“winter”
in better weather,
i reject socks and slippers, and
my bare feet kiss the tiled bathroom floor gently,
accepting the cold with an acquiescent shiver.
tonight, however,
the ragged edges of my cracked skin
glance off with an aloof “shh, shh”
only daring to breathe when occasional puddles
present themselves as moist sacrifices to greedy soles.
world issues have nearly completely consumed my brain today. between the issues currently and recently in libya, new zealand, wisconsin, egypt, australia, etc, i’m feeling overwhelmed.
this lead me to think about the burden of caring.
i’m in my last semester of undergraduate study, and i’ve got plenty going on in my own life, but i cannot cease to seek out information outside the “bubble” of my school and even my country. it’s my nature. i like to be informed, not just about news issues.
however, up until a few weeks ago, my deep need to be informed and care about what’s happening, from the lives of my friends to the lives of people in countries, had been suspended (partially due to the grieving process, i believe). it was a me-me-me-fest, 24/7. i was a slave to heightened sensitivity and mood swings, with generally agreeable or good days but terrible nights that brought tears like clockwork. deadlines for schoolwork and for the school newspaper that i write for had no meaning.
i honestly felt like shit most of the time, despite–or maybe because of–being the center of my universe.
but now i’m feeling mostly normal again (well, normal for me). i can CARE.
caring takes time. caring takes energy. caring causes headaches and rants and broken hearts. apathy is easier. i’d probably get better grades, more sleep, and spend less time online about to tear my hair out in aggravation.
so why care? is it actually worth it to have a bleeding heart?
caring proves our humanity. that robot that just won jeopardy could sit with a single college-student as she anxiously awaits the results of a pregnancy test, weighed down with the possibilities that could disrupt her entire future, but a robot couldn’t absorb those emotions and be stressed out (unless you’re Data in that one episode of star trek: TNG). i doubt hearing the death count from libya would furrow its brow.
apathy allows those committing heinous acts to continue unabated, those being oppressed to remain silent, and the suffering to believe they are alone. it devalues those outside of your own universe and raises you, the individual, to the status of unreachable and self-sustaining island, which we were never meant to be.
it is because of this that i also have a beef with those who say “i don’t watch the news, it’s depressing.” guess what: avoiding world events doesn’t mean that they aren’t happening. taking the time to actually know what is happening is the first step towards eliminating personal apathy. if you can care about the life events of your friends displayed on your Facebook, you can take the time to regularly hit up a reputable news website.
i’m about to tear my hair out. my multitasking brain is attempting to analyze world events from the perspective of someone who’s finally attempting to learn why and how countries are interdependent. i don’t understand most of what’s happening, but i’m not going to give up. i’d rather get upset or up in arms about things happening outside of myself than spend an hour in a pity party. i take the burden of caring seriously.
i’ve been following this guy’s blog for awhile now, and, since i’m in a procrastinatey mood, i figure i’d steal an idea he stole from this other writer, who stole it from someone else, who probably stole it from someone else…some facts about myself.
1. i’m 21. that’s also how many facts will be present in this list.
2. i am an optimist at my core, despite having struggled with depression and self-injury and a current foray through the grieving process. this probably has something to do with my strong christian faith.
3. while i’m technically a registered republican, i also don’t really think there’s a political party for me anymore. i don’t like having to compromise some morals and beliefs for one and others for another. if someone can tell me how to register as an independent, i’d love to know.
4. all my favorite colors are neons. my very favorite is neon purple, with cerulean and scarlet making up the second and third places.
5. i am what i call an “englishy” person. words, in so very many ways, are my life and my trade and my contribution to society.
6. i’m also a “francophile.” i’m fluent in french. my maternal grandmother is french. i’ve been to france twice, the second time (if you’re a latecomer to this blog) to study abroad for a semester. i miss it dearly and hope to either have a job there someday or a job that will provide me with enough funds to travel there regularly.
7. i probably couldn’t give you just ONE favorite author, but if you were to give me a genre i can comply. for example, neil gaiman is my favorite living sci-fi/fantasy/etc author.
8. however, favorite poet is a lot easier. pablo neruda. i refer to him by his first name because that’s how comfortable i feel with him. i’m in the middle of a senior paper analysis of his love poetry. i even own a tshirt with his face on it. and so on…
9. i am generally distrustful of apple and their products. however, this did not stop me from purchasing my first apple product last week, an ipad.
10. i name all my electronics after tolkien-related characters or things, except for my phone. i’ve never named a cell phone. to date, i own a gandalf, shadowfax, ainulindale, and elanor.
11. my favorite musical is RENT.
