Breath

I have never paid much attention to breathing.  It is just something that happens without thought, without reason.  This air is hardly important until it ceases.  Because then we are dead.

I talk very little about my sister.  And even less about those moments prior to her death.  I am still racked with grief and guilt if I allow myself the time to submerge my heart beneath the surface of the day-to-day fine.

She used a gun I owned.  A gun my sister offered to keep because I was too nervous to have a weapon in my own home with a baby.  That perpetual chain of events still takes my own breath away and leaves a putrid grief filled vacuum behind.  Guilt laced air is what I breathe now.

In her final day or so she was not much to look at.  A piece of her skull removed for swelling left her tragic head misshapen and uninhabitable.  It was an unnatural symmetry to watch her chest rise and fall in rhythm with machines.  I knew she was gone yet there she was lying in a shallow and selfish grave. 

I go back to that moment often.  For some strange reason I grasp at the fading memory trying to recall if she ever exhaled the final breath she drew.  I do not know why this is important.  And never mind that it is certainly of no consequence to the circumstances I find myself within today.  But still I wonder.

Did she give something back or did she steal that tiny piece of air never to reciprocate again?

Thinking precisely back to nights in that big, white, and wooden bed I can hear her breathing.  Nearly nose to nose I match my breath with hers and we share.  We share the space and we share our secret burdens.  And we never say a word.

Growing siblings often fight as they learn to share.  But we were forced to share and we did so brilliantly.  We never fought over who was fucking us.  We never fought over who betrayed us.  I held her collective breath and she held mine.  But in the end we did not share survival and I will always wonder why.

We both grew up and with her final stolen breath our secrets died with her.  Every minute of every day I breathe and if I'm mindful I can feel the pangs of the memories lost with her.  She should be turning a year older soon but she never recovered from that last breath of toxic shame she took.

Money

This is a discussion I avoid at almost all costs.  Money.  Yet I am surrounded by it. 

Literally.  By way of my profession.

My family was wealthy.  So now that they are gone, I am left with a mess.  It's not a mess to most people but rather an inheritance.  I have now stood up the estate attorney four times.  I make the appointment and then I don't go.  His office assistant drives me crazy.  She probably is a pretty nice person and she probably wouldn't drive me crazy if I showed up for appointments. 

I get in my car.  I drive down the freeway.  I have even made it to his office.  And then I break out into a cold sweat, my head begins to spin, and my heart pounds with the anticipation of finality.  And then I leave.  I just can't do it.  I can't go in and legally acknowledge what has happened.

My family is gone.  A family that I never quite had in the first place.  So if I never had them, did I really loose them at all?  Perhaps my loss is bigger, even different than just their physical presence.  My loss was the chance for a caring mother; a loving father; a best friend for a sister.  I never had these things.  But I hoped for them.  I begged for them.  I even prayed for them.

Well meaning people offer me encouragement and ideas for what to do with these funds.  I nod my head and listen but each idea hits a dead spot in my brain and travels to a broken part of my heart.  Money doesn't make this better.  And while this would be a welcome addition for most; it is a painful insult to my own existence because I did not die.

I survived and they did not.  And for walking through hell I get the prize.  When I sign those papers I will make this official.  The black and white proof of their end and perhaps my own twisted beginning.  I want to say that this is good.

But all I feel is that money makes a dirty and really shitty band-aid.

Badness

I am learning there were two versions of truth. 

His truth.

And then the truth. 

Forgive me because none of this is black or white.  Nothing is as it seems and this is so fucking confusing.  Ever since I received this news I have had an overwhelming sense of guilt.  Shame.  In little kid terms... badness.

Small voices repeat... bad people get killed... he was bad... he was our dad... so we are bad... over and over and over.  These are anxious words wrapped with fear.  Fear that we are next.  An irrational fear yet a real anxiety.

How could I be good yet come from them?  I get that they were bad.  Exceptionally bad.  So how did I get here when badness raised me?

Bad little kids don't have parents... If you tell then you will get taken away...  And then you won't have parents... Because you were bad.

And now we have no parents.

Quite honestly, I am lost.  I pace the floors all night.  My chest is full with pounding butterflies.  I stare at the food on each plate.  A cold sweat overcomes me with each police car I see.  My mind wanders through each day waiting for that phone call.  The call that makes this all official and I wonder how it will go.  I wonder how I will react.  And what I fear the most is that I will have no reaction whatsoever.

And in that lack of reaction, my badness will commence.

Conflicted

Life seems to be measured best in approximates currently.  I have a difficult time explaining that I am fine, sad, good, grieving, angry, or relieved.  Approximate values, however, can be assigned to the various feelings. 

Approximating allows me to change.  To fluctuate.  To estimate something that may change at a later time.  This works because I am nearly every conflicting feeling all rolled into one.  Conflicted is perhaps the only feeling that is consistent.  Conflicted is my stalwart feeling.  My rock.  It is always there.  No matter what.

I love him.  I hate him.

I need him.  I do not want him.

I trust him.  He hurts me.

conflict.  Conflict.  CONFLICT. 

No matter how you shape it, spell it, or write it; it is there.

Chances are, it is him.  In my gut I feel it.  And from that feeling I know that death is  the worst feeling a stomach can own.  With each moment of decay, that rotting feeling in my own body grows.  His decay is my decay.  I cannot eat, drink, or sleep.  I am terrified that in my sleep I will not wake up and in that time we will meet.

More alive than ever before; he is in my nightmares.  His rotting flesh makes my own creep with fear.  His missing fingers I have found.  They are in my sleep and reaching towards me.

Once awake I am sad.  And I am guilty.  I survived and I fear I did not do enough to save him.  I did not make him a better father.  A better husband.  Nor a better human.  That one more chance I withheld.  Buried beneath my fears, his chance died an unnatural death.

Could I have done something more? 

Loved him better?

Loved him differently?

Hated him completely?

My head and my heart are conflicted.  And my memories are conflicted too. 

I remember the man who bought me a treasured doll.  I remember the man who brought me ice cream home from the store.  I remember a man that patted me on the head.  I remember the man who gave me my love of reading.  I remember the man who gave me my first dog. 

And then...

I remember that same man who destroyed my favorite doll.  Who starved me for doing wrong.  Who brutally raped me.  Who tore up my favorite books.  Who killed my beloved dog.

And then I am conflicted.  And I hurt.