Finding Yourself

The most difficult thing about life is figuring out who you are.

That should seem easy, you think. I'm born who I am. I have a unique personality that defines me, likes and dislikes, quirks and habits.

But it's not that simple. You realize that the first time someone asks you, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Now is the time to pause, because whatever you say next will define you in the eyes of that person; it will shape your image and put ideas in their head about your worth and your character and your intelligence.

But you're only four years old, so you're not thinking about all of that. And you promptly say, "I want to be a princess." They laugh and they smile and they tell you you're so cute. And you soak it up.

Next week, you've seen a fire truck go blasting past, sirens blaring and lights flashing, and your mom has told you that they're going to save people from danger. So you decide that this is a noble profession and the next time someone asks what you want to be, you tell them "firefighter."

Years go by, and maybe, if you're lucky, you've settled on something that you're fairly sure you want to spend your life doing. You dream about it and you do research on it...but by now you're a preteen and your peers don't judge you by your career prospects. They judge you by what music you listen to; whether or not you've kissed a boy. They judge you by the price of the shoes on your feet and how many followers you have on social media. And your priorities begin to change.

Suddenly, your future isn't that important anymore. After all, it's always just that...the future. Always just out of reach, never quite arriving.

How can you comprehend something that you've never seen? How can you plan for it, when there is so much going on right now, so many new things, forbidden things, a life to be lived here? Now?

But this is only the beginning, you realize. There is still high school. College. A whirlwind of faux responsibilities and first heartbreaks and first jobs...and then one day if you're lucky, it hits you. This was never the beginning. This is it. This is your life, whatever you're doing right now.

Your life was never the future. It's not "what you'll be when you grow up." It's not going to begin when you buy a house or when you graduate with a degree. You are alive now.

You have been, since the day you were born. Your four year old self knew that - instinctively. This could all end at any moment. And if it did, would you say you hadn't lived your life? But oh, my friend, you did. You lived it in the movie theaters when you were fourteen, eating popcorn and Skittles that you had smuggled in. You lived it in the hours spent at the playground, running through sprinklers in the hot summer sun. You lived your life in the stolen moments with lips meeting each other in an empty stairwell, in the time spent laughing with your friends, hugging your pets, arguing with your parents.

Every moment that passes is your life, right now. This is it. This is you. And yes, when you look back you will see who you have become, and you will remember who you used to be. But when you try to find yourself, and think that you will begin to live when you have finally reached the ideal version of "you" in your head, think again.

And understand.

You are YOU, right here, right now.

And that is okay.

a realization or two

It's nice, having a best friend. One that's a guy. And that you like as more than a friend.

I can't believe it. I'm admitting to feeling happy. I'm always afraid that admitting that will cause a crash and burn scenario. But...this year I think is going to be all about experimenting. Giving chances to happiness. Spontaneity. (I spelled that word wrong twice before I got it right, lol)

It's funny, because I didn't label him as my best friend inside my head at first. It was like, he's one of my best friends. I knew I was his best friend (when a guy's girlfriend tells you that...wow).

It's still funny. It's almost like the title "best friend" doesn't feel right. Maybe closest friend? Yeah. Best friend sounds a little childish. But the thing is...I started thinking about it.

And I realized:
We can be together for hours in complete silence and neither one feels the need to break it, nor is it uncomfortable.
Then, if someone feels like talking, all of a sudden we'll be deep in conversation about either something philosophical OR randomly telling the plots of marvel movies or anime. Or trying to figure out how time travel works. Or what Daleks eat. Or whether you can have an infinite number of tardises inside of tardises.
He can be sculpting or playing video games and I can be drawing or reading and it's just nice to be around each other.
I actually feel like I can tell him most things, even the things that I hold dear to my heart. He's told me things that, well, I don't think he would have if he didn't trust me.
When I get excited about even the littlest things, he's the first person I want to tell.
We work really well together...the way we are around each other and interact.
He actually understands and is okay with me expressing important things via text rather than in a face to face convo...he's called it "acceptable," lol. Even to the point where he said it would be "acceptable" if I'd have broken up with him via a text. (He said that last year...when he was in the process of breaking up with me)
On that note...he doesn't blow up or get clingy or question where I've been or who I've been with like I've seen other guys do.
We're comfortable just randomly leaning on each other if we're both sitting on his bed..using the other person as a cushion/pillow. (I'd always wanted that)
He's literally my favorite person to be around.

