Torrential downpour

Southern California is deluged.  Tornados, floods, thunderstorms.  As it rains upon the earth, my emotions have chosen to rain upon my soul.  I feel detached, brooding, emotionally wrung out.  So much has coursed through my mind and my heart in the past 24-48 hours, I do not even know where to begin.  And so I will begin with the present.

A liquid shuddering starts in my diaphragm, moves up through the leftside of my chest, running through my heart, up my neck, and out the top of my head.   The emotions lie there... having been expressed, having overwhelmed, and having no closure.  Tears well up in my eyes.  I mourn my brother.  He should not have left 11 years ago.We were destined on this earth to be together - born two years apart - playmates... who should've grown into touchstones for each other as we navigate this Earth.  I cried back then... woke in the middle of the night crying in grief ... bawled in the dewey grass of his grave one year later cursing my abandonment, hating the loss.  I don't want to lose my sister - my best friend.

Deep, shuddering breaths... collecting myself - semblance. thought.  I'm overreacting - I want, no need, to bring her to happiness.  I've experienced such highs this week - and I know the agony of the lows she's in.  That was my goal.  It was slowly planted there throughout the budding of our friendship - friends help each other out.  It was expressed in words scarcely more than a week ago - I would pull her along with me on my journey.  It crystallized two days ago late at night - I would help her heal herself like I healed and help her experience happiness.  Prior to that  night it was simply to help and encourage, now it's to heal.

Since the break of the new year, I've metamorphized.  Twenty days, and I've experienced such bliss - and come to touch true happiness.  I've never been happy before.  Now I am.  In this same span, she's gotten steadily worse.  Each one of my steps forward has been a step backwards for her.  As I advance, she retreats.  We marched in lockstep once upon a time. Now I look back and can barely see her at the end of the horizon, the lifeline between us stretched taut to the point of breaking.  Indeed, it is fraying and everytime I pull, more individual fibers unravel.

Enough metaphors.  The facts.  I came home from a blissful experience last night. Something wondrous, ethereal, gossamer.  She had missed me while I was gone, and wouldn't talk when I got back.  She had wanted to play WoW, but I was away.  And besides, scarcely hours earlier I had decided that I was done enabling the escapism that it represented for her, and would try and help her back on her own two feet directly.  I told her such, but she never wants to talk about such - about her emotions - her situation - where to go - what to do.  I know the feeling - facing any of it feels like a mountain coming down upon you - there is no light at the end of the tunnel, in fact there is no tunnel. the earth is collapsing on top of you and the air is siphoning away.  Yet I pressed her anyways, and she withdrew even more.

Why must I press knowing that she will withdraw?  Perchance a small hope that my words will sink in and she might listen - perhaps I'm desperate and don't know what else I can do.

She said she didn't want to talk about it - that she was going to give up.  She would go give up her life to another and let him tell her what to do.  Just last week, she had confided that it wasn't the life she wanted - it was a life she knew she could grow accustomed to - a life she could settle for, but not something she wanted, and certainly not a life of her own choosing.  I became frantic, desperate - enraged, furious, pleading.

Looking back now, I believe that my brother's death influenced me.  During the evening I had allowed myself to feel grief for him for the first time in years, and I was suddenly confronted with another loss in my life.  No, she wouldn't commit suicide, but I felt like she was committing spiritual suicide. Hence, my overreaction.

She was on the phone with him, and could only type to me.  My emotions raw, eating away at me.  I needed her to understand how I felt - needed to hear the authenticity of her voice, the tenor and tone that would belie the truth beneath her words.  I raged, and she relented.  Now I could hear her voice, and she could rage back at me.  This was her life, her decisions... why am I interfering?  If she choses to deal with her state by escapism, then I shouldn't lecture, I shouldn't preach.

I'm sorry - I know the solace of pushing everything away.  I just don't want the mountain to suffocate you.  I don't want to look up one day and see you gone. That's why I'm trying to pull you up.  Trying to give you air to breathe, trying to find you another route.  But denial and escapism enshrouds you.  If you refuse to see the tunnels I'm trying to carve for you, then you don't have to hope, and don't have to see the rest of the mountain.

