ishoutedinmysleep - Tumblr blog

[ishoutedinmysleep]

it does get better.

i promise ♡

[ishoutedinmysleep]

something that cannot be spoken:

we went to the movies, and they had us choose our seats. i chose one row above the reserved handicap seating.

that was a mistake.

we were the only ones in the theatre, and my grandmother lost her balance and tumbled over the low wall. she landed on the seats below, and she couldn’t get up. she was stuck, halfway on the chair and halfway on the railing.

i left her to get help - some hapless teenage employee out of his depth and still willing to help. then another party came in, and a man came over to help, and the three of us got her seated in the chair she’d fallen onto, and there were managers and incident reports and a few comp passes i still haven’t used.

we stayed for the movie.

i went out again after we went back to her house - to run an errand and get gas. it was my dad’s birthday, and he got to celebrate with a phone call from me having a breakdown at a gas station because grandma had fallen, and i didn’t know how to navigate it.

take a deep breath, he said. if grandma wasn’t okay, you’d know. everything’s okay.

maybe it was.

but two weeks later, on my own birthday, i got a phone call from my father.

grandma’s in the hospital. she broke her hip, but she’ll be okay.

she wouldn’t be. i knew it, immediately and intrinsically.

i had been dreading my birthday for weeks - months - and it didn’t know why. i just knew it would be bad, and it was.

i didn’t visit her in the hospital. she was there for three weeks, and i couldn’t go because of covid regulations and vaccine requirements - but i’m not sure i wanted to. the idea of it left me aching in a terribly self-centered way i still can’t quantify.

(i need you to understand this, my mother said. i need you to start preparing yourself for the possibility grandma might not come back from this.)

((i was, or so i thought. i had been since the moment my dad called.))

she went to rehab facility after that.

i was fully vaccinated by then, and i did visit her. the first time, she was having a good day, and we talked about the pedicure she wanted from the on-site salon.

the last time, it wasn’t a good day. it wasn’t bad, but she was tired. my dad was there, and she kept drifting off and waking up, and i didn’t want to be there. i said goodbye and that i’d come by soon, and i went looking for bowls at a thrift store.

(i left a dvd with my dad for her that day. my parents had brought her a portable dvd player, and my aunt had recommended little miss sunshine to us before all of this happened. i found a copy at a thrift store and scooped it up, and i thought she would enjoy it.)

((for the unfamiliar, little miss sunshine ends with the grandfather’s dead body smuggled in the back of the family van.))

(((i’m still not sure what to do with that.)))

my grandmother called me from my aunt’s phone on june 15th. she had had a really good day - physical therapy had gone well, and she was in good spirits, and we would go see cruella as soon as she was out. it was a really good day.

the next day, she didn’t wake up.

i was supposed to go watch cats with my mother, just to say we did, but i didn’t sleep well the night before. i barely slept at all. i texted my mother, asking if we could reschedule, and in return got a call from my sister. our grandmother was dead.

 i don’t know if things felt real before then, but they definitely didn’t after.

my mom cried. my sister cried.

my dad is like me. we went numb. i still am.

there is something i can’t say. i cannot tell my family, i can’t tell anyone without sounding absolutely batshit.

but this is the truth:

that night, when i couldn’t sleep, i was terrified. i knew something was wrong. my heart was racing, so fast and hard that it hurt, and i was scared, and i knew that if i closed my eyes, i’d never open them again. i was so scared.

but i start work at six in the morning, and around four, i managed to fall asleep.

i’m not psychic. i don’t call myself an empath. sometimes i just deal with energies that are not my own - and i want so badly to be wrong, in this moment. i want it to have been my imagination, for this to be a delusion of grandeur and my grandmother to have slipped peacefully away in her sleep. stars, i want to be wrong.

i don’t think i am.

sometimes i’m just right - and that means that my grandmother knew, and her last night was spent alone and in pain and scared.

and i just went to sleep. i don’t know what to do with that.

her services were the next week. the body didn’t look like her, and i can’t pinpoint how. it was just wrong. she wasn’t there anymore.

i don’t know how funerals are meant to bring closure.

that was the last time i really cried, i think, and even then it wasn’t for long. it wasn’t even grief, i don’t think - i was just overwhelmed and uncomfortable, and i couldn’t do anything. i couldn’t even make myself comprehend she was gone.

i still can’t. i’m still waiting for a phone call, or to make easter pizzelles, or to go to the theatre. i can’t wrap my head around the fact that something is over. it can’t be over.

