Receding into shadow

I miss you Mum. You pop up into my mind constantly, maybe because I think I am finally letting you go, and you are receding. So now, whatever life I choose to have, I will have to decide for myself. I've never been good at that, have I? But maybe that's OK. I can trudge on making whatever mistakes I am bound to make, falling and then getting up all over again to make mistakes, other mistakes, better mistakes...failing better, as someone once said.

My life is a mess and I allowed it to get this way. I feel tired all the time and this lack of energy has made me curl up into an uncomfortable corner, sweating because it is too hot, swatting the mosquitoes that tend to land on my sweaty flesh and take their fill, watching feel good Hallmark movies instead of sleeping because there are so many things I am trying to avoid thinking about.

And then, there's the work I could do but choose not to do.

And then I want to go out and watch a movie or write a letter in a cafe or do something at least, rather than sitting here, doing nothing, feeling lost and tired and cranky and hot.

The dogs: I love them and they frustrate me. On the one hand, I do not want the responsibility for them and on the other, I cannot bear to abandon them the way they were abandoned before.

Elliott is old and tired. He has cloudy spots in his eyes and he no longer runs like an antelope. Heck, he no longer runs at all, and if made to walk quickly, he starts wheezing.

And I don't know what I want to do with the rest of my life. The fount of creativity starts and stops...and right now, it's definitely stopped. I try to do what I am supposed to do, get by on the bare minimum and what I lack is soul, and what I lack is the real deal.

I don't know at which point my life got derailed. There is a point, no doubt, but I didn't see it while it was happening. I can only look back on it now, at this point, and wonder.

Has it derailed completely? Is there any such thing as a final ending? Is that what death is? Mother, looking at yours, I think you left so many things unfinished. You know, the way Michael Jackson did. But your body gave out before you could finish them.

And I wonder how lonely you must have been in that house by yourself. It always makes me cry to think about that. There is nothing I can do to change that now. But that house, it scares me and I avoid it. It has become like this dark thing looming in the shadows, and the more it looms, the more I avoid it.

I avoid a lot of things, but I guess if you've been watching, you've kind of noticed that already.

But as I said, even if you were watching before, I don't think you're watching anymore, or at least, less and less.

I feel you receding and this is good. You need to go get on with whatever you need to get on with. I cannot keep calling on you.

Mum I don't know how to live but I'm going to have to figure it out myself.

I love you. I always will.