Grief and loss on this place called Earth

I heard something really beautiful on a podcast today that I need to share with you.
It helped me.
"Reality is another word for truth, God's business. And on this place called Earth things happen, and they are always axioms of truth. That the Earth does not have an earthquake because it is trying to punish someone, that someone wasn't moral, that it was their number that was up. This Earth functions the way that this Earth does because that's what happens with planets. And transposing a story about what's happened on this place called Earth is irrational. Because on this place that we live in, where we don't have a choice, that reality is there are fires, and there are floods, and there are car accidents, and there are babies that die, and people get cancer. So I think that what complicates grief isn't what happens to an individual, it's what they are saying about that. It's their own account. It's their disposition towards it. So in other words taking the loss and personalizing the reasons for the loss. When loss happens that is just how it is here. And it doesn't ask for our permission, it doesn't ask for our vote. It doesn't ask for our opinion. It just happens. And asking the question why did this happen is usually a very simple response. And the response is let's go back to how this "game" is played. Out here in this world we are forms. We are physical forms. And there are many facets to us, but these physical forms live, and then in one moment they suffer and injury. And their bodies cannot compensate for the injury, then the form shuts down, and then it changes form. And that is what everyone's story is going to be when they die. Whether it's dying of cancer, or dying precipitously in a car accident, or whether you just die of old age. But at one moment all of us are going to encounter that we lived, and then our form suffered an injury, the injury was too great for the form to compensate, and then the form changes form, and the soul goes home. Wherever home is for that individual."

Mom and Dad

On our mantel, above the TV in the living room is a black and white photograph of my parents. It was from a time, several years before I was born, that my mom got into developing her own film, hence the picture being black and white, instead of color.

The picture is of my mom with a corn snake around her neck, laughing. My dad is standing beside her, a neutral expression on his face, staring at her. Despite the fact that he isn’t smiling, he has this look in his eyes. Like he is crazy about my mother. It was before they were married.

The picture sums up their relationship pretty well. In fact, most pictures of them look like this. My mom always clearly happy, my dad looking at her in awe. They have been married 22 years this may, and to this day mom claims that she would never choose anyone else to spend her life with. The last time she mentioned this my dad got tears in his eyes.

My mother recently went on sabbatical to Namibia Africa. After my dad dropped her off at the airport he called me, his voice all shaky, telling me that this will be the longest he’s been away from her since they were married. He has decided to go be with her in Africa for the remainder of her trip, and he will leave in three weeks.

I often find myself caught up in their love story, envying the fact that they have each found their soulmate. I feel blessed to have them around me, to have parents that are still in love after what I consider a very long time. Each time I see that picture I am reminded that the are people in the world that have the love out of story books. That it isn’t as impossible as it may seem to find the love of your life.  

Flashback to Mizak. And why I'm essentially Audrey Hepburn.

Reader,

I was just flipping through the journal I kept in Haiti and stumbled across this entry: 

11/16/15 

"I kind of want to try living off of boiled potatoes for like two weeks just to see what the Irish potato famine was like."

That's the entire entry. 

Profound, Sadie. Really profound. 

It's raining here today, which I love.

One day in Mizak (the little town up in the mountains of Haiti) it started pouring at like 4:30 pm. We quickly packed up all of our stuff from outside. Laundry, chairs, dishes, and bustled it into the house. The door of the cookhouse was firmly locked and then we retreated into the house. Our poor little dog was left shivering under the awning of the front door.

It was freezing. 

There is no electricity in Mizak so the house was incredibly dark. We lit candles and sat around damply. Not saying much at all.

After awhile I just went to bed. Bundled into as many layers as I could.

Side note: I wasn't living with Lee. I was staying with some of his friends, but when I first got to Mizak Lee had given me a blanket.

It's pretty warm in Mizak most of the time, but I was used to Port au Prince where it is HOT. The family I was with gave me a sheet to sleep under. Which was fine. When paired with my blanket. 

But on this night, this particularly rainy night, I was feeling very cold indeed. 

I tucked the blanked around me, and doubled up the sheet. Wrapping it over the blanket for added insulation. 

Sometime in the night I woke up to the sound of raindrops...in my room. 

Yes, there was a leak in the roof directly above me. 

Oh God.

