Face your daylight horrors!

There are a gazillion things I want to do, and contribute with (hello Femslash Friday why flicker by so quickly all the time, what do with my femslashy fic recs now), but. But.

So my grandmother who is still alive turned ninety yesterday, and collapsed at the reception and then there was an ambulance and medics and now she is at the hospital. They admitted her right away, because it was discovered she had problems with her heart, and she was very cross about her party being cancelled; it was all nice and formal and we were going to go to a fancy restaurant and be all.. proper, and things, I guess, like she likes us to be, but now I am just rambling again.

I have not slept since, because I am too scared and sad and dread closing my eyes, and it is not like she is dying right now or anything, but she is ninety, and this is not good at all. I am waiting for the hospital to call with news, and I am going to call her when the pone times start, and then come visit; I will have to find the energy for going into town to the hospital, somehow.

I just cannot lose this grandma, too.

During the night that brought me to yesterday I cried myself to the world of dreams, and while under the white dust from green capsules sleep someone whispered cruel fairy tales in my ear; one of a cruel woman in a Lucia crown who did evil onto others driven by nothing more petty than misplaced jealousy and of the tower she trapped people in for meaningless vengeance, and  of a fragile human soul with the voice of a nightingale who chose to leap from it to escape it even when true escape was so close by; but perhaps she would have leapt from one anyway, sooner or later, and this was only the excuse closest at hand. I dreamt in vivid detail of the tower’s windows and how I broke them to avoid suffocation or drowning even though there was no water and plenty of air so perhaps, I, too, was only looking for an excuse to break something, but could not bring myself to do it to my entire body.

As that was not enough dread for one night, another tale was whispered to me; of a beautiful shape shifter who forgot which form was her true one and how she had her heart torn our by the one person who wanted her back in it, all while trying to save her from her own deadly confusion and the old man who tumbled into madness as a punishment for driving her to hers, and I wept for them all and was relived to return to the waking world when I opened my eyes to it, but as awareness rooted me in reality I remembered that in this world of breaths spent counting breaths I still have those I weep for and mourn, and for a moment I forgot how to make myself breath. My head spun as I laid my eyes on the wooden chest I would not have if I had not outlived someone so dear to my heart, and although this is a body built for enduring such sorrow, I had to wonder which place was the worst one to breathe in after all.

I avoided my windows and stared at myself in a mirror I would not hurt myself to break, trying to recognise the person I used to be in the tired shadows and sunken in cheeks and only finding something more that is difficult to remember.

It is not that I no longer care or love or that I have forgotten how to show it; it is just that the path I used to walk on with a heart that could sometimes beat with enough calm to make me see things clearly is a road I cannot remember how to reach while looking at the world through a haze of tears.

I still care about you, I only do not know how to make my body do the things that made you happy, right now, and I still love you, I only cannot move my tongue under the weight of all the words I need to have said ages ago to tell you how much and why and how.

I never stopped, I only fell off the place where I needed to be to be able to show you everything I want to show you, how to find the voice to tell you everything I want you to know.

It is as if my body detached itself from its shadow, and somehow my soul got left with the shadow instead; all aimless confusion without the body it was meant to follow.

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So I crawl out of my blanket fort of mourning to actually do things and post some long-overdue fics only to discover I have been forced into tumblr’s latest terrible beta.

There really is no way I can keep using a site like this; the way it breaks saviour makes it impossible for me to go on the dash at all due to me having triggers that can set me off so badly it traps me in flashbacks. The fact that posting is now clumsy, cluttered, ugly and unstable is just icing on the cake that— actually wait that is a terrible analogy, because cake is delicious.

Tumblr, you fail worse than Jowan.

Combo’s sister: What the… where did all this snow come from!?
Combo: I was sad, and then it started to snow.
Combo’s sister: Why does the weather always favour you? …Shit, you are actually a snow fairy.

To my great delight, some mornings are glittering and white, but my sister has a cold allergy so she is less amused. I feel bad about feeling happy for snow when the cold hurts her, but nothing feels so much as home than a morning covered in snow, a morning that is all light on white branches and the air is so, so crisp that it almost feels as if I breathe in too deep, my lungs will freeze. In a certain light it makes the world look coated in silver; and then with a morning lined with silver my entire world becomes the silver lining.

The funeral is on Friday. We got the music ready today. My aunt has dementia, the aggressive sort, so now we have to watch a loved one fall apart into a someone else once more. It is worse for her, of course, but I am just so, so tired, to the very core of my soul. In part it might be because I have more or less stopped sleeping, and it is not that I try to stay awake; I try to fall asleep, but sleep will not come. I have fallen behind on things and I feel terrible, but I hope that when the funeral is over I will feel some sort of closure, and return to how I used to be. Right now I feel so unapproachable, so strangely silent, so closed off and not open and everything just hurts, and I want to change back to openness and talk, but right now, whenever I try to think, I can only think of loss. I just miss her so much. You are all such wonderful, supportive people, and it means so much to me, all that you do, and I just… it means so much. It is just that, how much I miss her is consuming everything I have, right now.