So with all that...I thought to myself...what other qualifications would you have for someone being your best friend?

But after all that...that title still doesn't sound right.

I think I'll stick with "favorite person." That sums it up nicely.

Funny how it's all turned out and how far we've come. From being friends for nine years, (this month makes ten...wow, a whole decade) to deciding to give "more than friends" a try, to a break up, to break up sex, to deciding to try again...to where we are now, which...I mean, I admit it. I'm f*cked. Seriously. My walls are all down. Smashed to bits. Matter of fact...no. Not smashed. Dismantled. Neatly taken apart and the bricks have all been tidily put away.

I am so screwed.

maybe i should tell you about the day my mother died.

I don't remember waking up that day.

My memory of the day starts with me sitting on a stool in the kitchen, across from a representative from hospice. She may have been a nurse. No, I think she was a social worker. She was a plump, white woman, who tried so hard to be gentle and kind and understanding, but I was bitter.

I learned that, that day. That when I'm really, truly hurting, I become bitter and sarcastic. I make crass jokes. I didn't know that about myself.

She was trying to convince me to book a funeral home.

There wasn't long left, she said. Not days, even. Hours. My mother had been in a comatose state since Saturday. It was Wednesday. Once my brother left on Friday, she went to sleep and never really woke up.

I didn't want to book a funeral home. I didn't want to preorder a casket. She told me Costco sells them at a discounted price. But you see, I knew. I'd read the booklets and pamphlets they'd given me, those hospice people. The pamphlet said yes, they'd sleep a lot. Yes, they'd summon the energy to have one last meal and you, the family members, probably wouldn't realize it until after...that it was their last meal. But it also said that when the body prepares for death, it will begin to draw heat from the extremities into the core as a last resort. Their hands and feet would be cold. Their arms would be cold.

My mother's hands were fire, just like they'd always been.

Yes, her face was skeletal. Unrecognizable. But I'd grown used to that. When it happens slowly you don't realize it. When you love someone with all your heart, changes in appearance don't matter. They're still as beautiful to you as the day you first laid eyes on them. It's like the Rocking Horse said in The Velveteen Rabbit, "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

I was relieved when the social worker left. I think now that she probably meant well. They all do, don't they?

I went to make myself a cup of tea, after checking to make sure that mom was still breathing. That had become a habit. I'd started sleeping on the couch so that she didn't have to be alone in the hospital bed that hospice had provided. I'd wake up with a start, several times a night, and stare over at her through bleary eyes, checking desperately for the rise and fall of her chest. It remained steady.

I wonder what kind of tea I had. Was it raspberry leaf? Probably. It was a comforting flavor, smooth somehow even when it scalded the tongue. I took it with me out onto the back steps, but left the door open. I don't know how long I sat out there before Cal showed up, locking his bike to the fence in the back.

I lie.

That's not how it happened.

I went out back without any tea. I remember now. I was in a zombie-like state, staring off into the distance, when he showed up. We sat out there and talked for a while, until I started to get antsy. Nervous. I had an awful feeling in my chest that I just needed to go and check on mom. My excuse to go inside was that I wanted a cup of tea.

Yes, that's how it went.

Did I ever make myself that cup of tea?

I don't know.

The next thing I remember is being in the kitchen with him and suddenly hearing my mother's breath become labored. Almost like she was wheezing.

There are no words to describe how quickly I found myself at the head of her bed, trying to help her sit up, trying to clear her throat...did I try wetting her lips with one of the little pink sponges? Maybe.

Somehow I was at the side of her bed, and Cal was standing at the head. I took her hand and held it, started whispering, "it's okay. I love you. It's okay." I switched back and forth between English and Norwegian. She grew agitated, pulled her hand out of mine and tried to stuff it into her nightie collar.
I took it back, held on.