The sheet was no good. Soaked through, but the blanket had miraculously stayed dry, so I scooted as far away from the leak as possible, while still being on the bed. Very pathetically huddled under my one little blanket. 

So needless to say, today I feel very appreciative of the lack of leaks above my bed here in Oregon. 

I do however have two leaks in other areas of my room, so I don't consider myself too much of a princess. 

Okay that's a lie. I'm a total princess. 

My new style is what I call the "Audrey look". It means I try to look as much like Audrey Hepburn as possible. Though she was like 5'7 and had gorgeous hair. Whereas I'm short and my hair is...well. 

Still, princess all the same.

Even if my fancy, designer clothes come from secondhand stores, and I'm lacking in friends because I act a bit too aloof. Seriously, everyone in my class just sort of stares at me blankly as I waltz into the classroom, Juicy Couture bag in hand, taking off my Audrey sunglasses and gazing around at my subjects with my head held high.

What can I say? I love playing dress up. 

--S

Starlings

Dear R,
Here is part three of the story I wrote you.
--S

III

T

I can see her car from a few miles off, pulled to the side of the road. I push 75 mph as I approach, and as I slam on my brakes to stop the car behind me blares its horn. I jump out onto the highway so quickly that It’s a miracle I’m not hit.

The March air is freezing, and I didn’t bother to grab a jacket on my way out. I can see that my sister is crying. Her arms are draped over the steering wheel, and her head is buried in them. She doesn’t notice me.

B

I’m crying embarrassingly loud. There is snot on the sleeve of my sweater, and I am positive my eye makeup is in puddles. But I can’t stop. It just keeps hitting me like waves. Washing across my mind. He didn’t even say anything as I walked out. Just sat there at the stupid breakfast table, staring at his hands. And it was in that moment that I wondered if he ever cared like I did.

T

I rap my knuckles on her window, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, trying to stay warm. It is beginning to snow.

B

Someone knocks on the window and I look up. Thomas is standing there, spring snow drifting around him in the cloudy sky. I stare at him, and he yanks the door handle impatiently. It is locked.

“Open the door!” He yells through the glass.

I unlock it and he swings it wide before clambering in, practically on top of me.

    I scoot over as much as I can without actually sitting on the center console as he slams the door shut. He turns to me.

“It’s fucking freezing outside.” He says.

T

Her face is streaked in black makeup, eyes all puffy and read. And she’s still beautiful.

“Here” I say, lifting the hem of my t shirt and wiping a few tears away for her. She’s just looking at me. Dumbfounded. As though a stranger just climbed into her car, and not her...what am I to her?

I clear my throat. The snow has turned to sleet, making spattering noises on the windshield. I don’t know what to say. We’ve been through everything together. She is my best friend. A friend, and a sister, and this other thing that I really can’t explain. She has kept by my side when it’s felt like none of the world would. And what I realized as I left the house after her, what I’m beginning to realize now, is that that ending it today would be ending one of the biggest pieces of me.

And if all of this isn’t love, I don’t know what is.

B

His features soften and his endless, hazel eyes are slightly hidden behind the snow on his lashes. I expect him to say that he is sorry. And that we should still be close. Friends, just not all of the other stuff, but if I need time that’s okay. And that I shouldn’t wait for him, because we are never going to happen. I’ve got it all mapped out in my mind. Every word, and I hold my breath, waiting for my heart to officially break.

.    .    .

“I love you.” He says. A flock of starlings surges outside as the sleet turns to rain.

It's just so wrong.

R,

Here is part two. From Thomas’s point of view.

--S

II

Who expects to ever have to break up with their sister? How can you possibly prepare yourself for something like that? It’s not my fault. She just waltzed through the front door one day, snow in her hair and eyelashes, carrying overstuffed bags, and my dad walking behind her, introducing us. “Beth, this is your new family.” He said.

“Hi.” She said, looking me right in the eye. And that was all it took.

I’d never felt anything like that for anyone.

Bethany moved out of the house last spring, after her senior year ended. She just drove off ten minutes ago in the Volvo Dad got her for graduation.

And I’m up in my room staring at the only real photo I have. You know, the kind that are actually printed out. Not something saved on a phone.

It’s a picture of my sister, Bethany. She hates it when I call her that. She says we’re not really brother and sister. That it doesn’t count.

