Idle Thoughts

Mood: sinking
Music: Fuel - Hemorrhage; Deftones - Change

I didn't write on the 2nd anniversary of my father's death. There was nothing to say that I hadn't said before. The same hamsters on the same wheels, turning and still getting nowhere but perhaps feeling cheated and angry and ...well, grieving. I'm tired of my own grief, in a way, but can't let it go. Can't let him go. We had him cremated and his ashes divided in two for my sister and I, because neither of us could bear to put him in the cold, cold February ground. Half of Daddy sits in a handsome urn on my bookshelf, where I pass it every day and know that I'm still not ready to let him go. Pain and a solid stubborn streak make for strong cement.

I didn't write on my 37th birthday, either. I'm not upset about being 37. Granted, there's a tiny part of me (probably my mother's voice) that whispers "only three years from 40 now", but there's a bigger part of me that looks over her shoulder at the first voice and says snidely "Yep, and I still won't have grown up". I think my refusal to act my age is my way of exacting revenge on my mother. There is a dark core of me that is far older than it has a right to be; forced into old age and cynicism. But on the outside - I look far younger than my mother did when she was my age; probably because she smokes and insisted on sun(baking)bathing. Now, and I hate to say this, she looks nearly as old as her own mother, and her skin looks leathery to me.

I'm not a high-maintenance girl. My face is lucky to see moisturizer once a month, I don't wear makeup most of the time, and it just seems silly to me to be so wrapped up in creams and lotions and such. I admit to a certain amount of vanity, though. I mean, I wouldn't go out to dinner without putting on makeup. But I'm not particularly fussy. I cut and color my own hair, straighten it with a flat iron now and then if we're going out, and call it good enough. I'm just not into spending much of my life in front of a mirror.

I have to laugh - I just remembered a visit to my mother's where she just gushed that I had to try this new face stuff she'd found. I let her drag me into the bathroom, where she applied this lotion and then looked at me expectantly. At first, there was nothing...until a tingle started..and then a burn..and then my face was melting. Seriously, that's what it felt like (it burns! it burns!). I grabbed a cloth and washed it off, and Mom looked disappointed. She chided me for being silly, saying it couldn't have been that bad. The woman just doesn't get it - she's totally a different skin type and tone than me. I'm a redhead with sensitive skin....as opposed to her tougher (hide) skin.

Ugh. I'm starting to sound mean-spirited, and I don't like it. Not where Mom is concerned. I know we have vast differences, but she's the only parent I have left, and I really do love her. Deity bless her, but she tried as hard as she could to make me into a kinder, gentler woman. It's not her fault that I turned out not to be the daughter of her dreams. And I really shouldn't antagonize her; I have a knack for being blunt, and some wicked little girl in me just loves to shock her with life's little truths. That little girl hates the rose-colored glasses Mom has lived her life behind and pounces at the chance to pierce them with a little reality. But then I feel bad, because Mom is who she is, and at the end of the day, I love her and wouldn't change her for the world. She is my balance - the Pollyanna to my Eeyore.

Of course, I could never shatter her illusions once and for all with the truth of the past. I just couldn't do that to her; though I strongly suspect she'd go so far into denial as to accuse me of lying. Then our relationship, such as it is, would be gone. That is not acceptable. As much as I'm loathe to admit it...I need my Mom.

Well. If this descent into the black was a game of Shoots N Ladders, that would have been a water slide. Oh, hell.

Now I miss my sister, too. I don't ever seem to get to talk to her. I don't get emails from her, except when her kids have gift lists to pass around. Sounds awful, doesn't it? Well it is. She and I used to be very close, and I miss that terribly. I don't know why the silence from her; she isn't upset with me that I know of, and when I finally do manage to get ahold of her on the phone, she sounds tired but glad to hear from me. *sigh* Life's too damned short for this shit. Didn't she learn anything from Dad's death?

Bleh. BLEH, I say.

File this under A for apathy, B for bleh, C for cynicism, D for disgust, and E for ....hmm...F for fuck it.