Homesick

I haven't blogged in a very long time, and I seem to get asked, more than I think is necessary, why I isolate myself when my life gets hard and... well... this is what I got:

I isolate myself so I can be alone, where I owe myself no explanations, no justifications, I can just be. It took me more years than not to accept the thoughts that race through my head. The good, the bad and the downright scary. Which thoughts to accept as truth, which ones to question and which ones need to come and go like a mid-summer Alabama thunderstorm; the ones that pop up seemingly out of nowhere, bringing their fury raining down on you without warning, then fading away as quickly as they came.

Those thoughts are the ones that scare me the most. The ones no one would understand. The ones you can’t forgive and the ones no one can forget. They pour from my lips like venom. A powerful poison that causes the utmost pain.

But mostly my thoughts move to my son almost instinctively. Because when I’m alone with my thoughts, I am with him. I miss him more than my mind can comprehend. My logical brain rejects the fact that he’s gone because it’s not logical that he’s dead. It doesn’t make sense. It’s not right or correct and it goes against the natural order of life. I know that he’s dead. I know that he’s never coming back. I know I can’t trade places with him. I know those things, but I will never accept them as truth.

I feel like I fell in love with all the wrong things in this life. I fell in love with music. With art. With calmness. With monotony. With color. And warmth. And I fell in love with the way certain things smell and taste. And I fell in love with a little boy who made me feel all those things at the same time. And holding him in my arms was more natural to me than breathing. There could never be another.

My grief pours out of me like a levy has been breached. The city of my heart was supposed to be protected by all the walls I built stone by stone over most of my life, but a little boy came along and tore all those walls down like they never even existed and then he was gone. I built this heart under sea level, protecting it the best way I knew how. He tore the walls down and I didn’t pull out before the hurricane hit.

I was selfish. I was blinded. I didn’t see whatever was there telling me we were in danger. I love that little boy so much. I still keep pictures of Keller and Joey. As much as I don’t understand, I understand how Keller looked at Joey. Keller was in awe of Joey. So was I. I look at those pictures to remind myself that we all loved and trusted Joey, especially Keller. You couldn’t keep them apart. I can’t accept what happened as fact.

I fell in love with a little boy and it cost me my entire life. I will wonder around this world aimlessly searching for something that can never be found. Like a ship floating out to sea with no captain and no destination. Every storm brings a beating to its shell, eventually chipping away enough of its strong, protective exterior to cause it to slowly, but surely, sink to the bottom of a watery, dark tomb that’s filled with the ghosts of every mother that’s come before her. Because none of us survive this – we only endure it until death so graciously comes for us.

My boy was all the best things about life. He was the smell of the rain. The first day of summer. A white Christmas. The feel of fresh cotton not yet picked. The excitement of a New Year’s Eve countdown in Times Square. The feeling in your stomach before your first kiss. The color of the sky right before a sunrise over the lake. The warmth of the sun on your face on a hot Ft. Walton afternoon in July. He was catching fireflies in a jar and sucking honeysuckles and every happy childhood memory. He was every good thing about life in and of himself and he’s gone and he took with him everything about happiness I’ve ever known. He took my life with him.

And now I’m sitting alone in a foreign living room watching the wall. The world is quiet for a moment. The white noise in my head silenced. And then girls start piling in from outside and I know that soon I’ll have to put on my mask. The one that says “I’m nice” and “I’m friendly” and “I’m approachable.” And it all just seems so exhausting – this fakeness.

Alone, I am just me – a grieving mom, a student of knowledge, a writer, a quiet solo artist. I dread sitting in chairs where the next chairs are so close I could reach out and touch the skin of a neighbor I didn’t buy property next to. A gross invasion of my personal space, even though no one else feels that way. I sit here and try to write and my thoughts are fluid until they are drowned out by voices so loud and harsh they interrupt my train of thought like a Monday morning car accident. I want to scream at them to shut up, but I know better. I was taught better. That’s not polite. That’s another mask I have to wear.

Everything is so distracting. The motion of the ceiling fan out of the corner of my eyes. The breeze of the air on just one side of my face. The way the air goes on and off again. The noise of a hairdryer humming so loud it almost vibrates my ears. The way the plants move to the rhythm of the ceiling fans, like they are performing a beautiful ballet, so effortlessly swaying.

Then a door slams, jolting my mind out of its mindless wonder and I am once again brought harshly back to this cold reality where I am sitting alone in a place I don’t want to be, with people who I don’t know, sitting on furniture that isn’t mine, listening to voices I don’t recognize in a house that is not my home. But yet, I don’t want to go home. There’s too much pain there. Too many unanswered questions.

I’m homesick. I’m homesick for a place of beauty. A place of peace. A place where I am free. A place where music fills the empty spaces and happiness flows freely like an open faucet. I’m homesick for sunsets that make one question if they’ve ever really seen beauty. A place where the water is so calm, it calms the soul.

I’m homesick for a place I’ve never been. A place where eggshells are in the trash can after making breakfast with your family, not on the floor for people to stumble over. And gossip has the word “Girls” at the end and it’s not a verb. Where people say what they mean and mean what they say. Where second guessing pertains to a game of Clue, not your self-worth. A place where love is infinite, not conditional. Where manners and pleasantries are natural and appreciated, not tiresome, old learned habits. A place where dogs bark and tails wag and you’re never without a warm welcome from a four-legged fur baby, no matter if you’ve been gone an hour or a whole day.

I’m homesick for places so beautiful and filled with love they envelop the soul and fill the empty spaces of the heart. I’m homesick for a being as equally as a place. I want to fill my heart with all the most beautiful and perfect things in all the spaces he left and I want to live in that place where happiness exists again, where my heart is whole and love lasts forever in the flesh and children never die and the correct order of living is restored.

I am homesick for a place that doesn’t exist. A place where my boy is whole again. A safe place where he is laughing and not scared. A place where he and I are together and mommy can save him. A place he doesn’t have to suffer, where he doesn’t have to hurt. A place where mommy is okay and sissy is still a pain in the ass.

A place where resting isn’t followed by an autopsy. A place where I dress my son to get dirty, not dress him to be buried in dirt. A place where the word “momma” comes from the mouth of a little blonde-haired, blue eyed boy who looks just like her. A place where the book “Goodnight Moon” didn’t sting so fucking bad. And hearing the words to “You Are My Sunshine” didn’t take your breath away. Where hospitals are a place of healing and not of death. A place where innocence still exists and is protected with the utmost importance.

So I isolate myself because I want to kiss the lips of ghosts and I long for people I’ve never met and I dream of places that do not exist. And I am home sick to death that my soul is not filled with them.