no rest for the wicked
March 11, 2004 � 2:05 a.m.

First Entry Today

Today�s Weather: Fucking insane

I am afraid to go to sleep.

Yesterday, all day, I kept getting these headaches, and shortness of breath, and dizzy spells out of nowhere. My face would tingle and my heart would race and I swore I was either having a heart attack or a stroke. I told Jenny this. I told Jack this. I felt as if I was dying.

I had just finished washing my clothes when I got into the car and saw my mom had called. I wasn�t going to call back until I got home, but for some strange reason, I stared at her number and the more I looked at it, the more I felt like something was going on. So I called. My dad answered, and for some reason it made me nervous. It�s not unusual for him to answer, but it still felt wrong. I explained that I had been washing clothes and that�s why I didn�t get the call and I was just about to ask if he knew what she wanted and to put her on when he told me she was in the hospital. My head started spinning. He rushed to say she�d be ok, and it was just for some tests. All I could say was, �Dad�.� and he said that yesterday she was short of breath and had dizzy spells and had one of her headaches. He said her arm kept going numb.

I said this yesterday, to my friends, about me.

He gave me the hospital information and told me he was going up to bed and would call me back when he got upstairs and settled. I asked if he would be ok there by himself, since he just got home from the hospital not too long himself and is trying to make it around in his chair. He said he�d be fine and hung up. I cried all the way home.

My mother is sick. My mom has been sick for a long time now. This is why I stayed at home so long. To take care of her. To take care of him. I was the go to girl, the gopher, the emergency contact. I reminded them of pills and doctor�s appointments. I went to pick up the medicine and get water in the middle of the night. I was their eyes and legs and common sense. And now I�m not there and they�re all the way down there and she is sick again, and as always, it�s my fault, because I am not there. No one says that it�s my fault but I feel it�s my fault. It�s my fault she is sick. My fault she�s in the hospital. If the world rotating was a bad thing, that would be my fault too. It�s how I feel, how I�ve always felt, like every bad thing that happens is somehow linked to me.

And now I�m scared. Scared to close my eyes and see her there waving at me. Scared to be woken up in the middle of the night with a phone call. Scared that the last time I saw her was really the last time I will see her. Scared, so scared, that my mother will die without me being there to try to stop it.

My mother is sick. She�s been sick for a long time now. Everything changes and stays the same.

I am afraid to close my eyes and dream of her going. I sit still for two seconds and tears flow down my face and I see her funeral. I see me flipping out afterwards. I see the loneliness and desperation my life will hold because she is not there. Because she will never see my kids or know my kids or know that even though we butt heads that I love her more than anything in this world next to my brothers. Scared to close my eyes and making my dreams a reality. The angel of death. They always come to me and say goodbye in dreams�Nanny, grandma, and mom-mom. I don�t want to dream of my mother. I don�t want to dream. I am going fucking crazy.

I should be used to this. She always ends up in the hospital after awhile. She hasn�t been able to afford her medicine. She looked so small and fragile when I last saw her. Like my grandma. And I�m not there. I can�t make it all right. I can�t stop crying.

I keep thinking of Henry and how she wanted to see him. Of how Darryl didn�t come with me the last trip down and wondering�if something does happen, how will he take it? How will we take it? How will we get on without her in the world to aggravate and love us? To love me?

My mother is sick. She has been sick for sometime now, and I am not there to annoy her with my stupid questions to the doctors and act bored in the hospital room and scold her for not taking better care of herself. I am here, all alone, crying my eyes out as I dread a future without her in it. A death without her knowing how much I need her in it. How much I love her in it. How much I love her. I don�t know what to do. I am freaking the fuck out.

My mother is sick. She is in the hospital all alone, worrying, I�m sure, about her husband and kids and thinking about her death like she always does when she�s in the hospital�hating being there but loving the attention�because that�s the only time she feels that we love her�the only time all of us function like a normal, loving family�in a damn crisis. I am here and she is there, and the guilt has come back and is camped in my chest. That guilt screaming I never should have left her, never should have let them move so far away. Never should have hated her for all the years I hated her while we were growing up. Never should have let so much time pass without showing her how much I love her. She is there and I am here, both of us alone and scared, thinking of the same bleak future and having the same fears, and feeling so incompetent because there isn�t a fucking thing we can do to change any of it, because it will come to pass eventually, because it has to happen eventually, and none of us is ready for it.

My mother is sick. She has been sick for some time now.

I am here sick with worry. I have been for some time now.

How alike we are. How similar. So connected. So joined.

I am here, full of fear and tears, afraid to go to sleep.

Afraid of dreaming, always been too afraid to dream.

Afraid of a future that is always on it�s way.

Afraid that when I wake up, my life will be the thing I fear most.

Empty.