After a little bit, something clicked in my brain. I asked Cal to find my phone. I'd left it in the kitchen. When he gave it to me, I dialed my father's work phone number and told him I wasn't sure if mommy would be there by the time he got home.

"WHAT!?! Put me on speaker," he demanded. He later said it felt like something exploded in his brain when I told him that. Her breathing had grown erratic. She would go for several seconds without taking a breath in.

I did as he asked. I put the phone on speaker. "Laila!" he shouted through the phone. "Laila! Say Jesus!" She took a sharp breath in, and her breathing came a little more steadily. I told him so. "I'm coming home, Laila!" He told me he was leaving right away, and we hung up.

Her breaths grew shallow again. Few and far between. I found myself wondering if each one would be the last one I'd hear. I started murmuring to her again. "It's okay. Det er okay. Jeg er her. Jeg er glad i deg."

Eventually, it looked like she'd stopped breathing. I say looked like because I wasn't sure. My eyes were playing tricks on me. I couldn't hear breaths. She wasn't moving. But her chest had to still be rising and falling, right...there. That was a movement, wasn't it? I asked Cal to get the stethoscope. I may have even sent him into the hall closet for it...inside the cloth first aid kit we have.

I was so calm.

When he gave it to me, I slipped it on and placed the round piece flat against her chest. But my own heart was beating so loudly in my ears that I couldn't tell whether it was her heartbeat or mine. He was watching me, carefully. "Do you hear anything?"

I could feel my pulse throbbing in the thumb that pressed the stethoscope against her silent chest. "I don't think so...I can't really tell."

I think I may have taken the stethoscope off and given it to him. I don't know where he put it.

The doorbell rang. He went to answer it, let in the home health aide who had only just started the day before. A big, older African American woman. She reminded me of Madea. Just as big and just as unfriendly. I was still holding my mother's hand.

It was still warm.

He said something to her. Maybe he said "she just died."  I don't know. I know he got the point across. She got out her phone and called my mother's nurse, Roseanne. She called the social worker. She did whatever proceedings are necessary in these cases. Cal returned to the head of the bed...I think. But why do I remember him standing across from me...on the other side of the bed in the dining room?

All of a sudden, without warning, my mother's hand grew ice cold. I let go with a start. Stood there. It felt numb. There was no feeling. There was no sadness...was it shock? It was like...I was sort of just there. And then I clapped my hands over my mouth, and saw out of the corner of my eye that he rushed over to me and grabbed me and then I was all tears and snot and bawling and my stomach felt like it was trying to claw it's way out of my throat and there really isn't a description for pain...it wasn't pain. It was emptiness. A deep, gnawing emptiness inside my chest that was raw and cavernous and he was holding onto me but my throat was still growing sore from the sounds I was making.

I don't remember how we ended up on the couch. I know I was there by myself for a little while. Maybe he got up to let the nurse and the social worker in - it was the same lady who had been there only a few hours before. I wasn't crying when they walked in.

Roseanne came straight over to me and sat down next to me. I don't remember if she hugged me or not. But I know she took my hands in hers, and she said some stuff to me. It was meant to be comforting. I may have felt comforted, I don't remember. I know I always liked her. She sat there with me for a while, where he had sat, and said words. Then she said she had to go and "call it."

That got through to me. "Call what?"

"The time of death."

"Oh, but it was at 2:24."

"I know, but I have to call it when I see it. That's the way it works."

I didn't think that was right at all. And then she got up. And then it got real.

It hit me. She was going to confirm my mother's death. It wasn't real up until that moment. No one had confirmed it. No one with any authority, anyway. I didn't want her to do it. No. No. NO. After a moment I realized I was actually screaming those words and I turned away and suddenly I was in his arms again and he was holding me as tightly as he could while I buried my face in his lap, the sofa, anywhere that was away from looking at Roseanne and her little watch...the social worker and her little notebook.

My dad walked in then.

