Lightwords.

Better late

I’ve been carrying my grandfather’s death certificate in my purse for two weeks. Although I’d like it not to be as morbid as it sounds, I’m pretty sure it’s somewhat indicative of my mental status lately. I initially put it there for convenience, as I had nowhere else to keep it when I received it during the wake. I was supposed to use it to get my dad some sort of refund on the 800 dollar flight ticket he bought me to attend the services last minute, but it turns out Southwest doesn’t give a flying fuck (pun intended) about sudden individualistic tragedies. Lately when I’m not experiencing some degree of angry manic emotion, I find myself rather apathetic and it reflects in the way I communicate. I am mostly too tired to care about life until I realize I’m practically 50 years old when it comes to regret and inferiority complex over missed experiences and what I should have accomplished at this point in my life ( I’m really 23, which equivocates to a whole lot of “What do you do?” and “What are you like?” when it comes to meeting my peers these days…neither of which I have a response for. Ridiculous…who doesn’t know how to respond to that? Seems like it’s just me, these days. And my boyfriend, who feels a lot of the same.) Anyway, I cleaned out my purse a few days ago and threw out that which no longer serves me, something I wish I could do with real life situations but that’s a joke because I have no coping skills for real change. That would have been the ideal time to reassign a home for my grandpa’s death certificate, like filed away with other important papers I’d like to not throw away. So I ended up taking it out of my bag and filing it away safely. Not even thirty seconds went by before I took it back out of its new home and put it back in my bag. Hence, definitely indicative of my mental status. I’m sure someone would categorize it as some form of grieving but I’m fairly certain it doesn’t quite fit with the typical stages of grief. Although with a degree in social work you would think I wouldn’t be so quick to rule it out as something relevant. But these days I’m anything but what I should be. His name was Paul and he died of a heart attack, mostly. It says that tobacco use probably contributed to his (natural) death in some way. I couldn’t stop reading that part when I got it. I was quite perturbed by it, because it seemed like material compiled for a survey, not at all relevant to anything. In fact, in spite of the book I brought and the pleasurable variety of magazines on the airplane, I chose as my reading material the carbon paper of death that had made its way to the bottom of my purse. He was lost for so long. I feel lost right now. There are plenty of days when I feel like me, but I mostly forget who I am. I don’t want to waste away.