the queen is dead

Its been ages since I've done much of anything really. I have no desire to pursue any hobbies beyond reading - and then, I really just want to worry about the problems of Westeros in lieu of my own. I have no desire to paint, to clean, to get dressed in the morning or wander outside the walls of my little blue apartment. I'd be content just to sit here in my bubble, in my cage, and pretend that nothing  in the world has changed. That everything is the same. Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine I am in Stephenville again, its summer and I'm hiding away in my bedroom, or running down some jagged hill with a troupe of friends, or staring out at the ocean with eyes made of glass. Those days are gone, though. 

Its amazing how quickly people slip into and out of your life. I have made so many friends over the years, and now some fall into my acquaintance pocket, or are enemies, or have simply ceased to exist. Right now I feel like everyone I've ever known is gone and I am just left to fill up all the holes they've left. This is the loneliest time I've ever faced in my life. Which is sad and strange, because I've purged so much negativity from my life, and I am exactly where I hoped I'd be this time last year. Theres one major difference, of course.

On June 5th my very brave and beautiful mother lost a very short but fierce battle with lung cancer. Watching her slowly deteriorate over the course of that year is the hardest thing I've ever had to witness. Always a tiny woman, she dropped to a meager 80lbs, her skin was yellow and raw, and she had a look of pain on her face in the last few weeks of her life that I will never forget. In the last few weeks she was here, she was reduced to silence and suffering - strange to see, for a woman that seemed to talk and laugh almost incessantly. Some days she didn't even seem to know me - I was a stranger to her and she was almost a stranger to me. It is a strange experience, to watch the place you came from - the woman that made you, hair and cells and skin - to crumble away before your eyes. Nothing instills you with more hopelessness, nothing tears apart your spirit more. 

Its been almost two months now, and I can't say how I'm doing exactly. For the first few weeks every time I woke up and remembered that she was gone I would burst into tears. After awhile it got easier. Now its harder again, and this time I find I am kind of retreating into myself. I don't want to go anywhere or do anything or see anyone. I'd be content just sitting home playing video games and staring off into space. Wallowing in my guilt and regret, feeling sorry for myself & my family and angry at the rest of the world. 

  

Another facet of dealing with this is that for the first time in my young life I am confronted with my own mortality, something I thought I wouldn't face until I was gracefully middle aged. Yes I, Sierra Skinner, am going to die someday. I might get hit by a bus, or fall from the sky. I might do it willingly. I might die for months on end like my mother while my family tries to hold back tears. I might die an old woman in some nursing home, 98-years-old and surrounded by smiling nurses. However it happens, I just know for the first time in my life that I am not immortal. I am going to die. Youth is immortality, and I feel like my youth is gone forever. 

Meanwhile, what am I left with? How am I ever going to come to terms with the loss of my mother, to start living again? After all, despite being mortal I am alive for the time being, and I have put myself into a kind of stasis. I have closed my doors for the season, shut down. I don't know how to face the world feeling as I do, and I don't know how the world can accept me feeling this way. I wish it was as easy as it was at first - paint a smile on in the morning, talk about it unflinchingly, so bravely people would say. Now even thinking about my mom kills me, and the only image of her in life I can conjure up vividly is of her in a hospital bed on the last day of her life, struggling through each of her remaining breaths.

I feel completely alone, completely lost. I am drifting off to sea.

XO

from the back of my head

Since I have neither the energy or the cognitive ability to write a real post, here are just some tidbits from my thought process from the last few weeks. I've been so busy that my greatest joy is just having five minutes to sit down and shut my brain off... I now understand how my cell phone must feel some days.

1. Educationally, I still have quite a path to follow. I'm going to be finished my PCA program in exactly 48 possibly delightful, probably exhausting hours from now. From there, it goes: PCA < LPN < BN... MD? We shall see where life leads me. Goddamn, would I ever love to be a doctor. I admire the level of knowledge doctors have, as well as the responsibility that goes with the role. And yes, I understand that it requires about a thousand years of school, a lot of sacrifice, money and stress. Especially the stress. After the last two months, I feel as though theres nothing I can't do. I'M INVINCIBLE.

But really, my work term has taught me a lot of really valuable things. I am going to be a great PCA, but I yearn for something a little more. I intend to climb to the top of the health care ladder, wherever that ladder may end for me.

2. Sometimes, I feel like my boyfriend can read my mind. More than you'd think. It scares me sometimes.

3. I miss reading. And writing.

4. I long for the time to actually work on real artistic projects (as moaned about in my previous entry.)

5. People make me want to burrow into the ground.

6. Bread is amazing and I want to bake some homemade bread again real soon. Sarah, care to cross a goal off your birthday list from last year? I know your new list has begun, but its never too late.

7. Its strange to me that the most important words in my life used to be big, beautiful words like "empyrean", "verisimilitude", "azure", "voluptuous", "velvet"... lush, artistic words that softly massaged the senses and hinted at some big, dreamlike thing.

