kbk

I am currently using Mozilla Turbobumblebee.

I am worried. I do not want to try to sleep because deep thinky things will probably happen and they suck. I do not want tomorrow... well, today... to happen. Though, I guess, three hours down, twenty-one to go, and that with sleep in there, probably.

It's been seven years since my mother died. Less a couple of hours, only, at this point. Long enough, surely.

And I have to get up in the daytime so I can do the bus-subway-train thing to reach the cemetery. And find out if paternal ever did get round to having her name put on the stone. Though it's been two years, iirc, and that was only the second or third time I'd visited.

I don't remember enough about her. I really don't. But then.

The psychiatrist asked me about my childhood memories and I swear, my mind went blank. It's like, I have to ask myself the right questions to be able to think of anything beyond a few things that are stories I've told so many times they're more fiction than memory.

So the first memory of my mother that comes to mind is of being, oh, nine or so, fighting with her about something, and kicking her, and getting spanked for it. And I remember being told that my gran had died, and I remember...

I know I had a good childhood because it's the shitty things that stand out in my mind.

Hell, there's even less about gran. I knew her for less than half of my life. I got a little fucked-up a couple of years back, when I realised that had become true.

Sigh.

But I've always had this thing where I don't remember things. Maybe I'm just too good at compartmentalising. Who knows. Who cares.

I wish I had some serious sleeping pills. I want something to just knock me out.

Of course, some of the shitty things are good ones in this context, like when I fell off my pogo stick and yelled for mum and she came and comforted me. And there are good ones, things we did... because I was the baby of the family, and she was at home, so for a few years I would get home a little while before my sisters did, and it would be just the two of us. And. I dunno. All the random crap. My first bra.

But then, a few years later, during Mum's last remission, when she realised that my bras didn't fit me any more, probably hadn't for several months, but she'd been sick and my sisters not there and paternal not noticing and me not knowing, or not wanting to go shopping for them...

Of course I was closer to her. It's one of the things that happens when one parent stays home, and the other relaxes from work by sitting in front of the television all evening. I mean, my earliest memory is probably that of dad reading to me, and he made an effort, but he wasn't there as much.

So of course I wished it had been the other way around. Sometimes still do. That doesn't make me feel less guilty about it.

And of course, mr-fucking-doctor, I know the statistics on cancer. I know that it's not done with me yet, unless I manage to die in the near future, before anyone else I know is diagnosed. And I know it isn't always terminal, but I don't care about that because it was for my mother and it's a hard protracted way to go.

And this really isn't helping in the not-thinking-about-it stakes. I know I have to think about it sometimes. But it really would be nice to be able to go to sleep without it.