I get home today ater a long day at work, a hectic day at work, to my mother, surprise surprise, planted in front of the tv, watching something, but also reading the newspaper. Logical right? Anyway, I am pleasant, try and engage in conversation, but nothing too heavy so that I don’t disturb her tv/reading thing. Everything about her actions shouts “fuck you”. She glares at me, gives me short responses, doesn’t engage or anything. Well, I’ve played this game too many times to not know what comes next. She’ll NEVER admit to being pissed at me about something, so I have to ask. I have to situation myself precariously beneath the lion’s paw in order to see what’s stuck between her toes. Stupid lion… GAR. Anyway, she starts with something like how she’s just really fed up with how I’ve been acting. Totally catches me off guard, I had been nothing but pleasant since I came into the apartment. I mention this, and she gets all “cat stuck in a corner” -ish. But I finally tease the real reason out of her. Apparently I threw her for a complete and total loop when I declined invitation to the funeral of one of my babysitters last night. As I recall I said I felt indifferent about it. And apparently, unbeknownst to me, this threw not only my mother, but as shes says, also my father for a complete loop. So lets back up a little bit.
Linda Myers died a few days ago. She was by far my favorite babysitter of all. She taught me to sing “old devil moon”, I dressed up in her shoes, and she never took any bullshit from me. I think she’s the only person who ever sent me to time-out (but always with a stack of pepperonis). I do love the woman, and that hasn’t changed, though I havent’ seen her for years and years. When I said I was indifferent, I meant about the funeral. I have no desire to go to some place in Queens and listen to people talk about a woman who I didn’t know. I seriously doubt if the Linda they know is the one I knew. I know all I need to know about Linda. And apparently my feelings about this have “shooken(sp?) my mother to her core”. What bullshit. I don’t even think “shooken” is a word… It sure doesn’t look right. My mother is “unsettled” because she suddenly can’t imagine who I am that I feel this way about some who played such an integral part in my life.
Fuck You. Who are you. You haven’t even thought about Linda since the last time you payed her to spend time with me so you wouldn’t have to. You take yourself to Queens to sit in a hall and surround yourself with people you don’t know so that you can say you went. “It’s the right thing to do”. “She would have wanted it”. “She would have appreciated it”. WHAT? Linda would have appreciated it? Linda, who is currently a mass of flesh buried 12 feet under? I think not. Linda lives on in our memories, she lives on in mine, I don’t need to be reminded of her by seeing her lifeless body dressed up in pancake makeup. As far as I’m concerned, Linda died the last time I saw her. She was an integral part of one part of my life. That part of my life is over, and Linda lives on in IT. You think by going to her funeral you’re better than me? Do you really think Linda would have wanted you there? Really, when’s the last time you thought about her? Called her? Seen her? Right, that’s what I thought. Pay your last respects maybe? No, it doesn’t work that way. Is it not socially acceptable to say what I said? Think what I think?
Clearly you don’t actually care what I think. If you did, you would have said something last night, or if it didn’t resonate until today, then you should have said something when I got home. But no. You just sit there. You’ve decided that I am some kind of monster who doesn’t care about other people. You’ve passed judgement on me, and as we all know, you’re always right, so who cares what I was ACTUALLY thinking. I’m not going to bother trying to explain myself to you, because it will either: a- bounce off your already passed judgement, or, possibly worse, b- get through, and then be used against me at some other point in my life.
Does it make sense to you? Linda, now, as a dead person, or last week, as a live one, wasn’t really a person anymore, not in my life anyway. Can you look at it that way, can you open your mind just for a second and see it how I see it? Can you try to understand that what society expects of you isn’t necessarily how you should live your life? Can you try and withhold judgement just for a few minutes? I know, at this point your mind is so warped, but try, please do.
This is how I see it: Linda isn’t a person anymore to me, not like you’re a person, or my best friend is a person, or the guy I’m fucking is a person. A person has a personality, has a being, and does things that effect me in some way. Linda hasn’t done anything that’s effected me in so very long. She is a memory. She is something I look back on fondly sometimes, when I look at old pictures, or am day-dreaming. If there needs to be something unfortunate in this situation, lets say it’s that, that she’s drifted away. It’s sad that she’s slipped out of my life. But maybe that’s just the progression of life. Maybe I didn’t need her anymore, maybe she didn’t need me. Or just maybe my life took me this way, and hers took her that way. I love her, and I know my life would never been the same had she not been a part of it, but I am not little 5 year old Katie anymore, and I do not miss her. And I HATE you for making me feel like I’m less than human for feeling this way.
I resent being made to feel bad about not feeling bad.
I honestly contemplated going to the funeral last night, while I was trying to fall asleep, I decided I would get up early and tell mom I was going with her. But then I started to think about what I would wear. Do I have anything black? Of course. What could I wear that I would be able to continue on to work in. But then James might say something stupid when I came in all black, like “when’s the funeral”, and then I would get all smug, and say, it was this morning. And then everyone would feel bad for me. And then I stopped. What the fuck was all that? Terrible is what is was. SHAM. And I knew then that I would not be going.
I don’t ask that you approve of everything that I do. Or even understand any of it. I only ask that you not make me question myself.