Now the most important words in my life are shortened little stencil like things... V/S, qid, DNR, bip, MRSA, adb... medical abbreviations, mostly. Though I have found a lot of beauty in medical terms as well. I like big long latin names,  particularly the ones for pathogens and diseases. Words like aphasia, dyspnea, cognition, etc... these all appeal to my word-loving nature.

8. Things that most people find moving or tragic have no affect on me. I find sometimes when people tell me sad stories, I have to fake my reaction. And I don't mean things like "I got a 50% on my last exam", I mean things like "I saw this story on the news about an entire family getting killed in a plane crash". I've never understood why. Maybe its because very little surprises me anymore.

9. I'm worried that in 10 years from now, I will be an orphan. Maybe less.

10. Sometimes, I try to summon up a postcard-perfect glimpse of my life in five years from now, and I just can't do it. When people talk about the future I sort of shut down because I can't get that far ahead. I can't dream because I'm scared of the disappointment involved with dreaming. Also, I feel like my life is on such an unpredictable course right now that theres no telling where I'll end up. I don't even know what, ideally, I'd want my life to be like in 10 years. I really don't.

And that is all for tonight folks. Where is everybody's head at these days? Is it in the fog, in the clouds? Is it hiding behind the sun? Is it asleep or loud or troubled or moonlit?



XO

stuck in the middle

The other day I was cleaning my perpetually messy bedroom, when I found my tiny tower of history stacked lonely in a dark corner, collecting dust. My precious notebooks. They date back to 2003, and I have dozens in different shapes, sizes, colors, materials. Each is filled with messy, tangled masses of beautiful words, thoughts, images. They exude a certain confidence that I didn't know at the time that I possessed. Reading them again I was shocked,  moved and naturally a little embarrassed (revisiting your mind at 15 is always a painful experience). I could write. I was confident that I could write. I knew my thoughts, they had patterns.  I seemed to know these patterns like maps. I was constantly inspired & moved by things, even the darkest aspects of life.

At the top of this pile, there are five notebooks. Each one is blank. Underneath this quintet of empty vessels, there is a diary that I began in 2010 and ended around this time last year. And it might as well have been written last week. My thoughts are the same - indecisive, apathetic, angry. I haven't changed a bit. My train of thought is identical. I was talking about doing things that I still haven't done yet. And still talk about doing. I don't mean big dreams like visiting Hawaii in the summertime. I mean simple achievable things like "I want to reorganize my closet and find a better job and take up cooking".

My whole life, I've been giving up on things. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've given up on everything I've ever tried. Either that, or just talktalktalked about doing something and never tried it at all. Exhibit A - notice the infrequency of my blogging, compared to the fair level of consistency it once had. I don't know why I do it, really. I adopt things for a few weeks, sometimes months, and then just slump back into being a ghost. This applies to both activities and hobbies. I bought running shoes swearing to myself that I would start jogging. I said I was going to learn Swedish. I've finished one painting in the last two years. I never study. I never write, the exception being the only two thoughts I've had for the last three years apparently: "I WANT TO BE A NURSE AND MY BRAIN IS EMPTY". The fact that I still have a job & have great marks in school absolutely astounds me. I get tired of listening to myself saying things like "I had this great idea!" or "I want to..." because I know its bullshit.

For years I've been trying to figure out what my problem is. Its been suggested that I just don't care. In remembering that in my youth I used to care about things far too much, this almost makes sense in a way - a sort of defense mechanism against disappointment, perhaps? I feel like I care a great deal about a lot of things, but maybe I'm just lying to myself. At the same time though, is it really possible to care about nothing? Or have I just changed into someone I don't want to be and I can't accept that?

I long for confidence. I long for the drive to do things, to feel satisfied about doing them. I long to stick to things when I make up my mind to do them. I long for the ability to make decisions, to argue, to know that I'm making the right decision. I long to be present, to be somebody, to be remembered. I honestly feel like a ghost and I can't live with it. But how do I fulfill these longings?

Is this just part of growing up, or is something wrong with me?

XO

stare into the sun

I am still among the land of the living, to those that have been curious. I also now have the internet, which means my life has leveled up! I am making a return to blogging as of now, though I'm not quite sure what sort of direction I want to take my blog in now. I'd like to do start doing more artistic, crafty things. I have a scanner now, so I guess thats another point on my technology card (and a cellphone? are you kidding me?) We shall see how events unfold! 

The last few months, I have been struggling. My life has been nothing but school work school work school work. Doing the exact same thing everyday for months on end wears on the spirit. In addition to this, my mother is sick. I am missing all my friends who have flown off to the edges of the world like crazy. I even miss my friends that live in town that I rarely see. 

And winter is cold and white and lonely. This time of year, my brain dies and shrivels to dust. It will bloom again when the flowers do. Its the hardest thing of all to deal with, simply because its like a magnifying glass for all the other awful things that are happening in my life. If I wasn't doomed to spend 5 months of every year being depressed and cynical and angry I might be able to cope with all the other stuff life tosses my way a bit better. 

Anyways, that is all for now friends. Just wanted to say I am here, I am alive. And there will be more words soon. Always more words.

XO