I do that too

After finding myself in the parking lot of the hardware store and not knowing why I was there or why I was in town, or more specifically, how I had driven there…..I flew home. I was going to eat mom’s food stamp inspired home cooking, sleep in, watch trashy tv, and not think. Most importantly, I would not be thinking much. Not think about all the panic attacks. Not think about the dreams. Not think about having lost control of my thoughts and my feelings, as they found fissures to surface through without permission. Just not think.

The first evening mom and I talked about the things that had brought me to call her, telling her I was flying home. We didn’t call them symptoms, just things that happen sometimes. Symptoms is to sterile a word. To dramatic. We’re practical people. We have problems, we fix them, we move on. So mom and I are talking, dad is listening.

 I finish a word rant of stressed out run on sentences.

 That’s what I do. Dad says. He leans forward. Sometimes I just forget things too. I know I have to do something and then I get distracted and I forget about it. Yeah, that’s exactly what’s going on in my head. They say it’s a stress thing. We’re just trying to do too much.

 

I didn’t think much of it, then. Now as I see it running in my memory, I see him sit back, relieved. He thinks he has found confirmation of how innocent and normal his mind is behaving. He must have felt so light just then. All that worry grabbed with hands of solidarity and wrestled from his shoulders, so that he could sit straight for a moment, and smile at his renewed future. He must have been so happy, in that moment.

And later, when we were told different, I wonder if he thought back to this moment, like I do. Did he remember that evening of joyful hope with anger, or with longing, or could he even remember that evening at all?

 

 

 

 

I think about it. I remember it. I remember how normal it all was. I spoke, and he understood, and he answered, and it made sense. It was a conversation of lucidity.