We argue.  I am timid. I try and be strong.  I am afraid of losing her. She explains that her decision won't jeopardize my visit in two months.  How can it not?  If she moves with him, it will be after.  I had thought it would be immediate.  No, he's trying to protect her, too.  He wants a safe haven for her like I do.  A place where she can heal and grow.  We are two sides of the same coin, he and I.  At least it seems that way.  But only one side can face up. Where is the difference?  I tell her I don't want a romance.  I have just healed and am learning to walk again and exploring the limits of my healed body.  She is still wounded and bleeding.  I know the sorrows of a codependent relationship - it is not something I will ever allow myself to enter again.  He wants her to live with him, to raise his son with him.  So that's the difference we propose.  Am I disillusioned to think that my offer is better?  I love her and yet deny my love through reason.  Can I really give her the space she needs to grow?  Can she really heal better without the romantic attachment to another to spur that healing?  Am I right to think the romance will warp the healing into enmeshment?

I concede, and we retire for the night.  Awkward and stilted.  She wants to talk to him before he sleeps.  As she talks to him, she offers to play Second Life with me.  Desperate and craving, I agree.  I need to sleep, my whole body is telling me such, but I need her more.

Second Life is something awkward, yet refreshing.  But it is far past my bedtime, and every moment that passes my body is telling me to sleep, and I don't value the time in game as much as I value the time spent talking. Wow.  Therein lies a truth I did not see.  I stayed up late the night before helping my cousin. I loved myself for that, and it empowered me, despite my lack of energy and sleepiness the day after.  Was it that much later than the night before?  No.  And yes, two nights in a row is more difficult, but it was more than that.  My own prejudice taints the activity.  I feel the activity is not as healing.  I should know better.  By my own healing and history, I should know better.  I do find some small solace in the places we visit.  She talks to me by voice again.  My heart sings.  We talk and explore and some small contentment seeps into my heart.  She needs to go for a bit, I tell her I'm going to sleep.

I couldn't sleep.  Agony and anxiety ripped at me.  Clawed their way deep into me.  I resolved to tell her how I felt.  It was unfair that she confided in him before me.  It was unfair that she makes time for him and not for me.  It was unfair that she chose to spend time talking to him and the only time she wanted to spend with me was to escape.  I worried for her.  I felt her drifting away and didn't know what to do, and I needed to stop it.  I ... I didn't know anymore.  I only knew the anguish.

She came back, and fear gripped me again.  She doesn't want to talk about these things.   But I need to tell her how I feel, right?  It's not about her, it's about me.  But it is about her, too.  It's about us.   Talking would drive her away.  Admission makes me vulnerable.  What if she didn't care that I felt hurt?

Hence courage comes first... we talked.  More upheavals, but at least an understanding at the end.We play more; we make tentative plans.  I understand how hard it is for her to keep plans as she is.  I wake this morning.  I let myself sleep late.  1pm meditation. She's put it in the calendar.  My heart glows.  My own anxiety.  How can I do yoga and shop and be back in 2 hours?  I will not abandon her.  I must be back.  What do I sacrifice from myself to do this?

She is still awake?  She did not sleep?  My brow furrows in consternation.  Yet her sleep schedule is fucked.  I know this, and she's awake - she's trying to fix it.  I tell her my time problems, and she gives me wisdom.  Wisdom that I should have known but couldn't access.  The yoga is optional - especially the yoga class.  The 21 day challenge puts a superficial veneer on it that adds expectation and pressure that, although supposedly to encourage, can also promote desperation, pressure, and unreasonable expectation.  I agree and go shopping.

On the way back, I call her.  All those times she dialed me driving to and from work - I need to talk to her more.  She didn't answer.  Was she asleep?  Pulling into the garage, past the doorstep, to my computer.  She is barely awake, but wants to sleep.  Meditation in 20 minutes?  No answer.  I understand, and I love her for it.  My best wishes go out to her, sleeping snug, enraptured away from the troubles of reality.  I leave her a note to sleep through the night if she can.  I hope she will. I dream that she will be up when I am up tomorrow morning, and that we can connect once again on that same wavelength we once shared .... two souls connected and tied together before either one even knew what happened.