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Thursday, December 06, 2007

Bursting at the Seams. Running Out of Time. Climbing up the Walls.

Is it just me, or am I running out of time? Today I feel like I'm about to burst out of my skin over this sense of urgency to get things done. Maybe it's a caffeine rush on an otherwise empty stomach, maybe it's the guilt over having wasted hours and hours playing Morrowind. Maybe it's because the year is nearly over, or because in four months I'm going to be 30. It may be because today my mother is turning 60 and in less than five months my grandmother will be 90. There's a nice triangular pattern there, don't you think? Beautiful.

I feel like I need to do a billion things or else I'm going to die or, worse, regret a billion things. Death is preferable to regret. I guess. I mean, why would I say it if it wasn't true? As I once told Stoker (when he told me that he felt fat), if you feel it, then it must be true (Stoker is anything but fat -- that's what I should have said, but I'm a moron sometimes). Great logic there. I know, I know.

Also, my dad is dying. Slowly. This agonizingly slow death. And I feel like I need to write him a letter telling him that I'm sorry I didn't invite him to my wedding and that I'm sorry I didn't speak to him for a year or two, that I love him, but I resented him for essentially going crazy and being a bad father (but, could he help it? He was crazy. I guess it depends on what you believe about mental illness). I feel like I'm mature enough to have known better. Maybe I need to forgive myself for that. In any case, he's dying and being cared for in a relatively nice assisted living home in Utah, and I feel this other pressure to hurry up and get his life story before he dies. To record it so that I will always have it . . . so that I know where I came from, I guess.

And I feel like I need to get more of my grandmother's story, before she dies. Because hell if she's not TRYING to die. Last I heard she was trying not to drink water because then she has to use the bathroom and she's tired of using the bathroom. What a woman. What a woman. Yeah, so she's been getting sick from not drinking water. She's very stubborn.

So, anyway. I'm about to burst.

3 comments:

Nathan Marx said...

I will remember to use your line "if you feel it must be true" with everyone I know! I like it.

I have felt that way (the sense of urgency, and that I have no time) with everything for as long as I can remember. I guess that is why when I start a hobby I go a bit overboard!

I don't know what to say about Calvin. He is difficult at best.

As for Grandma, I need to record our conversations since we make it down their much more frequently than anyone else in the family! I need to buy a cheap little recorder then we could send you the words from Grandmas mouth. Not the same but sometimes you take what you can get!

Dani said...

That damn grandma! Always trying to weasel her way out of this life. Doesn't she realize that the minute she decides she doesn't want to die, she will? It's a catch 22.

Nicole said...

Nathan -- I know, it's a great line (thanks). I said it to Stoker again last night, I can't remember what I was responding to. But it really cracked us up. We have stupid humor, though, so take that for what it's worth.

Anji wrote down some of her stories, but you SHOULD get a tape recorder. Grams is prepping to die, so she's rattling off stories left and right.

Dani -- It IS a catch-22. You gots to tell her.