Rite Aid is no longer my oasis

I bought a new mop and a new broom today. I didn't really need them but i bought them anyway.
I stood in the laundry and cleaning aisle at the Rite Aid near Columbia and i practically forced myself to need something: to need that spray bottle for $2.49, those hanger clips, some rope, an over-the-door hook. Just buy something, anything, everything. As i stood there i gave myself a talking-to. This is about comfort and retail therapy, this is me needing to make a purchase and take home an object that will fill the hole in my life. This is my drink, my donut, my dope. I still spent almost $40.

I had actually planned on going to Rite Aid to buy the mop and possibly broom after deciding over the weekend that the ones i have could stand to be replaced. Not a dire necessity by any means but somehow i convinced myself that this was a prudent decision. Searching on the Home Depot and Bed Bath & Beyond websites all day at work didn't yield a satisfying result.
If i buy the perfect mop and broom, i thought, they'll clean the apartment and it'll shine and sparkle and the perfect furniture will magically appear and the walls will be the perfect color. It will be an apartment out one of those magazines with endless ads for kitchen faucets you never knew existed.

If i buy this, my life will be better. If i buy this body lotion for my mom, she'll get better . The fancy dish sponge, the organic garlic cloves, the eco-friendly floor cleaner, the bamboo eye mask. If only i can spend as much money as possible on a simple product then that will be the key to curing my mom. Make everything around her perfect and she'll get better. That was the thinking. The right type of pajamas were just as important as the smoothies and the medicine.

In my evolution or development stage or status of reincarnation I have not yet broken through to relinquishing the material. I've always and still do use buying stuff as an instant remedy. It's never anything fancy. Socks, pens, lightbulbs, books, Skittles, something. I gotta get to that next level of enlightenment.

Walking around the Rite Aid almost felt like an exercise in masochism. My mom and i had walked those aisles together innumerable times. I blasted the rock music in my earphones and plodded around like a zombie, repeating over and over in my head, "i want to die, i want to die, i want to die." I almost didn't notice that i was doing it.

7 months passed and i'm still shocked that every step on the subway stairway and every inch of concrete on Broadway make me long for my mother. The aisles of Rite Aid deafen me with the blare of her absence. They seem almost angry.

I know, i know, i know. I have to grieve and give myself time to do it. But i wait and wait for the shock to go away. One moment i'll miss her and understand that she got sick and died. The next i'll be asking myself, "wait, what? She's gone?"

It all sucks.
The grief, the trauma of emergency rooms and peeling skin and draining fluids, lonely bus rides home, crying on the subway. I wish i could get it all out of my system, i don't know how to do that. I try with this blog.
Most of all the regret. The regret. The memory of being a jerk: mean, lazy, insensitive. Selfish, so selfish.
Yes, sometimes i wonder if it was my fault. If i caused her enough disappointment and frustration that it could actually cause cancer. Maybe i need for it to be my fault. I'll have to ask Dr. Hirsh.

Today after work, Barb and Erika spoke about how great the trees outside the Time Warner Center look, completely strung with the brightest lights i've ever seen. Obnoxiously so, i thought. But then i wasn't feeling that holiday cheer. Those lights mean a whole year passed and this time it's horribly different. It's not that i won't enjoy the holiday season. I think i will. I was enjoying the Christmas music station i listened to at work today. There was a little bit of masochism at work again. Or maybe it's not that at all. Maybe i was just testing myself to see how far i could go with the pain, not for the pleasure of it, but to make myself better. It made me sad but the childhood joy was there, too.

I know winter is going to be painful and the holidays will suck but i KNOW that it won't be like that the whole time. There will be happy and funny and relaxed moments, too.
The sad doesn't take away from the happy. And the happy doesn't take away from the sad. So that's what Dr. Hirsh meant.

It's too late to mop now, but then again, that wasn't really the purpose of my purchase, was it?

I need to write about coats. This whole essay thing for class is not working out for me. I'm supposed to do my homework and i end up writing in here.

A-C-H-E-F-O-R

62 Across. Miss terribly. 7 letters

I was just checking out the website feedthepig.org and it has some really good tips and interactive activities to teach about saving money. I need this.
There's a category called "Caring for Aging Parent." I saw it and said aloud to myself, "i wish i was caring for an aging parent."

I slept all day today. Literally. Slept all day. Woke up at around 7:50am. Went to the bathroom like 20 times. Watched some videos online, watched "Muppets in Space." Fell asleep again at 11am. Got up at around 2:40pm and ate some oatmeal and cereal with milk and raspberries. Watched "Muppets in Space" again, since i fell asleep the first time, watched some "Dynasty, " went back to sleep, on and off. I remember it being almost 4, maybe that's when i went to sleep. Woke up at almost 7pm, ate some blue corn nachos with mild salsa. Some strawberries. Glass of soymilk. Tea. Watched "Greenfingers" on Netflix. Really good movie with Clive Owen and Helen Mirren. Based on a true story about British prisoners who became award-winning gardeners. I cried a bit, so that was good.
Trying to go to sleep soon so i can wake up at around 6 or so and do the 100 lbs. of laundry that needs to get washed.
Clean the birdcages. Go to dinner at 5:30 with peeps from work.