12. i used to want to go to grad school right after my undergrad, but i recently decided that was the easy way out, so i’m going to try and find a job instead and then eventually get my MFA.
13. two sounds i hate more than the oft-evoked nails on a chalkboard: popping balloons and loudly flushing toilets.
14. i played violin from age 11 until i graduated high school. it’s exceedingly hard to make time for it when you’re not a music major.
15. i first read the harry potter books a mere two years ago, all seven of in ten days (in the middle of the semester, i’d like to point out). i am now what is commonly termed a ‘potterhead.’
16. i do calligraphy in my spare time. i’m pretty good at it.
17. making crafty/artsy things and attending dance concerts or plays mellow me out better than marijuana ever could.
18. i have, at last count, around 65 gbs of music on my zune. i’d say i’m pretty enthusiastic about music. i also have a boxful of inherited vinyl and a turntable, but i’m waiting on an adapter cord from amazon to make the turntable work with my zune’s docking speaker.
19. can i say laughing is a hobby? because it is. there are few “types” of humor that aren’t funny to me.
20. i have no qualms about sitting down with a box of triscuits and systematically consuming the whole thing.
21. no matter how messy my dorm or bedroom is, my bed is always made. i can’t really explain why.
i keep running into this picture. mostly on tumblr, but not mine, as i will explain.
now, i don’t mean for this blog to turn into one about the grieving process, but quite frankly, it’s been consuming my life and i can’t pretend that it hasn’t been. therefore the above picture irritates me for a few reasons.
i have wished for it. i have prayed for a thing dramatic and big and life-changing to occur. and life did make a strange sort of chaotic sense for awhile. retrospectively, it was nice.
my dad died. he wasn’t supposed to. [disclaimer: do NOT tell me any of that "he's in a better place now, he's not in pain" blahblahblah bullshit, because i KNOW. just don't.] he was actually doing better than he had been, despite still being in the nursing home. the last time i saw him alive he was feeding himself pudding, saying that he’d been having more of an appetite so he needed to eat to keep his strength up. i needed to get back to tulsa, i needed to meet my friends i was leaving KC with, i needed to go get through dead week [ha.] and finals and come back for a proper break from school, so i walked away, the whirring and clicks of hospital-esque machinery and the sounds of my dad eating slow and slowly behind me.
i walked away with no premonition of it being the last time i’d see him alive. there was an unopened pumpkin pie on my right, left by a family friend so he could have a bit of thanksgiving, and i hoped that he’d eat it before it didn’t taste good anymore. it was tippins, his favorite (homemade notwithstanding).
two days later i was at the movies with some good friends, back in oklahoma, when i got a call from my native area code but with a number i didn’t recognized. i was watching a movie. i rejected the phone call. my sister called. i rejected it too. she sent a text saying something close to CALL ME RIGHT NOW. i left the theater, exasperated, called, she told me that they’d found dad unresponsive and were trying to resuscitate him. that unknown call i hadn’t answered was from the nursing home. i stood outside the theater, not moving, feeling fuzzy pricks of pain at the edges of my vision that i did not know were going to come true or not. and then my sister called, hysterical, saying that they couldn’t bring him back. i fell to the floor. it felt like my life and my happiness had been cut down the middle, sharp and irreparable. it still feels like that sometimes.
i’m 21 years old. my life up until this point has felt largely out of my control. as a child with books for best friends and then an adolescent with divorcing parents, i’ve been a piece of cork on ocean waves until around the college years began. then it was me. this was MY life. and then it didn’t feel like my life anymore. perhaps even less so, because it’s well-documented and advised that grief is something that you HAVE to go through. you have no choice in the matter. if you manage to suppress it now, it will come and bite you in the ass later. so i’ve been yanked around by my emotions for a little over two months now, but that doesn’t mean i have to like it.
i’ll never stop missing him. it will hurt less and it will hurt less often, but it won’t stop hurting. when someone close dies, it’s like having one of those injuries in your leg or foot or whatever where doctors can do all the fixing they want, but you’ll still always walk with a limp. i walk with a limp. some days it’s hard just to crawl. i have a friend [eh, friend might be kind of a strong word here...] who lost a sibling when they were both young who can attest to this, and for some reason quite a few friends my age who have also lost their fathers in the past few years.
look at your boredom, your routine, your normal, and give thanks, because it can all be pulled out from under you faster than you can say “lolwut?”
the things that change your life aren’t always the things you WANT to change your life. i can’t send this message to the thousands of tumblr folk who have reblogged that photo, so i shall send it to the internet at large.
be thankful for the mundane.
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