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More grief crap, and twin-ness
Oct. 22nd, 2005 08:37 amI had a very blunt, reasonably helpful discussion with someone yesterday, who offered -- this'll sound bizarre -- cold comfort, and if I can't have a hug, well, that's pretty much my favorite kind. Rational. Intellectual. Platitude-free. Even though too much of that makes me worry I'm not letting myself emote.
We talked about being in the public eye in a sense -- being in a closed environment like a school and having people know about your 'tragedy' -- no matter how absolutely appalling that idea is, it's still more or less the situation. And, how important it is to permit the physical release of tears.
And I came home and did some thinking -- which often expresses itself in conversations with non-existent people (no wonder folks think I'm crazy) -- and realized some things about my twin that I'm not going to share all of here, but that, I think, give me some new insight into our relationship. He is the one person I had to see, had to speak with, as something between a moral and a biological imperative, when I found out about Papa. Seeing him would make it better, I told myself. I just had to hang on until that point. And I hung on from Sionnan, Ireland, to Newark, to Seattle, to Anchorage -- all sans Kleenex, mind you. And when we finally were together, it didn't make things all that much better. There was so much to go through (Papa's things, arrangements, etc.) that there was time for us to have only one real conversation -- one -- and then it was time for one of us to get on a plane and fly away again.
[And then I got to see my folks (mom and my dad -- who happens to not be related to me) for something like 20 minutes in August, instead of the three days of family and friends in L.A. originally planned. Just 'hang on'. Oh, here, Sid, let's knock out the thing you were hanging on for. Now, hang on some more. It's the eternal carrot, dangling in front of me.]
I feel like I'm doing the same thing to an extent now. If I just 'hang on' until I see my twin again -- next year, or later (even if my folks came out for a visit or for graduation when I get my J.D., he probably won't) -- everything will be OK. In one sense, I'm clinging to that twin-ness to give me a feeling of not being completely stranded. That there is someone out there even though they're not where I am.
And yet, our lives are so different, though we are still so the same in so many ways. (We weigh the same. I'm not kidding. It's freaky. He's 5'10", I'm 4'11", and we weigh the same. We both had heart palpitations at the same time a couple of years ago. We both love the same foods. We both had back injuries. The list goes on.)
In a very real sense, he can't be the one to hold me. He has his family to hold now, and it's right that his attention should be focused "downward", on his node of the family tree, not "up" to his parents or "across" to me. That's the way it should be, when you form a family. He's Daddy, and Daddy has obligations.
Results of self-reflection on a Friday night. Yippee.
*exhale*
And now, I go to write on my Journal article. (14 pages, btw, has to be about 25 on Monday, with proper cites, so I'll be doing the 10 pages all today, and figuring out my footnotes tomorrow.)
We talked about being in the public eye in a sense -- being in a closed environment like a school and having people know about your 'tragedy' -- no matter how absolutely appalling that idea is, it's still more or less the situation. And, how important it is to permit the physical release of tears.
And I came home and did some thinking -- which often expresses itself in conversations with non-existent people (no wonder folks think I'm crazy) -- and realized some things about my twin that I'm not going to share all of here, but that, I think, give me some new insight into our relationship. He is the one person I had to see, had to speak with, as something between a moral and a biological imperative, when I found out about Papa. Seeing him would make it better, I told myself. I just had to hang on until that point. And I hung on from Sionnan, Ireland, to Newark, to Seattle, to Anchorage -- all sans Kleenex, mind you. And when we finally were together, it didn't make things all that much better. There was so much to go through (Papa's things, arrangements, etc.) that there was time for us to have only one real conversation -- one -- and then it was time for one of us to get on a plane and fly away again.
[And then I got to see my folks (mom and my dad -- who happens to not be related to me) for something like 20 minutes in August, instead of the three days of family and friends in L.A. originally planned. Just 'hang on'. Oh, here, Sid, let's knock out the thing you were hanging on for. Now, hang on some more. It's the eternal carrot, dangling in front of me.]
I feel like I'm doing the same thing to an extent now. If I just 'hang on' until I see my twin again -- next year, or later (even if my folks came out for a visit or for graduation when I get my J.D., he probably won't) -- everything will be OK. In one sense, I'm clinging to that twin-ness to give me a feeling of not being completely stranded. That there is someone out there even though they're not where I am.
And yet, our lives are so different, though we are still so the same in so many ways. (We weigh the same. I'm not kidding. It's freaky. He's 5'10", I'm 4'11", and we weigh the same. We both had heart palpitations at the same time a couple of years ago. We both love the same foods. We both had back injuries. The list goes on.)
In a very real sense, he can't be the one to hold me. He has his family to hold now, and it's right that his attention should be focused "downward", on his node of the family tree, not "up" to his parents or "across" to me. That's the way it should be, when you form a family. He's Daddy, and Daddy has obligations.
Results of self-reflection on a Friday night. Yippee.
*exhale*
And now, I go to write on my Journal article. (14 pages, btw, has to be about 25 on Monday, with proper cites, so I'll be doing the 10 pages all today, and figuring out my footnotes tomorrow.)