I'm wondering why it's so bad for me to become my mother. What if by becoming her i'll be a more awesome person than i could ever be otherwise? I'd like to do gardening. She loved plants and flowers and always talked soothingly to them, while i told them they were ugly, because i thought it was funny.

Quotation time!

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break. ~William Shakespeare

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. ~Kahlil Gibran

Man, when he does not grieve, hardly exists. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

Sorrow makes us all children again - destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

In my Lucia's absence
Life hangs upon me, and becomes a burden;
I am ten times undone, while hope, and fear,
And grief, and rage and love rise up at once,
And with variety of pain distract me.
~Joseph Addison

If you're going through hell, keep going. ~Winston Churchill

The deep pain that is felt at the death of every friendly soul arises from the feeling that there is in every individual something which is inexpressible, peculiar to him alone, and is, therefore, absolutely and irretrievably lost. ~Arthur Schopenhauer

If you suppress grief too much, it can well redouble. ~Moliere

There are things that we don't want to happen but have to accept, things we don't want to know but have to learn, and people we can't live without but have to let go. ~Author Unknown

The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs weep. ~Henry Maudsley

It is some relief to weep; grief is satisfied and carried off by tears.
~Ovid

Silence is not certain token That no secret grief is there; Sorrow which is never spoken Is the heaviest load to bear.
~ Frances Ridley Havergal

We say: mad with joy. We should say: wise with grief.

~ Marguerite Yourcenar

Never does a man know the force that is in him till some mighty affection or grief has humanized the soul.

~Frederick W. Robertson

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief . . . and unspeakable love.

~Washington Irving

As long as I can I will look at this world for both of us. As long as I can I will laugh with the birds, I will sing with the flowers, I will pray to the stars, for both of us. ~Sascha, as posted on motivateus.com

this is how we feel

Main Entry: evis·cer·ate
Pronunciation: \i-ˈvi-sə-ˌrāt\

Function: verb

Inflected Form(s): evis·cer·at·ed; evis·cer·at·ing

Etymology: Latin evisceratus, past participle of eviscerare, from e- + viscera viscera

Date: 1599

transitive verb 1 a : to take out the entrails of : disembowel b : to deprive of vital content or force
2 : to remove an organ from (a patient) or the contents of (an organ)intransitive verb : to protrude through a surgical incision or suffer protrusion of a part through an incision

— evis·cer·a·tia·tion \-ˌvi-sə-ˈrā-shən\ noun

Contradictions

I logged in and my info said 33 posts. Hmm. That number meant something to me when i started this blog. Now i'm too sad to know if i still care.

I came home tonight to an empty apartment. My cousin moved out tonight while i was at a benefit with people from work.. It feels so different now than it did in April, May, June. I feel more alone than ever. The apartment feels more empty than ever. It's like there's more absence now than there was before. Or the covering up of the absence is now over.
My mother's absence was always present. Now it's the only thing here.
I know i need this emptiness and need to be alone, and by extension i suppose i need this pain, too.

Not only are certain situations comfortingly the same (such as watching Project Runway at Jes' apartment) but some people are comfortingly the same. I see some old ladies and think, 'Thank God she's still alive. I need her to be alive.' But then there are times when i see men or women and think, 'YOU'RE still alive? And my mom, isn't? How is that fair?'

Today was tough. I thought a lot about how unfair it is that my mom died. I kept thinking about why she got cancer, about what caused it, about what i missed, what i could have done to change the course of events and didn't know that i should have done. Same old, same old.
I listened to Sara Montiel and Juan Gabriel and longed for my mom and to share the music with her.
Tonight at the Rockers on Broadway benefit i smiled because it was all 60s music and i thought about how my mom must have been fun (and had fun) in the 60s and how she loved to dance and she loved pop music and despite all the crappiness in her life, i know she had a good time in her youth, going to dances, going out with boys, studying yoga, taking courses like pastry arts or improving her sewing skills. I was thinking of the 60s as a time when my mom was really alive. And so i smiled thinking that if she was around she was enjoying that music, too.

no more memories

October is gone. November starts.
I thought to myself today that i don't want to make any new memories. What do i need them for? I don't want anything to push out the memories of my mom. I don't want to run out of room.
All i do is miss her and try to involve her in everything i do.
Yesterday i walked in the Village Halloween Parade and it was fun but only because i imagined my mom watching me from the sidelines, the way she and i always watched the parade together. I hoped she was happy somewhere, maybe, that i made this effort for her.

Sad, rainy day

It smells like chicken soup. Like orange-hued broth with thick noodles, small, soft pieces of potato and little shreds of chicken that you get at the corner Chino-Latino restaurant. Or at your godmother's apartment.
I want soup. I want to be sitting at a table in a Dominican restaurant, looking across at my mom as she eats her soup. This is the kind of soup we ate together. She made much healthier soup, which i liked, too. But there's something about greasy diner chicken soup that makes me feel like a kid. And makes me miss my mom taking care of me when i feel sick.

Every day deeper into fall and closer to winter just gets harder and harder. For about a month or so, i didn't miss her every day, all day. Now i'm back to missing her with every step that i take.

Back to work...