It is as though the space between us were time

 I can't lie. it's been really hard moving back to ct and being with my family every day.  no one listens to me!  I've gone very suddenly from well-respected peer to sneering snot-nosed kid.  a role I can grudgingly take on, because as mama says, it's of prime importance--our JOBS now, really--for everyone to be happy. but everyone is not happy.  wes is absolutely apathetic and I've actually become uncomfortable around him.  we awkwardly say good morning and night but it seems he wants to be around me as little as possible.  of course I'm interpreting it that way and he's just busy working on his demo reel (even though while he's "working" he's also streaming the entirety of arrested development on netflix.com).  still, his aloofness hurts.  I wish I had a sister!

I think that's the main reason I started the blog, under the guise of the public sphere!--to have a sounding board; to be heard by a friend.  even if it's just me listening (which let's face it, who doesn't love to hear themselves prattle intelligently if so capable).  the main reason it's so hard to be back here near my parents and brother, because family isn't friends.  not when they're going through hard times.  though misery loves company, grief is not a unifier but a divider.  we're cautious around each other, but cautious and rude alternately.  mama's very personality has changed.  she doesn't laugh anymore and she's never really paying attention to anything.  "I get really scared sometimes," she told me today over a few jittery bites of bagel.  "we've been together 42 years!  that's most of my life!  I know I'll have enough money, a place, my family, but there's going to be something missing that I'm so afraid to conceptualize it sends me into a panic."  okay she didn't say ALL that exactly, but she would have if she hadn't started crying.  she cries every day.  sometimes I find myself actually getting annoyed and thinking, "why doesn't she try to be more positive and enjoy each day that she's got left with him."  I'm a terrible person, I know.  dad says I lost my ability to sympathize after years of watching people suffer.  doesn't that seem like the opposite of what would happen?  nevertheless I am sick to death of suffering and the sympathy it brings.  I've cried over complete strangers and now dad's dying and about that all I feel is slight confusion.

I still find myself on the verge of tears with no provocation sometimes (though not nearly as often as mama).  not because dad's dying, but because being back here, now that we're all together, I can see that we're not really much of a family.  we don't know each other and we don't care to.  we've been hurt, scorned, abused by one another and none of us is capable, I guess, of letting it go.  dad doesn't see it this way at all.  he always says I'm "unhealthily preoccupied with feeeelings."  maybe I am, but I'm also a chick, so I have license.

One thing that that will stick out in memory after he's gone is the time last week mama sent me up to his office to leave some form on his desk.  he had gone downstairs to watch tv, and as I came up to his desk I saw he was working on a paper.  I don't remember what book or author it was (probably faulkner).  it was about familial ties, a father's ability to recognize his son, his wife, etc., and form appropriate bonds, or something.  I read a few paragraphs but couldn't get interested.  the irony was too great.  all his life dad has researched and written and taught on hidden narratives and complexities in human relationships--family relationships--yet he nearly has none.  dad could have maybe specialized in american writers, or 15th century texts, or poetry, whatever, but buddhism and faulkner: his two main touchstones for 38 years as a professor.  fucked up familial ties and the path to enlightenment.  really dad.  but would you expect a psychologist/psychiatrist to have a perfect family?

I suppose my expectations are too high.

death stamped his feet when daddy died
death laughed at us, mom cried
I felt much less the pain than that of love denied,
and so replied
death finds us reasons for resolution within ourselves.