But trust me, it does.

In the picture she is looking at me out of the corner of her eye. There is snow on her long lashes, like the first time I saw her. I took it before anything had ever happened between us.

I don’t understand how you can love someone like a sister and in another way too, at the same time, and I don’t really know if I even understand the difference, because who the fuck expects to be put into a situation like this? I know that life is unfair. But this? How come the person that I decide to love had to be my dad’s daughter?

We’d come home from school, make Katie a snack, get homework out of the way, and then Mom and Dad would come home.

And while my parents fought upstairs, and Katie watched TV, Beth and I would kiss for hours, locked in the hall closet. Coat hangers falling down around us like rain, and nothing but breath and love between our bodies.

It was like a game. Exciting and terrifying all at once. And so wonderful, to be that crazy about someone. Knowing that you could do anything as long as you had them by your side. Knowing that they made you infinite.

I run my thumb across the glass frame of her photo.

I’ve never in two years told her that I love her. I should have, but I just sort of figured she already knew.

It’s wrong. It is really wrong. We’re not even step siblings. We are full blood relatives. It’s not the kind of thing anyone would ever accept. I don’t even think that I can accept it. Because it is fucked up.

But God, I love that girl.

I swear, I really am sorry.

My Dear Reader,

Here is another short story. A weird I short story. Not that the others weren't weird. 

Anyway, I hope you find it interesting.

This is only part one. There are two to follow. 

--S 

I

We’re sitting at the kitchen table because, yes, the house is big enough to have both a kitchen, and dining room table. Forgive me for thinking that’s a bit ridiculous. It’s mid afternoon and the sunshine coming through the windows is really warm, even though it’s March, and last time I was outside, a few hours ago, it was freezing. Thomas’s hands are flat on the table, and so are mine, like we’re in the middle of an interrogation. We’re looking each other dead in the eye.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.” It’s me talking here. My brow is all furrowed. Something I didn’t notice I did before Thomas pointed it out to me one day.

He’s got tawny brown hair, and a straight nose. Like mine, but my hair is reddish. He’s got my father’s eyes. Thomas swallows hard, and then parts his lips to speak. I close my eyes and pray that he will stop talking. “I just think...I just think we need to stop.”

“But why--”

“Bethany.”

I shake my head, even though I do know exactly what he means.

“It’s not…”

And then a bird hits the window. We both look. It’s lying on the ground, looking dazed, and I feel for it. I feel like I just slammed into a window myself. Like I can’t breathe and my head's on fire, and how, how, how can this be happening to us?

After a while the bird ruffles its feathers and flies off.

If only it were that easy.

“It’s not right.” He continues. As though the bird thing didn’t even happen.

I pull my hands from the table and clench them together in my lap. The bird left a little smudge on the windowpane, and Carol, Thomas’s mother is going to have a hissy fit, and because I am pretty sure she’s got OCD. Like, bad OCD. Then my dad will come home with their daughter Katie, and Carol will be in a tizzy and she’ll snap at poor little Katie, because Katie is only five and doesn’t have enough sense to go hide out in her room like Thomas and I used to when I still lived here. And then my dad and Carol will argue, because they are always arguing.

I look back to Thomas. He hasn’t taken his eyes off of me. Hazel eyes. My dad’s eyes. But he has Carol’s tawny hair, and didn’t I mention all of this already? I feel tears swarming up in my eyes, and stinging me like bees. “I--” I begin wiping them away with the tips of my fingers, trying not to smudge my makeup. “I stayed for you.”

We’re both quite attractive, Thomas and I. We got the good genes I guess. Because, no offense to Katie, but she’s not the cutest of kids. Not by a long shot. And I know it’s bad, but neither Thomas nor I like her that much, though he’s known her way longer.

See my dad knocked up my mom right after he got engaged to Carol. Why Carol stayed with him after that I have no idea.

So I’m six months older than Thomas. We’re a grade apart because I’m one of the spring birthdays of my class, and he’s one of the autumns of his. We went to different schools for a long time. I lived with my mom until just two years ago when she decided that running off with some guy was a lot better than taking care of her daughter. So yeah, that’s when I moved in with my dad, and Carol, and Katie.

And Thomas.