I am visiting my family as the funeral is drawing closer and we have a lot to do (and the sorting out of grandma’s things is quickly escalating into nightmare status), and so, I have been having breakfast in company of other people. It is… different. Things like this happen:

Mom: So what is a black book, anyway?
Sister: …You have to take care of this one, there is no way I can explain it in a non-vulgar way.
Me: It is this… book, where you collect phone numbers. In case you need… company. 
Mom: Oh! I never had one of those.

Things only went downhill from there.

In other news, after a rather long silence from me, I am somewhat starting to crawl out from my blanket fort and attempting to function as a person, again. It is difficult, but I am trying. My secret Santa gift is sort of ready, I think, probably, so now for the dread I always feel before posting anything, and then I can continue posting the Karlendar. I would have dearly like to not have a hiatus for it, but my brain pretty much just shut down after grandma died. I could not even write three words without crying, because making my brain do things, forcing it to think, just made me remember and I just… could only cry. Every little thing that reminds me of her tends to have me burst into tears, and I have sort of accidentally isolated myself from people a bit, and I feel really bad about that? But I just.. shut myself off a lot.

Two nights ago, there was a huge commotion outside, with three police cars. Apparently there was a drug dealer getting caught? Which was sort of terrifying, but my first thought was, “Oh, we cannot tell grandma about this, she would be so worried”, and then I remembered, again, and I just.. this has been a very difficult time, and it will continue to be so for some time, I suspect. But I hope things will become easier next week, when the funeral has passed, and there will be some closure, hopefully.

Now I have a lot of wonderful messages to answer, and I will probably tear up again, but this time because I am surrounded by such beautiful, supporting people; you all make my life brighter and more hopeful, especially now when it suddenly got much darker.

Also I only just realised that tumblr no longer notifies you when you receive fanmail. So I only now saw a bunch of fanmail that I have not responded to and that feels so awkward D: Oh, tumblr. Just when I thought there was no way I could ever feel more awkward.

The new year is approaching so, so quickly; this is the last flickering breath of December, and I do not feel ready. I never do and I never am, not for the moment when one year eases into another. I always feel I did not do enough, even when I have done more than ever, and I must do these things before the clock strikes for midnight even though it should not matter when as long as it gets done. Sometimes I would like to pause the world as to not have it be such a wild thing of haste and hurry, but when it truly comes down to it, it is better to have it be what it is.

So I wrap myself in silence, resigned to the world moving at a different pace than I do, and watch the fireworks in awe of their colours and lights. It is as if someone has gathered more jewels than a person could ever need and is repeatedly flinging them into the sky in hope of fastening them there; they never stick, but that is alright. We have stars to brighten our nights.

It is difficult to not get gripped by a certain measure of nostalgia when something comes to an end even if it is something I should be used to ending. I have to think about the year I am leaving behind and reflect upon it; and I think, all in all, it has been a good year. More good than bad, because despite all loss and hurt and sorrow, I met so many new people, wonderful, wonderful people, and I did things I never thought I would be able to do, I achieved things I thought impossible for someone like me. I saw so much beauty and lived so much joy, and even though I wish I could have done more with everything, done more for others and made things better, I still think I did well. Well for living and learning and growing. I hope in the next one, I will live and learn even more. And so, my one resolution is as follows; to live. Live another year, and do as much with it as I can. Even if it will be difficult, even if it will continue to hurt, it will also continue to be filled with hope and love and life, and I am determined to find enough good things to outweigh the bad. This was the year of my twenty-fourth winter which was the year my hair started to turn grey; it was the year I cried more than any other because I lost more than in any other, but also the year I faced more daylight horrors than in any other, and grew more, and loved more.

I hope a year from now I will be able to look back and smile as I do now, at a year lived well despite the hurdles that had to be overcome.

I hope the next year will be a better one, for everyone. A happier and more beautiful one, because you all deserve happiness to be yours, and I hope you will never forget it.

I want the DrinkSavy campaign to reach its goal so much that I am going to call my father* to ask him to contribute.

Wish me luck in this endeavour, dear tumblrs!
 

*to put it mildly, things are somewhat strained between us.

Thank you so, so much, for all the support and soul hugs and just, everything. I have been trying to collect myself, but I am not quite sure of how to do it. I really do try my best, though. It is just, difficult, right now.

My heart is not working quite right. Usually, I am always so filled with feelings of many different kinds and I think so much about all sorts of things, but ever since grandma died I feel so numb. It is as if part of my heart is missing, like a much too large part went away with her. I barely know how to form coherent sentences, most of the time. Whenever I try to think, truly think, I remember how she is gone and then I just burst into tears, again. Whenever I try and touch on all the heart-close things, all I find is loss.

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