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Aaaand we're back! *
10 years ago
As a fair warning, this is going to get a little verbose before it's over. I feel the need to write down some stuff.
Hooooooly Crap. That all happened. As a followup to my previous journal, I went to some distant(ish) relatives to attend a wedding and, overall, get a little time to decompress, You know, general vacation stuff. And for the first week of my trip, that's essentially what it ended up being. I had fun, managed to relax a bit. I went hiking in the Daniel Boone National Forest, even managed to dredge up a little inspiration. Something about deep, rural America is just beautiful. The grass is greener, the people are friendlier, and the food is hella tasty.
I wound up being blindsided by a proposition, at the last minute, to not only attend the wedding, but to help run it. It being the wedding of one of my favorite cousins, I of course accepted. I helped with logistics mostly, but I also got to run the music at the wedding, which was neat because it meant I got to sit in the sound booth of the church in which the ceremony was being held and pretend I was a DJ when all I was really doing was pressing the "next" button on the CD player.
Had fun. Ate too much cake. Wound up attending another wedding that was kind of a surprise, but was also fun. I got to see a lot of people whose company I enjoy, as well as a few people that I'm not a fan of, but c'est la vie.
About a week-and-a-half into the thing is when things started to fall apart.
My grandmother, who has been having increasingly dire health issues over the past few years, too a bad turn while my immediate family and I were up there. She has recovered, but it hit my mother hard. My mother, being confronted with her mother's infirmity and senility, was an inch away from a mental breakdown for the rest of the time. My younger sister is really too young to deal with the sort of pressures that being an emotional crutch entails, which meant that it fell entirely upon me, and since my mother and I were in close proximity for all hours of the day, it drained me emotionally. I'm empty. I'm mentally exhausted.
I came to understand a long time ago that I don't process emotions the same way that some people do. I'm a deeply introverted, introspective person. When I feel something, I need to know why, and I do a lot--some say too much--deep-thinking. Perhaps it's callous of me, but I suppose that I've already come to terms with the mortality of my grandmother, which causes even more strain between my mother and I. Unless I'm pulled out of my shell, (not a hard thing to do, by all counts) I'm not very outwardly emotional, which makes a lot of people, especially those that don't know me very well, assume that I'm not very emotional at all. Which is ridiculous. I smile often, and I laugh even more. I get angry, and I sure as hell feel sorrow. It just doesn't always show, and my mother, who is the exact opposite, has trouble understanding that aspect of my personality, which leads to a lot of questions like, "She's your grandmother, aren't you worried?" and others like, "Why don't you smile more? Are you angry? Oh well you must just hate me, I know you must." Not a question, I know, but easily the most hurtful of all. It's frustrating, not being understood by the people who are closest to me, those who, without hesitation, I would sacrifice everything for.
That didn't help the tension inherent to the situation.
But I eventually had to leave, especially after staying almost a week longer than expected. I got home. I'm here once more, being greeted by the tender arms of the southern Florida summer in its height. 90+ temps and 100% humidity all day, err' day. My house got swarmed with termites. My sister got mauled by fleas on our last day in Kentucky, and today, during my family's weekly ritual of attending my sister's horse riding lessons, I was jumped by a brown widow spider that was the size of my thumb. Nothing like home, I guess.
Oh, also, the Rogue Trader game I'm in had today's session was canceled because of a few no-shows, so there's that. I was really looking forward to it... Damn...
But I guess I'm reaching for excuses to complain now. I'm just tired and cranky. I didn't get nearly as much done as I wanted to, and I'm all off-schedule when it comes to work and writing both, something that will be remedied as soon as I can feel my feels again.
But hey! It's still Shark Week for a day, right? That means a little something something I fiddled with on the way home. Just gimme a minute to get it up for you guys.
Man... I need a vacation.
(* physically, at least. The rest of me is still catatonic.)
Hooooooly Crap. That all happened. As a followup to my previous journal, I went to some distant(ish) relatives to attend a wedding and, overall, get a little time to decompress, You know, general vacation stuff. And for the first week of my trip, that's essentially what it ended up being. I had fun, managed to relax a bit. I went hiking in the Daniel Boone National Forest, even managed to dredge up a little inspiration. Something about deep, rural America is just beautiful. The grass is greener, the people are friendlier, and the food is hella tasty.
I wound up being blindsided by a proposition, at the last minute, to not only attend the wedding, but to help run it. It being the wedding of one of my favorite cousins, I of course accepted. I helped with logistics mostly, but I also got to run the music at the wedding, which was neat because it meant I got to sit in the sound booth of the church in which the ceremony was being held and pretend I was a DJ when all I was really doing was pressing the "next" button on the CD player.
Had fun. Ate too much cake. Wound up attending another wedding that was kind of a surprise, but was also fun. I got to see a lot of people whose company I enjoy, as well as a few people that I'm not a fan of, but c'est la vie.
About a week-and-a-half into the thing is when things started to fall apart.
My grandmother, who has been having increasingly dire health issues over the past few years, too a bad turn while my immediate family and I were up there. She has recovered, but it hit my mother hard. My mother, being confronted with her mother's infirmity and senility, was an inch away from a mental breakdown for the rest of the time. My younger sister is really too young to deal with the sort of pressures that being an emotional crutch entails, which meant that it fell entirely upon me, and since my mother and I were in close proximity for all hours of the day, it drained me emotionally. I'm empty. I'm mentally exhausted.
I came to understand a long time ago that I don't process emotions the same way that some people do. I'm a deeply introverted, introspective person. When I feel something, I need to know why, and I do a lot--some say too much--deep-thinking. Perhaps it's callous of me, but I suppose that I've already come to terms with the mortality of my grandmother, which causes even more strain between my mother and I. Unless I'm pulled out of my shell, (not a hard thing to do, by all counts) I'm not very outwardly emotional, which makes a lot of people, especially those that don't know me very well, assume that I'm not very emotional at all. Which is ridiculous. I smile often, and I laugh even more. I get angry, and I sure as hell feel sorrow. It just doesn't always show, and my mother, who is the exact opposite, has trouble understanding that aspect of my personality, which leads to a lot of questions like, "She's your grandmother, aren't you worried?" and others like, "Why don't you smile more? Are you angry? Oh well you must just hate me, I know you must." Not a question, I know, but easily the most hurtful of all. It's frustrating, not being understood by the people who are closest to me, those who, without hesitation, I would sacrifice everything for.
That didn't help the tension inherent to the situation.
But I eventually had to leave, especially after staying almost a week longer than expected. I got home. I'm here once more, being greeted by the tender arms of the southern Florida summer in its height. 90+ temps and 100% humidity all day, err' day. My house got swarmed with termites. My sister got mauled by fleas on our last day in Kentucky, and today, during my family's weekly ritual of attending my sister's horse riding lessons, I was jumped by a brown widow spider that was the size of my thumb. Nothing like home, I guess.
Oh, also, the Rogue Trader game I'm in had today's session was canceled because of a few no-shows, so there's that. I was really looking forward to it... Damn...
But I guess I'm reaching for excuses to complain now. I'm just tired and cranky. I didn't get nearly as much done as I wanted to, and I'm all off-schedule when it comes to work and writing both, something that will be remedied as soon as I can feel my feels again.
But hey! It's still Shark Week for a day, right? That means a little something something I fiddled with on the way home. Just gimme a minute to get it up for you guys.
Man... I need a vacation.
(* physically, at least. The rest of me is still catatonic.)
rocker234
~rocker234
I hope your grandmother recovers and that you and your family get to relax a bit after all of that!
Skabaard
~skabaard
OP
No worries. She's doing rather well all things considered. Thank you.
