ebb & flow

I think one of the eerie things for me yesterday was the fact that I lived in that house for six years and was gone for four months, and I remembered nothing about where basic things could be found, like the toilet paper holder in the first floor bathroom, for instance. I went through the hallway and saw that the door to the bathroom was wide open. It was weird since I always had it closed. Going through my old office was surreal. The solid pine wood folding door had been removed and replaced with the door that came before it, complete with the decal stickers I'd placed on it before swapping the doors out. My old office still had the wall decal and the butterfly stick on mirrors. The only piece of furniture there was an end table with the modem connecting the phone and the cable, and the main phone base.

Part of me I guess was looking to see if there were any traces left of the life I lived here for six and a half years. Outside of a Hot Pocket cooking sleeve with a dead fly in it, and an Amazon package label permanently sealed into the flooring (and the thing I mentioned in the previous paragraph), there wasn't any. Even the tension rod in the shower was gone.

It's almost like it wasn't the same house, but it was. And everything felt weird and looked weird. My brother said it was like a "funhouse" attraction at a carnival.

The stairs to the second floor aren't level. At all. There are strange dips in the floor that weren't there before, and the flooring in the laundry room felt "spongey". Michael said that that's a sign of moisture seeping into places it shouldn't and considering there is a moisture issue in the basement, I wouldn't be surprised if that's infiltrating the first floor.

I don't regret moving to and living in Port Jervis. There is history there and natural beauty. But the city itself looks so bad. I wouldn't want to stay there. It didn't look like this when we moved in.

That house wasn't as fucked up back then either.

Maybe it's because the house I picked out with my wife is so much better it's easier to see where things are wrong or slipshod. And maybe Port Jervis looks even worse now because we moved somewhere better; the worst of Elmira looks like the best parts of Port.

I don't know. I don't have the answers for that either except time, and perspective shifts, change things.

So what is my hometown going to look like when I go back there in the coming weeks? The last time we were there was 2017, and my wife has never been. A town can change in 8 years.

Then again a city can change in two years and a house can change in four months.

Sorry to be this introspective on main but... A lot can change in a short amount of time. But I think the biggest change has been me.

22 and a half years ago I lost my father. I was 10 years old. I didn't know what I felt except "big sadness" and though I knew what death was, that that person wouldn't be coming home again, I didn't really understand what death *actually* meant. What 10 year old does? I cried alone in my room most nights the first year. I didn't know what to do with the sadness. What grief meant. How to properly deal with that. All I knew was I missed my dad and I'd never see him again in this life, and I was very sad.

As an adult now turning 33... I have a clearer understanding of death and what it means and, more importantly, what grief means. It's really fucking complicated. The grief I felt (and still feel) for my dad is different from what I felt when Pop-Pop died and that was way different than when Nana died. And that was different from how I felt when my mother-in-law died... And, you guessed it, that was all different from how I felt when Sadie died.

This time around, this loss, the grief is different from all those times, because it comes with very complicated, very complex emotions. It fits because I feel that my mother was a very complicated person emotionally. She was abusive to two of her kids and her one daughter-in-law and there is no excuse for that. Reasons due to some sort of mental complications, yes, but doesn't excuse it. Nothing does. So I should be angry, and mad, and pissed. She drove me away.

I never wanted to go no contact. But I wasn't going to deal with someone who treated my wife and I so badly. And no matter how hard or how much I tried I couldn't get her to see she needed so much help that I couldn't give her. You can't help those who won't help themselves. You can't convince the alcoholic he has a problem, he has to realise it himself and seek help. I said I would leave if she didn't get help. She went to one session and that was it. So I held my bottom line.

As much as I may have hated her at times because of what she became, I still had some kind of love for her. Maybe not love but some kind of compassion. As someone who struggled for years plagued by demons known as depression and suicidal thoughts and self harm, I know how awful this is. I've been there and done that. I resisted help when I was younger because I didn't think things could get better.

When my wife said I needed to get help for my depression I didn't resist because at that time I was done with simply existing. It was like I'd learned how to breathe for the first time. I've gotten better, life is good, all that great shit that comes with recovery and healing.

But I could not lead the horse to water and make her drink. And I got treated like I was the mental case for thinking water was edible.

How do you grieve someone who hurt you and others in your family so bad that you had to cut them out of your life? She was the tumor I had to excise to save myself.

It's complicated. It's going to be complicated. Always. We don't know how things happened but they did and now she is no longer here. I ended up having a breakdown at 1am because my god that is not the way anyone should ever go. If you've been following along with everything from the past year or so then you know one of the things she did was try to goad God into choosing whether she would die a natural death or die in some other way.

If this is how the divine being in the sky chose her to go, he is a sadist.

I find myself questioning him a lot and have been for 22 and a half years.

My life is just one big grief cycle I suppose. I'm tired of it tbh but it's going to continue. We have cats. We have loved ones. Death is part of the natural cycle, everything from plants to animals and everything in between and who are we but animals in this huge circle called Life?

Maybe it's the same thing with cities and towns and houses where there is a life and a death.
I feel like I've died a thousand deaths over almost 23 years but the difference between this kind of death and the permanent sleep sort of death is...rebirth. I've always risen again from the ashes and dust and I will do that again.

Maybe these cities and towns and houses will too.

That is the natural ebb and flow of things.