But then other days, like today, it's like it just happened. Like it's happening right now. Like I will live in this moment as long as I breathe. It's as if I could sit here with his laugh ringing in my ears and his face dancing in my mind until it drives me truly insane.
Mainly it's the guilt. What isn't there to feel guilty about. Cause I feel it about everything: the fact that I could have seen him just days before it happened, and I simply decided to pass, the fact that I stood by his casket and felt nothing, nothing but indifference, the fact that I'm still here breathing as if his life was for naught.
It's not as if I think it all meant nothing, quite the opposite really. I know how much it means, I know how bad it's supposed to hurt. It's just that in my heart all I can feel is confused. I replay the years I spent with him, searching to understand, trying to make myself realize that he really is gone and I'm not just going to see him sometime down the road at a reunion. It simply doesn't make sense, and therefore I can't convince myself it's true. I feel nothing most days. I'm stone. I see him, so much to the point it haunts me, yet still I am ice. I'm told it's my body's way of coping with the loss, but I've simply come to assume that I'm inhuman. What kind of person is incapable of expressing emotion over someone she loved?
And that's when I realize that my life has become one big oxymoron, emphasis on the moron. Because the content has effected me-- some things do get to me. It has changed my overall perspective on life. I get angry. Mainly when other people don't care. Or when they just don't know. They don't get it, and neither should they, however, careless comments make me want to strangle them. Sorry Momo, but I will never call you Mikey, no matter how many times you sign your notes or leave messages that way. That one's not your fault. But it still makes me cringe. Then there's the, Ugh, I'd just go ahead and hang myself if I had to listen to her voice any longer. No, actually, you wouldn't. You like that song? Go kill yourself. No. Don't. And quit talking about it. It's not a funny reference. I don't want you to tell me that you're going to turn into oncoming traffic if I don't stop singing so effing loud. I don't want to hear that a class just makes you want to die. If you point a fake gun to your head one more time I'll scream. Stop making jokes about things you don't understand. You don't know who you're hurting.
That's one thing that's come out of this I guess. I've become a lot more sensitive to the people around me and what they're going through. I'm more careful to see the problems people might be having and not make light of things that actually can completely alter a person's life. "I think you can tell a lot about someone's good sense of humor by whether or not they can laugh at racist or suicidal or dead baby joke." I don't believe that. You know what I do believe? I believe I can tell whether you're ignorant and insensitive by watching you laugh at the same one. This year I've learned that people can be even more blatantly hateful and ignorant than I could have imagined. How someone can be so openly heinous I will never fully understand, and how I can offset these effects I am still trying to find.
Mikey changed my life in entering it, and he altered it completely by exiting. This is a truth I hold to. I refuse to let anyone else go through this without my realizing. I resolve to open doors to those who are struggling, and always remind those around me that they are important and that they are loved--by the people around them and by their heavenly Father. And I resolve to make my life count. Mikey touched so many people in his time here, and I have been blessed with a life with which I can and must do more.
My secret: I used to wish fervently that something truly tragic would happen to me so that people would feel sorry for me--so that they would look at me and I would be different for my pain. January 4th, 2009, I knew how wrong I was. For seeing death, tragedy, sickness, rape, and sin as things from which I could gain, I will forever feel guilt.
Hey, God. I know you're shaping me here. I just, need more time to understand this. I thought a year would be enough. I thought I'd have it figured out by now.
No comments:
Post a Comment