Peanut Butter and Jellyfish Sandwiches

9/26

went to suicide survivor meeting in NJ for the first time

its once a month

went home monday after classes ended and came back into the city on tuesday, around noon

felt i recognized all the faces but they were faces of people id never met before

a couple’s son killed himself 2.5 weeks ago

i cried

the entire time

no one else cried

i just had tears streaming, at a constant rate

but my eyes wanted to cry so much more and my lungs wanted to wail

my tummy felt very sick

i couldnt speak

my mom said a few words

i tried to share but i could barely open my mouth

i had to keep pinching my stomach to have the physical pain distract me from the mental pain because i thought i might explode into a puddle at any moment.  if i let myself focus on it too much, i wouldn’t make it to the end of the meeting

one person had their mother killed herself and then her brother a few years later

as we arrived back at the house i saw the light on in his room and i thought, “he’s home!”

trying to remember what it was like when they told me.

in that moment air was thick and my mind felt very cloudy but very clear and very intense

my heart was out of control

the room was buzzing

i felt like i was outside of my body

it felt staged

it felt stuck

my ears were ringing and felt stuffed with cotton

i wasnt in the room but at the same time i was very much in the room

time felt heavy

my mind was stuck but also rushing

this is impossible and yet so possible

this isn’t my life!

but this is my life

(oct 25 — i was supposed to go the group again yesterday, but i decided not to go.  i just dont have the mental energy to remove myself from the world of school and then put myself back in it in such a short amount of time.  its not just 1.5 hours of of my day, its a whole process.  and i have 5 papers and two quizes this week and two midterms next week.  no mental space for extreme saddness and self-reflection right now.  i feel balanced enough but feel unstable and dont want to shake the ground right now.)

from oct 2

sometimes i miss him so much i feel like my body is grabbing at the air, clawing at high dark mud walls of a deep well, ripping at the fabric of the exterior world, trying to tear it down, trying to get to him, trying to see, trying to hear him.

today i was trying to find a file with music in it and i accidently opened a file with his pictures in it.  i was utterly shocked to find them there.  i forgot they even existed.  the pictures were very recent, within a year of his death, and yet they didn’t look like him to me.  he looked internally sick and distant and detached, forcing himself to try to look happy in a picture, trying to make himself keep going in life.  maybe i’ projecting.

 sometimes when i think of him i think of only a piece of him.  like his arm.  and how i would jump into bed with him and wrap both my arms around one of his arms and push my cheeck against it, snuggling into it like i would a teddy bear.

i had an idea.  maybe i can write letters to him and send them somewhere, so i can pretend they are going somewhere and i am talking with him.  the thing is, it’s hard for me to find time where i can let all my thoughts go and i can think, let alone write.  it’s hard because i know if i really let myself think of things, it’s not just going to take 5 minutes, it’s going to be an entire day or lots of days.  so most of the time, i try to just do things, so i dont think.

from oct 6

every time someone new joins the bereavement group at school i hope they are joining because their death is related to drug addiction or suicide.  maybe that’s not a particularly nice thing to think, but it’s true.  most other people that join the group had a parent or sibling die of cancer or, more rarely, an accidental death and while suffering is suffering, i felt i was missing a level of understanding.  on oct 6 a new girl joined group.  and she said “my mother killed herself.  she had depression.”

we exchanged emails and phone numbers and i think we are going to get together soon.

oct 26, 2011

i noticed that when i get really sad a tingly sensation sweeps across my nose, similar to the feeling you get when you need to sneeze.

10/14/11

tonight i feel incredibly quiet.  there aren’t many thoughts going through my head, my body seems to be still and not have any urges or wants, my mouth is too heavy to speak.  so while my friends bake and laugh in the kitchen, i decide to move upstairs to sit in a thick stillness.

i think that since i dont seem to have the energy to do anything else, i will write about things i can remember from the last few weeks.

ant running for its life

(today is 10/14/11 but i wrote this post in august)

i wish i could read faster so I could read more books.  sometimes i get all energetic and excited about books and i think I’m going to read this and this and this and this and i’m going to lock myself in a tower with my books until i read all of them.  but then i read too slowly to devour them at a pace i want to and never get to read all the books i want to.

this summer ive read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Franny and Zooey, and Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart.  I’m almost done with another of Shteyngart’s books.  I am in the middle of Catch 22 but I think I’m going to forget about it because it isnt captivating me the way it did everyone else.  I’m also in the middle of a Phillip Roth book, an Agatha Christie book, In Defense of Women, and Nine Stories by Salinger.  And I’m tempted to start another book called Dry that I found on my fathers shelf next to his bed.  It’s about an alcoholic who goes to rehab so maybe it will be really sad, but I’ve read another book by the same author (Running With Scissors) and I really liked it.  and maybe sad books are the best books anyway.

While I should be cherishing these last few days before school starts, I am feeling restless in my prison-house.  well its not really a prison at all and im about doing things — like packing for school and doing laundry — and busy not doing things — like filling out forms for school — but sometimes at the end of the day i feel like a caged animal.  i need to get outside!!  the rest of the world is at work, so being home alone for hours on end can make you feel a little crazy.  but then again, when at school i feel like its impossible to get alone time.  so maybe i should try to get out all the semester’s crying now while i have the chance?  QUICK!  GET EXTREMELY SAD!  GO! 

something that made me sad, though not extremely sad, today: an ant.  I was lying outside my house, trying to get in a few minutes of sunshine from the afternoon since I forgot to go outside all day, reading that book i’m trying to finish but not finishing quickly enough.  and a tiny tiny little ant scurried by my book and i didnt want it to get lost in my shirt sleeve so i blew at it.  and i immediately regretted it.  it started running around in frantic circles at very high speeds i didnt know ants could run at.  and i felt horrible!  i just made this ant totally freak out!  i’m going to die!! AAAAHHH What’s going on!?!  where is this wind from?  so then i tried to guide it, but it kept running in circles and getting freaked out by my body, so i got up and let the ant find its way home and then lay down after.  i know ants dont have families like humans but i was so sad i made that ant so anxious.  yes, its an ant, but it has a giant family to care for and feed.  man, i dont want to be mean to a bug ever again.

today i also: did my laundry!

today: my friend’s mother stopped by the house

“If I caught a Leprechaun, I would eat it.”

9/1/11

when we heard about the hurricane coming our way my mother decided to distract her anxious self by intensely cleaning the house.  we came across one box of drawings from when julia and i were very young. 

in a composition notebook i found 3 drawings i did: janette, julia and jessica. 

and i found on another page “I HAT YOU BERBBY.  i WiL Pee on you BERBBY,” the “y”s of the “you”s are all backwards.  who is Berbby?  maybe Bubby?  or a kid named Bobby?

i found a couple of storybooks i made with  the help of my mom.  Cover page: lots of things written backwards.  last name spelled forwards, first named spelled like a mirror image.  lots of curly brown scribbles.  Page 1: “my tree has a bird in a bird’s nest.”  general shape of a tree with a purple scribble in the middle – nest?  Page 2: “Another tree with another bird.”  General shape of a tree with a black scribble.  Page 3: Jessica practices copying the numbers mom wrote out.  Jessica is only able to do the shape of a six, which she does for most of the numbers.  Page 4: strange scribbles in purple, brown and green.  what do children think when they are drawing?  do they see something special?  do they have any method to what they are doing? Page 5: brown scribbles. Page 6: green scribbles.  Page 7: green scribbles.  Page 8: green scribbles.  page 9: green scribbles.  page 10: green scribbles.

another piece of art i must have done on st. patrick’s day.  at the bottom it says: “If I caught a Leprechaun, I would eat it.”