new digs

Three years we lived in that apartment. It is a complex filled with history. I lived there so many years ago where the stories of the deleted posts take place...stories of endless knocks and tears and decisions that brought me there again a year and a half later, to a bigger apartment with a bigger view and bigger heartache. I'd been warned that the juju was too much, but I liked it there. But with the case over and yet another loss under my belt, I deemed it time to move on. And so move I did, for the 35th time in my 30 years.

So weary I am of packing my belongings, carrying them somewhere else and laying them all out again. I try to get rid of things, but can't bear to toss the Day tickets for the London Underground, I look and them and I hear "Mind the gap," and wish I was there once again walking the streets of Chelsea and through Hyde Park and then I remember how much pain I felt there. Packing up my belongings, I came across journal after journal I've kept over the years, and I found the one I kept in London. Flipping straight to January 2006, the stream of excitement that is so quickly quelled by the horrible unveiling of a wicked plan executed by the Swine is a clash that jarred me as abruptly now as it did then. To one moment be wild with anticipation for the arrival of one's daughter and impending birth of a son, and the next anguished over the betrayal and realization that a battle would have to be fought and now the son couldn't be born fast enough to allow for a return to the States to fight that battle is a heartbreaking juxtaposition of emotions that is only heightened when that son dies and all that is left is to fight for the daughter whilst mourning the loss of that son. Packing away that journal with the Underground tickets, playbills and ten-year high school reunion namebadge, I felt as if I shouldn't have read that, as if I'd violated my 26-year-old self's privacy. And I realized that I prefer the fog of the years over those memories. Reading that journal brought back the acuteness and extremity of those emotions in a way that tore at the scars in my heart.

Even as I packed it away, I sat in the mess of that apartment thinking about the journal entries I read from other years that are sprinkled with pain and with drama. Part of me wished I could share them with my siblings, the ones who don't get me and my gruff, me exterior. They don't know me anymore, and I don't know how to let them in, because it is the stuff of those journals that brought me here today, to the girl that calls herself narcissist. I don't want to talk about it. And to tell the truth, they don't want to hear it. Perfection they demand, but only from me, and since I have only imperfection to offer our relationships will be as they are.

London happened. It's easier to go away. That's what my dad taught me. And so I go away from that apartment where I lived with Steve, the man I thought I would love for everything despite and in spite of everything, the apartment where I tried to pick up the pieces when my mom had surgery on her brain tumor, Steve betrayed me, the Swine started another war, I lost my job, and two out of three siblings showed me their backs because I didn't deal with all of that very well. I thought I did all right. I had a friend who landed in the psych ward when she was laid off. I managed to find a job in two months, help nurse my mom back to health, kick Steve to the curb, hire a lawyer and figure out how to pay her. So bite me, siblings. \I got grouchy, so what? I was dealing with a few things. Ever hear of empathy? Moving on.