Where does the time go?
It’s hard to think about this but yesterday was your birthday
I guess it’s true what they say. Time flies.
No one ever knew your real age. Or so you’d tell us. And maybe this is true. Maybe you lied about your age for so long that even you forgot how old you were. Or maybe age is just a number.
Maybe time is only time and age is far more subjective than we think.
Time is definitely a great teacher, which is why I always hated when people would tell me, “You’ll understand when you get older.”
Well, I’m older.
I’m not sure if I understand as much as I am supposed to.
Or maybe I’m still learning and maybe I’ll understand when I’m older than I am now.
Maybe, or maybe not
But either way, awareness is an interesting thing.
I remember all the times you’d try to convince me to take it easy on myself.
But of course, I never listened.
I remember when you would try to help or redirect my attention to see things from a different angle.
You tried but to no avail. I was a young know-it-all.
Or so I thought.
You tried to help.
But I often saw advice as criticism. And who was more critical of me than me?
You would try and I would be angry or yell because as far as I knew, you could never understand me.
No one understood.
How could anyone understand?
Or how could I explain anything when I hardly understood myself?
I remember when you would tell me not to sweat the small stuff.
I remember when you’d tell me that no one ever promised me a rose garden, which was grandma’s way of saying life is hard.
I remember how nothing seemed small to me.
I had the weight of the world on my shoulders and my chest was heavy. I always swore that something awful was in the mail, so-to-speak, or on the way.
But this is a thing with age and maturity. These are the things that come when you’re young and think you know everything.
And this is what happens when we make assumptions about life or jump to conclusions.
I was always good at that, jumping to the wrong conclusions, I mean.
And yes, that was me. That was my mind. That was my way of thinking which I later learned there’s a term for this. I was told that professionals call this catastrophic thinking. I was told these are thinking errors . . . .
I suppose therapists and doctors have words and a diagnosis for everything these days. Then again, mental health is a billion dollar business industry, which is fine for the thieves and profitable for the medicine mongers who keep us sedated and on the dangle.
Everything is a disease now.
Everything is a challenge.
Everything has a name. And that’s good.
I’m not angry about it because having a name for something can lead to having an understanding of what you have.
And as for me, I have life.
I have a past.
I have a future, which is unknown and uncertain at the moment.
Too much of my future is unclear to me.
I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. And I don’t know if tomorrow will be brighter.
All I can say is thank God yesterday is behind me and hopefully, maybe today has something better for me.
At best, I can say that I am frightened.
Absolutely.
I’m uncomfortable and afraid. And yes, I realize this is humbling to me.
I am vulnerable and scared. However, it takes a real man to admit to these things.
Then again, I do not believe fear and emotions are limited to man or manhood.
No.
No one has the market cornered on these things and no one can feel what fear feels like from my side of fence.
I think this is why I struggled to listen to people or their suggestions.
I think this is why it was hard for me to listen to you when you’d say not to sweat the small stuff because it wasn’t small to me.
The world is all relative and so am I.
So are my emotions.
So is my grasp on things and so are my assumptions and opinions.
All are relative.
We are all unique in our own way. Or maybe what I was told years ago is true. Maybe I am terminally unique, as if to say this is a lifelong or life ending thing. And I get this now more than I did when I was young.
I thought I was so alone, which was hard for people to see or understand.
I know this was hard for you to see. And I know this was hard for me to be this way.
Alone and tired and otherwise worthless. Or, so I believed.
No one knows
No one gets it, or so it seems. And those who do understand or those who are close are often the ones who had to carry the weight of my reactions to pain and frustration.
By the way, I call this honesty.
I do not call this self-deprecating or say that this puts me down.
No, I think it takes growth to admit to these things, same as it takes growth and maturity to admit to my truths.
It can be hard to see things regardless of how they hit home or impact my vanity.
It is the day after your birthday and yet, you are elsewhere.
You are far, far away and where you live is timeless now.
There are no phones. There is no internet, or at least, so I suppose.
I know the tech gods and the world have made a lot of advances over the years.
But as far as I know, the mail does not reach where you are and last I checked, there was no forwarding address after you left the hospital.
I guess this is why I’m sending this out to the atmosphere.
I’m sending this with hopes that the universe comes along to grab and bring this letter to you.
It’s been hard, Mom.
This June 15 marks 11 years since you’ve been gone.
I suppose the hardest part is you were gone before you left because you were not you anymore.
You had not been you for a long time.
The doctors and the meds and the surgeries took you away in pieces over the years.
And that was hard to see.
I wish I handled things differently, Mom.
I wish I was better.
I wish I still saw signs from you
I wish you were here.
I wish we had better times together towards the end because the memories that linger are uncomfortable and sad to say the least.
I wish the memories of your last moments were better.
I wish the ending of your life was better.
But wishes do not make facts out of fiction or fiction facts.
I don’t know where you are now. At least, not spiritually.
I only know where you were buried.
But sorry –
I do not go to graves and cemeteries because that’s where dead people live.
And Moms can never die.
This is not allowed.
So, you are just elsewhere and reachable in different ways.
Moms never leave because nothing in the world is as strong as a Mother’s love.
And I know this is true because you told me so.
Happy Birthday, Mom.
I wish I had a few slices of your cinnamon toast or maybe a slab of your mashed potatoes and chicken cutlets.
Send a sign, if you can
I’d like to know if you get this.
Love always
Your son
B-
The Written Addiction 