(i’m afraid i don’t remember her face properly anymore, or her smile, or the sound of her voice. i don’t know if i remember any of it properly anymore, and i don’t know how long i can.)

my brain is very good at protecting me. when things are too much, it shuts down.

you’re going to drown, it says, and builds levies high and strong. no emotions for you for a bit, yeah? just until the tides recede.

i don’t know how to convince myself that i need it, and sooner is better than later. i need to drown, just a little, so i can remember how to pull the air back into my lungs. the levy will break regardless, one day, and the flood will come, and i will not survive if i let it grow too big. these tides will not go out.

i can’t keep myself afloat if i’m against the entire ocean.

one day, the levy will break, and i will drown, and they i will breathe again.

[ishoutedinmysleep]

you want to learn everything, and you find it stressful to be bored.

renfaire psychic, calling me the fuck out.

[ishoutedinmysleep]

how do you ask for help when you can’t?

i’ve will not talk to anyone about whatever nonsense is going on in my brain. it’s just not an option. there are people i care about, or i’m supposed to, and they have other shit going on. even if they didn’t, it would be unfair to burden them. it’s not their job to handle my nonsense.

i should be in therapy. everyone seems to agree on that - but i’m a grown adult, and i can make my own questionable decisions, and i will never, never tell anyone in my life that i’m honestly afraid that a professional will listen to me politely and commit me as clinically delusional. there is some shit that is tangled in my brain, and spiritual nonsense seem to be fine, as long as you’re christian.

the thing is, i think i know exactly what i need.

i need to sit with someone and just talk - for hours, probably, until i have vomited everything i cannot hold in my brain or my heart - and i need them to sit with me and not judge me or themselves, and i need them to hug me and tell me everything will be alright.

my family and friends can’t remove themselves from my nonsense, and it wouldn’t be fair to expect that of them, and a therapist can’t promise me everything will be okay, and they certainly won’t hug me while doing it.

so i guess i’ll keep vagueblogging into the void, and eventually everything will be alright.

[ishoutedinmysleep]

i don’t want to go.

there’s a concert tonight. 

it’s almost kismet - the touring adaptation of a concert series in new york i’ve been tracking for years. we were planning a trip, and i wanted to go - only to find that now it’s national. now it’s travelling. now it’s here.

and i don’t want to go.

it’s not that i don’t want to go, it’s that i don’t want to go. it’s a distinction i’m still learning to explain, the way that i know it’s something i’d like, theoretically. it’s something i would have enjoyed - it’s something that i would enjoy. i just don’t think i can right now.

so i don’t want to go.

but i think it’s more that that.

because i might enjoy it. there’s a potential. it could be grand and glorious and therapeutic and exactly what i need.

but maybe i wouldn’t. maybe i’d just sit there on my own, quiet and alone and numb. i don’t have anything to lose except seventy dollars, a few hours, and something more of my tenuous grasp on my self. that’s not so much.

it’s tonight - it’s one night, the only chance i have - and i’m not sure that’s enough. it’s not that i’d regret going, i’m just not sure i’d regret it if i don’t.

i don’t know. maybe i just don’t want to go alone.

[ishoutedinmysleep]

there are ugly sounds between the pretty ones.

i don’t know when i stopped making them. i don’t know if i remember how, and trying just aches.

i don’t think anyone wants to hear them. i don’t think i do.

i think they’re important, though.