He later told the story that he came through the door and saw me on the couch, crying my eyes out, and Cal holding me with tears streaming down his face too. I didn't know he'd cried.

They called the time of death at 3:00pm. It was Wednesday, March 9th, 2016, exactly one month after my twenty-seventh birthday.

My dad went straight over to her bedside and threw himself down across her. I think he cried. I couldn't hear him over the sounds of my own body gasping for breath. At some point I picked up my phone and started texting everyone I knew. My brother was on his way over. My friend Tomieka left what she was doing to come. I don't know who opened the door for them, but suddenly they were there. Our pastor was there. I had joined my dad at mom's bedside. We were whispering things to her, things we weren't sure if she could still hear but we had to say them anyway. I told her to dance with Jesus. I know she'd always wanted to.

My brother showed up. I remember Tomieka asking for permission to kiss my mother's face. And then the people from the funeral home were there, with a white van and white sheets and they wanted to take her away. They said it was time. What the hell is time, anyway? There's never enough of it.

The social worker wanted me to leave the room when they took her body out, but I couldn't have done that. How would I have coped with her being there one minute and not there the next? I needed to see where she was going.

I don't know how I ended up on the floor behind my dad, but I remember looking up at him when he stepped away and nodded to Gaffney and Co. that they could take away her body. I really don't know how I got on the floor, but at that moment I had a strange out of body experience. It was like the sane, rational part of me was in the back of my brain watching this play out. I had no control over what I was saying or doing for the next few seconds...it was like instinct took over. I reached out towards my dad "No, daddy, no, please, no." I was aware that I was screaming those words. It seemed so foreign. I watched myself with a detached, almost clinical sort of interest as I felt the words tear their way out of my throat, because that's what they did. They tore their way out.

And then there were people trying to pick me up. Cal. Tomieka. I fought them off and kept screaming. They tried to lift me. I pushed them away. Someone finally managed to give a giant heave and pull me off the floor, shoving me straight into my dad's arms where I hung like a sack. I didn't want to stand. I didn't want to move out of the way. He pulled me to the side and the people went by with their white sheets. They rolled her body this way and that, maneuvering it. It was stiff. I found myself crying "Mama, mama," over and over again, and then there were more arms around us. Tomieka squeezing me from the side and Cal wrapping his arms around my dad and I. I saw him desperately scrubbing at his eyes and cheeks. I think my brother was on the other side of me.

The pastor was standing off to the side, filming it all on my dad's phone. I have NO. IDEA. WHY. To be fair, my dad may have asked him to record it. It seems like something my dad would do.

Later that night, It was just my dad, brother, Dynesha, Cal and me left. It was maybe two in the morning. People had come by. Khrys, Nia (she brought me oreos), Ms. Joholley and Chiara, church folk, my uncle and his family...or did they come the next day? I don't know. We ordered pizza. I don't remember if I ate or not.

My brother and I sat on one of the church benches that had been brought in to accommodate all the extra bodies. Dad and Dynesha were on the other one. Cal was on the sofa. I heard my dad replaying the video to show Dynesha...the one with me screaming.

Eventually Dynesha and Chris got up to leave, and Cal began to gather his things. I tried to be quiet. I tried to let him go. But every step further that he took away I began to feel a madness creeping in. I was going to be alone, alone in the room where my mother had died and the house was empty and my chest was empty and it was beginning to fall apart.

I asked him if he had to leave.

He stayed.

He wore my pajama pants, red checkered flannel ones that wouldn't stay up on his waist because I have hips and he doesn't. I know I went and put something else on, but I don't remember what. We sat on the couch together, him behind me and holding me tight, and the long night wore on. Neither one of us slept. My legs grew numb, his arm grew numb, and somehow...impossibly, the sun came up the next day. My eyes were closed and he flicked my lip to wake me. I was already awake, but what's funny is that's the last thing I remember.