I’d never even met any of them except my dad, and I only used to see him about twice a year. Moving in with them sucked, especially at first, but as time went on I began to realize that I’d never felt like I had a family before them. Kind of sad isn’t it? Not having a real family until you’re fifteen.

“I stayed for you.” I repeat.

“I know. I know.”

“I gave up Princeton for you!” I didn’t mean to say it so loud.

He hangs his head. Like he really is sorry, and I know that he is because Thomas is one of the most honest people I know.

You can’t possibly understand what it is like. Coming from living in a shit neighborhood with your crazy, inattentive mother, to the suburbs and living with your wealthy family that you barely knew existed before. And you can’t understand what it’s like to feel so downtrodden and then thrown into a nice, private high school where you don’t know anyone but your half brother.

And then suddenly your half brother is letting you sit with him and his friends at lunch, and he’s talking to you like you’re a real human being, and he’s showing you around your new town. Your half brother who’s got these eyes, and this tawny hair, and a perfect nose, even though I already mentioned all of that.

I’m just sitting there wondering and wondering where it went wrong, and the answer is that it was wrong from the beginning. We just didn’t care.

“Beth. I’m sorry. I just feel like it’s really not okay.” It’s like he read my mind.

“You seemed pretty okay with it when we were screwing on the bathroom floor.”

Okay maybe I didn’t mention that part yet. About eight months after moving into my new home, Thomas and I were instructed to babysit Katie while Dad and Carol went out for lunch, and shopping, and whatever they do after they’ve had a particularly bad fight the night before.

Katie was watching TV in the family room, something about cartoon, peter pan, super hero bullshit. And Thomas and I were bored, so we were wandering around the house, because it’s so big that you can do that as a form of entertainment. Or at least I can. After having lived in that shit place with my mom for so long. Yeah, I know I mentioned that already too. I was sixteen and he was almost sixteen and we were just walking. Not saying a whole lot. We ended up in my dad and Carol’s bathroom because it’s gigantic. Like seven shower heads, and a jacuzzi bathtub, and an entire wall of mirrors.

Thomas just reached forward and touched the tips of his fingers to mine. And then, I don’t know, there was just a lot of pulling at each other’s clothes and towels being thrown on the tile floor so that it wouldn’t be so hard to lie on. We weren’t very good at it because neither of us had done it before. But after two years we’ve gotten a lot better.

I exhale.

Time, Life, and Death

R,
I am finally in the library. I just feel so exhausted. Like I never have enough time in the day, and I know everyone says that. But it's just become so real. 
I spent the last year or so avidly believing that time did not exist. That instead of a linear path to be followed, our lives are like looking at the page of a book. It's all laid out right there, and we are constantly living every moment that we will ever live.
Don't confuse it for fate, or destiny. That's not what I mean at all. I just mean that I never had fear of loss, or change, because I believed that I would constantly be in each moment always. So loss did not exist.
But over the last couple of weeks I feel that time has reentered my perspective on life. And not at a "normal" pace either. It is speeding by me so quickly that I can barely breathe. I look back on Haiti and it feels that I was there for a mere second, Christmas passed and I don't even remember half of what happened.
I'm stumbling over my own feet, being dragged along by a train on a track.
Maybe because since high school I felt a bit stagnant, and now it's all catching up to me.
I'm trying not to let it make me irritable. But I get so stressed and anxious now that I find myself reacting far to severely to things.
I find solace in the library. And in writing.
Creative writing lets me disappear into another world, so forgive me for posting so many excerpts and short stories. I just need it right now. It is a form of therapy.
I do not want to check out. I don't want to distract myself. I want to be fully present in this world, I am merely looking for ways to cope with my new reality.
The way I view the world may seem pessimistic.
If I'm being truly honest, I don't believe in God.
I used to, I really did. But then something happened, something little. Inconsequential, and yet suddenly my faith was gone. I wait for it to return, I've searched for it. I've tried. But as of now, I believe in time, life, and death. My higher power is the universe. And, for now, that is okay.
I have a prayer that I find very beautiful that I want to share with you. You might have heard it. It's the serenity prayer.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
I say it to myself nearly everyday. It helps.
Okay, so this has been a very vulnerable post. I implore you not to judge me harshly with your opinions. I respect the beliefs of everyone around me. I hope you will do the same for me.
--S