Deep void

Friday night, there's a deep, deep void inside. Finished crying now, my eyes are sore, my mind a daze. I'm an outright mess again...

Earlier today, my uncle called me to ask about my plans to commemorate my mother's passing. I have no real plans. I don't even know where I am going to stay. I don't know how I will get through it all. He wants to attend, as does mum's other siblings. There will be many people. I don't know how I will cope with it all.

One more month from now... One more month and mum will have been gone for a year. I have not heard her voice in almost a year. I have not touched her in almost a year. I have not seen her smile in almost a year.

My god... how have I been so troubled, so very burdened with sadness and heaviness for these past eleven months. Her birthday, Mother's Day, then the loss of my dear (soft animal) companion... Things have been dramatically declining. And I cannot seem to get out of it.

Who sees my sadness? Who sees and feels this deep void? With whom can I share these feelings and not feel like I'm burdening that person?

I need help. I cannot just sit and cry and cry...

Long weekend

Woke up today and feel very down. Nervous. Anxious in fact. The ex is coming to town. Why should him being here affect me so? 

It's because of expectations, of fear of rejection and disappointments. It's because he has the ability to make me feel like the worse and most unwanted person in the world, and the ability to make me believe and hold onto hope of something beautiful and sweet. I get so fragile and hurt because of him.

Before, whenever he used to visit he would stay with me, we'd do a lot together. Yesterday I asked him when he's arriving and where he's staying. He sounded  uncomfortable, said he was arriving late and going to another friend's place to stay. He said it would be late to get to my place. Where he said he purportedly is going stay is even further away. 

I'm guessing he doesn't want to see me, will only see me when it's convenient for him. He told me before his visits here are for "fun".

I guess I'm not fun. I'm guessing he's here because of someone else, and I'm no longer that someone. It's like that dream I had a few days ago. It's frightening. It makes me so sad, so broken, as if I need any more hurt, any more confusion. 

It just hurts a lot, and I don't think he realises why. It feels like for him it's all fine and dandy between us, when a year ago he was all over me and telling me how much he loves me and wants to be with me. And now? He calls me every day, gives me the impression as if everything were back to normal again. But no, nothing is ever the same. Not for me...

I wish I did not feel this way... I wish I had clarity, wish I could free myself from feeling and be like my ex and just move on, be merry and pretend nothing ever happened, pretend as if nothing ever was said of felt. 

It's going to be a long, long weekend...

Dream: the ex

A nightmare. It's irrational, I know. But it fills me with dread and fear, insecurity and trembles. 

I saw my ex in the dream. He was shouting at me, making fun, laughing at me. I felt like such a fool. A fool to be hanging on, to be clinging on to hope still, two years now after he suddenly broke up with me, one year now after he told me how much he wants to be with me, and where is he now? 

In the dream he was not laughing at me alone. The boy he is so infatuated with, the reason why he has been unable to let go, why our friendship has suffered and deteriorated so much over the past two years, was there next to him. Both were laughing at me, laughing at this fool who believes in true love, who is too foolish to see that other people can and do move on quickly. 

I woke up gasping for breath, almost on the verge of tears. My phone vibrated. It was him, the ex, telling me he got me even more sponsorship for a charity ride I am doing in early July. 

I think I know what the trigger of the dream may be. He is coming to visit this weekend. Every time he visits it feels "off", feels awkward when he wants to spend time with me. Time and time again, I have been left so hurt while he drops by for a visit and quickly must dash off elsewhere. Of course I don't, I shouldn't, expect him to spend all his time with me, but you know how it feels to be unwanted? To feel like someone is visiting you or hanging around with you just because they feel pity and feel like they should spend time with you? Perhaps to him visiting his old hometown is all fun and great, but for me it just conjures up unpleasant memories of abandonment, of being told one thing and see him do the complete opposite, of being warned time and time again about how I should move on and be wary of him, yet being unable (or perhaps unwilling?) to detach myself from him.

It feels like crap, it debases my value, it makes me feel me wanting, longing deep down inside. 

A foolish, one-sided, desperate desire for love and affection from someone who does not realise, does not see how deeply he affects me still.

PHX-PHL

PHX-PHL

130513.0013

There is a disturbing voice of discontent inside my head. Flying home now after almost a week away. First it began with a stressful exam, then several days on the road. The Grand Canyon was inspiring, majestic and so amazingly beautiful, and I had many hours of bicycling which always does wonders for my body and mind. 