The rest of the days passed in a long, drawn out blur. I know he was there every day. When I couldn't move from the couch he was there behind me, holding my ribs together. When days had gone by and I hadn't eaten a thing besides gummy bears, he peeled a tangerine and pressed it to my lips to try to get me to eat. But he didn't force me. People brought all sorts of things to try to entice me to eat. Popeye's chicken. Jamaican food. Chicken soup. But I didn't eat anything until Kim and Joan came and brought organic tofu and brown rice.

That tasted like home. That was comfort food.

This was all over a year ago, now, but it still feels like yesterday as I write about it. I'm not entirely sure what made me decide to do this now. I just woke up this morning and was ready to tell my story. So there you have it. I don't have a poetic way to end this...but I'm stopping here because I said I'd write about the day she died. Not the weeks following. That's for another time.

Time. There really is never enough of it.

Do I need to write?

Do I?

Maybe I do.

I'm not sure.

It's hot, and my brain feels kind of empty, which is a new thing for me. Usually it's going a mile per nanosecond, and is full of things that don't make sense yet make too much sense to me.

It's funny that I'm typing.

I swear my brain feels empty and I don't know which keys my fingers will press until they do it.

Let's see what's in an empty brain.

....

My fish made a bubble nest. I read online that that's a sign of a healthy, happy male betta. That's good. And my bullet journal is actually coming along nicely.

The weather has been in the mid-nineties these past few days, and today it hit one hundred in Laguardia airport. At least it hasn't been humid.

The sudden summer weather has me feeling rather strange. It reminds me of last summer, which was, uncontested, the absolute worst summer of my life. Everything fell apart back then, and although some things have fallen back together, there's this strange subconscious feeling of discomfort. Like...the weather reminds me of it. The sound of the ice cream truck outside or the Pokemon Go theme playing in the car as we drive through Brooklyn.

It's like I'm being reminded of a time when everything was so horrible and i was trying so desperately hard to be okay...and now that it is okay (even though mom's not here so it will probably never be fully okay again), my brain has to get used to that.


I need new batteries for my Tardis. The light's beginning to get rather dim.

I've been mostly okay lately. Sort of mellow and neutral. There have even been a few genuinely happy days in between. Been trying to teach myself that life is made of a whole lot of ups and downs, and just because there are guaranteed to be downs doesn't mean that you should ruin the ups by fretting about the downs.

The ups can be rather nice, and after all, the only thing that ever happens is RIGHT NOW. And right now, I think everything is quite okay.

I'm also beginning to realize that grief does this weird thing where it pops up COMPLETELY UNEXPECTED. Feelings are so fleeting. And it's possible to feel more than one at once, and more than three in the span of about twenty seconds.

For example. I'll be content with life, and happy about how things are going with Cali, and all warm and fuzzy because well dammit I can't seem to shut that off lately, and I'll walk past a photo of my mom or suddenly think of her and suddenly my chest feels like a cavern and there are tears in my eyes, and I'll try hard to think of good times but the tears will still slip out but at the same time the fuzzy feeling is still there or I'll also be stressed about getting ready for tutoring.

All that.

Today, I went from feeling indifferent to confused to disappointed in myself to anxious to neutral. So many feelings.

And you know me. I hate having feelings.

I kind of want to watch Doctor Who's latest episode (I recorded it) but it's eleven pm and I think I may be sleepy. I'm so not sure. I also kind of want to save it to watch with Cali.

Dunno.

And then you have that tiny voice that goes "But if you try to save it to watch with him then he will magically suddenly get bored of you and not want to date you anymore or be your friend anymore and then you will be stuck watching it by yourself because you dared to get excited about something."

Little things like that always pop up in my head. That's why I always shoot down feelings. I get burned sooner or later every time. Last time I got burned terribly...and for every dream I had there was a moment when I realized it was dying and I cried specifically for its loss. Like when I realized there would never be a Norah. I love that name, and it's lost to me now. Forever.

Or when I felt there was no point to have seen the milky way, because what good did that special memory do me? It only caused me pain when I looked up at the sky.

So now I'm afraid. Afraid to dream, afraid to expect anything or hope for anything, because if I do, it feels like i'm inviting the universe to rip it away from me while laughing manically.

I'm tired for real now.

Good night.