saitaina | Musings

Originally published at Memoirs of a Nobody. You can comment here or there.

I live a very torn life these days.

I’m suddenly charged with keeping everything running (the house, the car, life in general) while at the same time I’m trying to be the girl I was less then a few days ago.

Normalcy…

What a stupid little word. It’s just a word, normal, used in every day language, and yet has such implications as to mean everything is not normal, not as it was…and probably never will be.

that is my job. To give normalcy, or the illusion there of.

I pay the bills, I run the errends, I make icons and wash my hair…

And I run every day/every other day up to a city over half an hour a way to visit my mother who should be here.

I wash dishes and clothes, cook meals, balance the budget and try to figure out how I’m going to afford next weeks’ groceries without any money. I collect the mail and newspaper, I feed the animals, babysit children…I do a million other jobs that were never mine and wonder…what now?

I knew one day I would have to grow up, that she wouldn’t be around forever to watch after me. But I expected that further down the road, after more years of freedom and with some sort of warning.

I didn’t expect to wake up one day from a nap and suddenly be the temporary head of a household.

There’s supposed to be training, a gradual shift. And while I’ve always been the one to take care of her…I was still a child…still am in many ways.

Maturity, when forced upon ones self hurts.

Everyone keeps praising me, talking about ‘how well I’m handling it’, ‘how easily I slid into the role’, ‘how proud they are of me’.

I’m just trying to keep my head above the fucking water.

I feel like I’m drowning, that the axe is swinging ever closer and I don’t know what to do…how to stop it from falling. I don’t want to be a grown up, I want to go back to being the selfish little brat who conned mum into waking up at three am and then get her to make food.

I’m scared.

At least there’s an end somewhere. Before Yule…before thanksgiving, after Samhain…somewhere in that time…she’ll come home.

But what sort of home will it be?

Nothing can go back…nothing can be fixed easily. Grandmere is completly out of our lives (bitch hasn’t even called ONCE to see how her daughter is), my ulcer is a constant companion, and our sanities are frayed. And neither of us will ever be the same.

So where do we move forward to?

I like to pretend I’m brave, that I can handle anything that comes…that I’m strong.

Right now I’m so scared I want to hide under the covers until someone tells me the monsters aren’t real.

But the monsters are real, I see them every time I open my eyes, in her bed, with the animals staring at me with the same hallow look I see every time I look in the mirror. Until I climb in the car and drive the half an hour to a hospital that haunts my nightmares…until I have to put on the smiling mask that re-assures her everything’s all right.

It’s only when I climb back in the car that the mask falls away and the dead face comes back in the rearview mirror, and the monsters are back to being my companions again.