I keep looking at a wedding photograph of my parents. Both of them are gone. “Gone” is a more gentle word to use. I usually say that they’re “dead”. My Dad died in 2012 and my mother left me last year. Both died alone. My Dad in a hospital bed, my Mom in a small room she rented in the suburbs of Washington, DC. Both times I couldn’t bear to see them in their last moments. I left my Dad’s side right before I got the call that he passed on. I was barely awake when the police rang my phone to tell me that my Mom’s landlord found her laid out on the floor. I was supposed to go down to put eyes on her but the fear of asking for help with doing such a thing kept me from going. She wasn’t answering her phone all week. My Dad first lost his voice and then his coherency days later because his kidneys slowly began to disconnect from his main frame.
Painful and lonely. That’s how they both went out.
I live that in the present tense. I feel that in my bones. My life is an inevitable disaster. I keep fighting my fate.
I woke up last night feeling like I just can’t get past the things that trouble me. Like there’s this invisible wall — brick by-fucking-brick — in my way that’s blocking me from taking one or — by the grace of God — two steps forward. That wall has a name: advocate. It went from “you need to learn how to take care of yourself” to “you need to learn how to advocate for yourself” to just simply that one word. The subtitles? “Be your biggest cheerleader” or the even more grating “you’re nobody’s bitch”. Don’t let anyone walk all over you or make you think you don’t matter.
Charge those thoughts to feeling invisible. Think about how they manifest into you being lonely.
I write about the same things a lot. I don’t really get pushed out of my comfort zone. I talk about losing my parents and the fear of an already lost self plenty of times. Another show of how cozy and comfortable the reality of chaos can be. I guess I can let others in on my fears beyond just dying alone.
It’s losing my mind. I’ve been dealing with acute memory loss. I can barely put full sentences together. I repeat myself a lot. It takes me longer to understand concepts and ideas. Thoughts jumble. I often think – and then know – that I’m saying the wrong things. My reaction time to others is slower than it used to be. People close to me believe it to be stress. It’s beyond that. When I say that something’s wrong, I’m often dismissed. My grandmother was “sharp as a tack” until her late eighties so I know I come from good stock. But my Mom was diagnosed with schizophrenia in her late forties so I’m aware of the ghost in the corner that haunts me day in and day out.
I’m in a season where I want empathy and not solutions but no one seems to have the time or patience.
I’ve never been normal. I’ve always felt weird. Off. Right of center. I know who I am destined to be: like my Mother. There’s this voice inside of this body telling me to fight to fuck away from that fate. You’ve seen what happens when you don’t take care of yourself. You die alone. In a hospital bed or a spare bedroom. It doesn’t have to go down like that.
Every day I just know I’m running away from that pitiful and lonely “inevitable disaster”. Can’t tell me it ain’t a curse.
ciara roslyn-james 