, "Then don't." I waver between thinking that I am some sort of anomaly of humankind and thinking that what exist in me must somehow exist in everyone in some way or another.

I hurt people. I do it because it feels good an safe. It makes me feel alive somehow, yet it also pushes the horizons of my guilt further. I want to be close to people. I think I do anyway, but when the prospect of getting close to them arises, nevermind.

FUCK.

There is just too much pain. The f-word doesn't have the edge that it used to. No, I can't seem to expel the rage and hatred in me with that societal weapon. Deeper more insidious forms of manipulation and emotional rape are my way. And here I stop and wonder: is it so insidious because I interpret them as such, or is it the truth? Ugh. What a drag of a thought. It's just begging the universe to paralyze you, like staring into the sun and then crying that you've been blinded.

My grandma is dying. She will probably die tonight. I wept over her two nights ago, screaming choking, losing myself in the grief. That's the beautiful thing about pain, you can forget who you are. You can forget everything and just be. It forces the 'now' on you, and I like it.

My dad is grieving too. I don't want to share with him what I know to be the same pain. I don't want to meet him on the human plane. The story of my life. I pine and pine for connection, and when real opportunity arises, the curtains pull back exposing the self-pity machine churning away, puking out the black smoke of my soul.

I told my mother about how I didn't want to see his face, considering the ineveitable encounter of the funeral. I want to be the star, I want my grief to be greatest. That's the truth. It's disgusting, I know. I would like to say that it's about my grandma and how much I love her. It's not. It's about me crying about how I never got what I really wanted from her. I never gave her access to me, never showed her how much longing I have. I never showed her my desperation. When I cried, I cried because she was leaving. I cried as if she was already gone. But she's not.

Evidently she is nearly comatose, drugged to oblivion and barely able to breath much less speak. To be honest I am slightly relieved, I've missed the boat. I will most likely never get to tell her what I feel. Sure, I've told her I loved her plenty of times, but I've never expressed it. Such a selfish thing, it seems, so greedy and destructive my love, or whatever it is that drives me. In any case, I could never have imposed that beast on my poor grandmother.

I did send her a letter telling more than I had ever shared with her, and she never responded. The day before I heard about her state I remembered the letter and hoped to find a reply in my mailbox. I will never get one.

A man named Dan once said that the African woman you see laying on a coffin sobbing has it right. She sobs because she is left behind. Grandma is going to heaven. Soon she dance and sing and do cartwheels with Jesus. Soon I will be laying in my bed alone in my apartment, wondering if I'm really crazy or if it's all an act.

I feel guilt. Grandma did so much for me. Was she really like me, dark and deceitful, secretly selfish? I don't know. I'll never know.

Mom said to me, "Your dad is in a lot of pain, more pain than you, so you need to be there for him."
I replied "Why should I? He wasn't there for me."
"If you can't deal with your dad maybe you shouldn't come home for Christmas."
"Fine." Click.

I feel guilt. How can I do the right thing? He disgusts me. He is me. I hate him, no matter how hard I try to accept him.

I fear I will never know what love is.

In the midst of this, I am a child of God, a new creation. Perfect, holy, acceptable, pleasing and loved by God.

Don't ask me how.

I feel crazy.