[ishoutedinmysleep]

death should not be so hard to conceptualize.

i am a grown adult.

my grandmother died.

this should be simple: died is dead, and dead is gone.

and yet, i can’t comprehend it. i can’t make it real. i’ve tried, and still i’m waiting for a thursday night phone call and a netflix marathon and a sunday matinee and a symphony. i can’t stop. i don’t know how.

there’s denial, and there’s absurdity, and i don’t know how to start grieving someone i can’t understand is lost. i can’t.

and at this point, i don’t know what to do.

[ishoutedinmysleep]

a girl of swords.

the viii of swords is not, strictly speaking, a good card. most tarot cards aren’t, really. they’re not good. they’re not evil. they just are.

and yet.

i find that the viii of swords scares people, or at least makes them feel uncomfortable. anxious. they really, really do not like it.

i look at it, and it’s me, and i am calm.

there are cards that will let you know who they mean, over and over and over again, until it’s a pictographic endearment, a shorthand - significator cards, spiritual contact pictures, and i know my deck. and it knows me.

it knows my life.

my mother: justice and - unknown even to her - the priestess.

my father: the emperor. the hermit, but only when i can’t see the resemblance.

my grandmother: the queen of wands.

my grandfather: the knight of pentacles.

me: the hermit, occasionally - but always the viii of swords. always.

no one seems to like that, and i think i understand. it’s not a happy card.

here is a figure, alone in a graveyard of swords planted in the shore, blindfolded and bound and still tangled in what was. a castle looms behind her on the cliff. if she was running, she didn’t get nearly far enough.

and still, she is there.

people fear the viii of swords. it is a card of the lost, the doomed and abandoned and forsaken. it is a girl in red robes left to drown, or at least to be washed away in the tide. no longer here, no longer seen, no longer a problem.

hell, maybe she even deserved it - in whatever way that means, to whomever cares, to whomever put her there. it’s a death sentence, regardless.

but the fog is grey and cool, felt if not seen, and there is water beneath her feet, and she is there. the tide has come and gone, and still she stands. she is alone and cold and blind and bound, but she is there. she survived.

maybe it was because she had a sword to lean on, to cling to. maybe her frozen hands are red and bloody. maybe she’ll slice her bindings on whatever edge she can find and pluck a blade from the earth and wield it against anyone and anything that tries to hurt her again. maybe she’ll turn back to the castle, return the favor and the hurt and the cold.

maybe she’ll just go. the tide will come again, after all.

this is a lonely card, a card of fear and cold, and that it right. the water was cold, and the night was long.

but it is, too, a card of survival and hope and determination. it’s a promise - and we’re still here. 

we’re still here.

there are worse things to be.

[ishoutedinmysleep]

broken isn’t bad.

it’s just broken.

it’s only a problem if you can’t figure out how to fix it.

[ishoutedinmysleep]

professional liar, lying to herself.

i’m an actor - or, well, i used to be. i don’t know what i am anymore.

the thing about acting is that it is, to an extent, undefinable. i used to joke i was studying how to pretend to be human in front of other humans, which is fine and good and glib and wry, but these days it hits a little too close to - well, not home, but something close. it’s the closest i can get, anyway.

maybe i should never have joked about it.

acting is, at its heart, an extended exercise in empathy, one that just happens to include a tantalizing invitation of voyeurism. we watch actors because they are people, and they’re real, and they’re fascinating and true, and they’re us in moments we might never see in our own lives. they’re just people.

theoretically, so am i.

practically, i have my doubts.

right now, i am stuck - on the inside or the outside of my own mind, it doesn’t make a difference. i am locked out or away, and there is a part of me that is lost to me because something, somewhere inside of me or out, fears a burden that will break me. something that will shatter me.

i don’t know the weight, but i would try. i would.

but i am locked, and there are things i cannot reach to carry, and how can i bear the weight of someone - of a person - when i can’t even bear my own? and who am i when i can’t? what is left for an actor who cannot act, or a person who cannot be?

or maybe i’m just afraid i’m not any good anymore.

[ishoutedinmysleep]

lesson no. 1

sleep helps.

i hate it, but it’s true.

[ishoutedinmysleep]

therapy is not a dirty word.

but it is exhausting.

therapy is like working out; i dread the anticipation, i hate the duration of it, but damn, do i feel better after.