Dark Days Of Summer

I’m not going to pretend anymore this week. I don’t have anything uplifting to say to you that will make the world feel like an easier place to love, or an explaination of why I think things happen because frankly I have no idea.
I don’t like to dwell on the past, it just seems there are a few dates in the matter of a year that sneak up on me, and once they get close I can feel them breathing down my neck with a ridgid force of darkness. There isn’t much I can do really, not to avoid this date.

Five years it will be, July 17, 2003 at 1:10pm when my mom took her life, to ‘save’ us from watching her die in the hospital. I’ve grown a lot in five years. Learned a lot about humanity in general, learned to love myself for who I am and not what I see others think of me, or tell me I am. I’ve raised a child as a single mother and watched her single father do the same from a distance. She’s the light at the end of the dark hallway when it feels like you can’t run fast enough to get away from whatever it is that follows you, once you reach her, she takes it all away and causes nothing but peace.

Jaida will be with her dad for the next several days, taking my light, leaving me here alone in this cave of darkness wondering around clueless trying to figure out when, just WHEN this emotion will stop and go away or at least subside!
I cut all my hair off the other day. I feel like a pixie and I like it. I see the reaction in others eyes, the lie when they say it’s ok, or they think it’s cute. It makes me smile inside because just then, as the glimmer of a lie flickers from their eyes and glances another direction I feel her hand on my shoulder laughing with me, telling me that I am still me, no matter what I do to my hair (of course she would have hated it to be honest… “what about your long soft angelic hair” she’d say) to which has been gone so long now I hardly remember or care what I looked like with such beautiful locks.
 

I keep taking pictures, trying to prove that what I see in the mirror isn’t really as dark as it is when I see it. So I snap – I look, waiting for the right picture to show you guys that shows my hair how I love it so much right now. Nothing, the dark is still here……… hovering in my eyes, tears balled up behind them and a clinch in my throat seemingly permanent. Anyways, here is my hair cut.


I can’t help but look so hard, trying to find the light I know is there, the light I’ve worked on for so many years to know that it is myself I love, and all else follows but it’s not there today, it hasn’t been there but will return in a matter of a week.
I know some of my readers have lost a parent. One of you (cp) seem to have the same painful anniversaries as I do with our moms, and Suzy and her dad- she just has a funnier way of speaking of him. She is after all a comedian though, she gets paid for that shit.  right Suzy?? 

So here it is, what it feels like to me – when the anniversary of the day she died approaches:
I’m standing in a dark place, unable to see anything around me, unaware of where I really am or if this is only a dream. I bend down slowly to feel the hard cold earth beneath my feet. I begin to crawl with my hands outstretched in every direction, reaching for something… anything to grasp that will tell me where I am, show me that I’m ok and in a familiar place. I hear echos in the distance, drops of water? The whistling of the wind? I still look so hard and see nothing but pitch black. Finally my finger tips pass something, drawing my entire body in that direction. I put both hands out to feel the object in front of me, it is but a wall, wet, cold muddy wall, the same as the ground I had just lifted myself from. I begin to follow the wall, as if a blind person would with no guidance but their hands. I realize where I am now. it’s a cave. The deepest, darkest, coldest cave I have ever experienced. I begin to cry, feeling lost and totally alone. I don’t know which direction to go, because I simply cannot see anything. I don’t know what to feel except utter panic and my breath begins to shorten and my chest grows tight until my legs get weak and I sit down to collect my thoughts.

I’ve lost something, I don’t know where I am, what I’m doing and I don’t have the energy to go any further from here. Then I hear voices. Not just echos of water dropping to the muddy earth but to my left I hear voices. I sit quietly trying to understand what they are saying, I begin to crawl slowly in the direction of the sounds with one arm in front of me, to keep me from hitting anymore walls. I can hear the voices getting closer, yet I still cannot see. I am beginning to make out what they are saying, it is not many voices, just one……… one every familiar voice. I realized suddenly where I am. Who that was. What she was saying and it made no sense. “please take care of the animals” she muttered.
I sat back against the cold wet wall of the cave and held my head between my legs, tears streaming from my face. I knew where I was…. Again, every year I hear the same thing….. and so I sit, crying, listening to her read the note she left me
“Please take care of the animals. Bambi, I’m so sorry for this pain- but baby were not the nuts, just care takers! Suckers with lots of pitty for the pitiful. You stay strong girl! (detail left out for personal reasons) It is time for me to go, be free. PS- Do not kill yourself for others hurting your heart so bad”
The last words she whispers to me as the voice begins to fade away again ‘The value of time…. How true’
My breath falls to short quick pants and my eyes grow heavy, the tears falling now so fast they have literally become a stream and I realize the drops I’d been hearing were not water falling from the cave walls at all, but my own tears in echo that even I never saw coming. The day is here again, and in this cave I will stay. Feel safe, cry where nobody can see me, write when nobody can bother me, yell because sometimes it’s frustrating to have your only mother and best friend gone for the rest of your life, only visiting you in a silent dream when she feels it necessary. I lay down in on the hard cold earth, still unable to see anything and settle into the darkness that has taken over my eyes. I close them softly as my tears carress me to sleep…….
To Be Continued….