uneven keels

I’m a big one for pendulums. Always have been – strongly drawn black and whites irritate me, and I will go overboard to see the world in shades of grey or glorious colour when faced with a binary option. It’s only gotten worse with education, and especially with CHID. It’s actually less stringent here and now, simply because that joke about two philosophers and three opinions? Is more painfully true than people who don’t live in philosophy departments are aware.

So it’s been with some bitterness that I’ve seen so much dichotomy in life the last few days, so much good coupled with so much bad, and the difficulty I’ve had in finding any part of a sliding scale rather than either/or. Sitting a death watch with a friend (as much as I’m allowed or welcomed, anyhow), spilling a mug of coffee on my Macbook before I’d finished writing (and backing up) my final ethics paper, that today is Mother’s Day and you can’t go anywhere without people trying to profit on it in all the Hallmarkian glory. But I’ve also had fun bantering Buffy around, the contented glow of companionship, continuing friendships forming, old ones hanging around and making life more enjoyable.

I don’t know. There have been highs and lows, and it’s hard to balance it all out, to find the middle ground and harmony that should be there, to not be overwhelmed on either side of things. I keep thinking I need to sit and read, but read what? Nothing is coming to mind – nothing that I have, anyhow (and I’m banned from spending money until I find one of those J O B things).

I had thought, today, I might lean on a friend for comfort and support, and instead find myself trying to be mentally primed to be the comforting and supporting. Which is in itself somewhat funny, since from our conversation last night, he’s doing the same – and I think the end result will be neither of us talking to or supporting the other, when it’s what we both want.

I’m not speaking in riddles, so much as I’m just speaking to myself, but have to get it down somewhere. More than anything, I think it just comes down to wishing I hadn’t gone out of the house today, wishing I could have just continued thinking it was only Sunday, wishing the multiple service-staff while out hadn’t continually shoved Happy Mother’s Day at me, in my face, trying to get me to buy things for Mom, a mother I no longer have in tangible form.

I finally snapped, on the way out, at the last person who was thrusting those Mother’s Day remarks at me, and told him my mother had died in November. And I’m not happy with myself for it, for the joy that drained out of his face as he realized his faux pas. But at the same time, the insensitivity in assumption just boiled me over.

I miss you, Mom. I wish you were here for me to send flowers to, silly animated cards, to laugh and fear what later this week would bring. To be giddy with you, and have the sorts of conversations that a girl can only have with her mother, and I will never have again. I miss you.