I know I'm not the only one who does this now, but I wish I didn't jump at the smallest things.
I live in a city, I tell myself. Not the nicest neighborhood of a city. There is are two major hospitals only a few blocks away. There are bound to be ambulances and police cars and fires, I tell myself. I shouldn't jump to look out the window, gripped with fear each time I hear one.
The other night, still wide awake as the skyline slipped from black to grey to silvery blue, I found myself paralyzed with fear at the sight of a plane, flying rather low, right by my window. My window looks out south and even on a not-so-clear day, I have an easy view of planes coming in for landing at the Philadelphia airport. I know this. I shouldn't be so freaked out by it, but damn, it's hard not to be.
And the thing is, the things that scare me so much, the monsters that really keep me awake at night aren't really the planes or the sirens or even the thought of bombing people and going to war and all the horrible things that go along with that — they scare me yes, but I can dissociate myself from it enough. And anyway, I never really trusted those things in the first place. I think what shakes me up the most are the things that all my life I trusted without really even questioning that went ahead and betrayed me anyway. Without me even realizing it.
I know I'm being vauge, but I don't know what else to be. Some things aren't real until you say them on paper, where you can see them and encounter them again and as real as I know it is, I'm not sure it's time to deal with that yet. But anyway.
It's so strange how clearly I can see myself going through the stages of dealing with it. I don't know why it interestes me to look at it that way, like it's not really my life, but just some psychology case study where I can say 'Oh yes, these are the signs of denial, the first stage of dealing with it,' and later, 'Well, now that she can't deny it anymore, see how angry she gets?'
Reeling is a good word to describe where I am now. I mean, what are you supposed to do? I don't want to be rash and rush to burn bridges, but at the same time, I damn well don't want some bridges crossed by some people ever again. Ever.
It would be easier to do if I thought he was sorry, but I don't. And that's something I don't even really understand, because even though I have dreams in which I scream every obscenity and hateful remark I can think of, and in one, I even beat him to death, I at still feel guilt enough over it that I feel sorry, that I could concievably feel the need to apologzie. And still, he doesn't. I'm sure he doesn't even know why he should apologize to me.
And then I think I must be a pretty awful person. Thousands of people lost their families and I'm sure I look like I am taking everything for granted, going on like this. But in some ways, I feel like he did die. Except it's hard to mourn it because someone I hate took over his body.
Anyway, I know one tragedy isn't really related to the other, and the latter's been going on much longer. I've been dealing with it for longer. And in a way, when so many things go so horrible at once, it's sort of easier, you can divert your anger and pain between all those channels, shift the weight around and keep going.
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