But the chatter, the discontents and frustrations are returning. Back to my life in Montreal, back to the people I do not really wish to see, because seeing them I must make small talk and work so hard to avoid talking about my feelings-- something they rather would not want to hear, something they pretend to act as if is already long buried and over and done with. 

Is it Mother's Day that's causing me to feel so upset and discontented? Is it the message from someone wishing me happy Mother's Day when they fully know I don't have a mother any more? Or is it seeing a daughter take her mother by the hand and walking with her along a trail by the Grand Canyon that made me so emotional and fatigued?

I thought going away would help me clear my mind, I imagined some sun ( maybe a bit too much, as my arm got sunburnt...) would help me heal a little bit, but for some reason I'm feeling much worse... Much worse. To top it off, I seem to have lost a stuffed monkey who has been my traveling companion for the last four, almost five, years, who was there throughout the difficult and happy times with mum. 

I can't describe it. Somehow, my mind just wandered back to a year ago. my mum lay there slowly dying. how painful that was to watch, how painful that was to bear. And in the midst of it all, my ex was there on the side giving me false hopes and expectations, playing with my feelings and my life even, as he wrestled with his own relationship woes and indecisiveness. My mum dying, an yet I had to keep myself together, I  kept myself together by allowing myself to believe someone is waiting for me, is going to help me get through this all. I kept myself from crying because I told mum not to worry, because someone would be there for me. But where is that person? Who is that person? 

A year later, mum is gone. A year later, the person I shared such a solid and trusting friendship and hopes of a lasting relationship with has somehow become a distant acquaintance (it feels like...). And he does not seem to see it, he does not seem to see how things have affected me so and continues to haunt and hurt me still. I have no relationship of significance now, no one I truly feel comfortable talking to, no one I truly feel I can trust and I can really tell everything to... Look at me, sad, sad me lamenting my life and still discontented after so many days out in nature. Ungrateful, unappreciative little sod I am...

Standing there on the edge of the canyon at various instances in the last few days, this urge came to me. To want to jump... To want to plummet to my death, to experience those few moments of flying through the air before everything ends... What has gotten into me? How did I become so wary of life, how did I lose the spark of life and joy I had and took for granted? How have I become or allowed myself to be so dark? 

I am hurting deep down inside... 

I miss mum deeply, sorely... And what a painful week this has been with mum's birthday and Mother's Day so close to one another. I truly am struggling... 

I miss having affection, being hugged and comforted, I miss so much having someone close and intimate whom I could confide in, who would listen, just listen to me and try to understand, and just recognise how deep I have sunk, and how. 

130513.0241

Forty minutes or so till landing. In fact I just felt the plane adjust downward a little. The day is brightening, a day beginning. 

It has been a horrible flight, worse in recent memory. Since I left the arid environment of the Grand Canyon, I've been feeling so parched. It didn't help that on te one and a half hour shuttle bus ride from the canyon to Flagstaff airport, at the behest of an elderly couple, the air con was switched completely off. The air was stuffy and heat unbearable. And my throat feels so dry, so irritated. 

Flying doesn't cure dryness. And I'm so afraid of drinking too much because of the need to go to the washroom. In fact, I've had to go twice writhing four hours, which is bothersome since the cramped, terribly cramped seats means the two people next must get up in order for me to get out (as always I have the window seat). And I don't know what's wrong with me, but the past few days I've been extremely gassy and feeling very bloated for some reason...

Flying seems to have, at least on this flight, lost its novelty. I can't wait to get out of the plane, to get off and stretch. But there's another flight to go, and I'm so exhausted from being unable to sleep. I can't wait to collapse in my bed. And in the emotional state of mind I am in, I may even just cry when I get home and lie down in my own bed...

Yavapai Point

Sunrise, Yavapai Point, Mother's Day. 

Sitting on stone-cold boulders lining the edge of a cliff that drops several hundred meters down into the canyon. The birds are waking up and starting to play with the morning sun. The air is warming up, the whole world is stirring and warming up, the deep canyon is slowly, slowly unveiling its rugged beauty as a curtain of light is slowly lifted from the darkness below. 

An emptiness fills me, filling the corners of my eyes with tears. Before, at moments like this, surrounded by such beauty, such serenity, I would grab my phone and call home all excited and giddy like a child, mother's child, and tell mum all about it... 

Mum is somewhere now, I cannot see her, cannot speak to to, cannot touch her, yet her presence is all around me, inside of me. Mum is in the canyon, in the shadow of tree that shields me from the glaring ray of the sun, in the little bird that is hopping a meter or so in front of me, in the warmth and brightness of the sun that is slowly rising, rising over the hills, over the darkness and abyss. 

Happy Mother's Day...