My memories are scattered. Sharp fragments. Bloody, jagged, lost pieces of time.

I am wandering the rocky streets in Bilbao, alone. I’m wearing the Teva, which I hate. I sit in front of the Guggenheim, crowded with tourists, and watch. They all seem to love their fucking tevas. They also love their daybags. They seem to think they’re on the  Camino de Santiago. I realize I’m judging in a really annoying way. I’ll write about it later.

I am wearing black laceup boots. With a skirt I picked up in Barcelona. It’s lightweight, gauzy, and makes me feel like I fit in with the Spanish women. Step by step, I walk, little pebbles shifting beneath me. I scatter my shadow over the rocky streets as I go. Each step connects me to the disjointed fragments of memory from before.

Dirty, smoky air fills my lungs. I see scattered fragments. Fragments of things, pieces of people. Blood on sharp, hot metal. Even people seem cut and raw, like they are made of shrapnel. The world outside blurs with the world inside me. Both are filled with remnants.

I am my own world. Love, grief, memories. Words and war.

In Memoriam

At first, it’s a party. People come over. They bring food, flowers, and booze. They clean. They cook. How are you? They ask because they truthfully want to know. They bring books and ask you to go on walks. They plan the memorial. They stay by your side on that day of celebration. Like a birthday party, a memorial celebrates a life.

The memorial is the final phase of people gifting their time. Soon, they must return to their lives and reconnect with their own families. Friends begin visiting only on weekends. The phone rings less. Walks grow shorter, then rarer. Casseroles stop appearing, their careful wrappings missing in the kitchen. Flowers wilt. Leaves drip onto the table. Like snowflakes and people, flowers melt.

How are you doing? The soft voices ask these caring questions, but slowly their tone changes—speed, intonation, their topics shift. Soon, conversations turn to life again. The lives of the living. I notice the shift as I stand outside of their worlds, unchanged.

But I cannot, I do not, return to my life because my life isn’t there anymore. And never will be again. I don’t think I’ll ever rebuild.

Now. Who do I cook for? Who do I cook with? How do I comfort anyone? How do I live in a world without that person? At first, there is disbelief. Shock. The phone is just a cold thing now. No more silly messages. I start to feel more, and then less, as I get used to what is missing from my life every fucking day. The repetition changes me. Life outside keeps going.

Then things start to seem almost normal. The world keeps going. I notice. I cry less. I laugh. I listen to a podcast. I eat breakfast. This uneasy normal settles in. It never really fits with what is inside me.

Life goes on, and so do I.

Shock and disbelief are gone. I am not numb anymore. The fresh wounds are covered, but the pain inside stays. Under the surface, I still bleed. My mind is full of hazy, painful images.

Memories. Trees, babies, and so much beautiful food. Love. Hate. Sadness.

So many memories are fading and breaking down. Like old photographs from the last century. The images blend and dissolve together.

I know I will remember everything again. And again. But my memories will not be the same. They change, just a little, every time I remember.

My friends go out to dinner. They take day trips to the lake. They eat at home or at someone else’s place. They return to their worlds. My world is too fucking quiet. My brain is a smoky battlefield of memories.

[imagely id=”2026″]

My memories are shrapnel and bloody bits of flesh and jagged remnants of time.

I am wandering the rocky streets in Bilbao. By myself. I’m wearing my brown Converse. They used to be white. The soft, bouncy soles protect my toes from the rock paving on which I walk, stepping on bits of pebbles scattering the rocky earth.

Dirty smoky air, which I breath. Pieces of parts of things. Of people. Of memories. Shrapnel.

I am my own world. My spinning world of love and grief and memories. My world of my words. My world of my worlds. My ether, with floating, evolving, melting snowflakes.

At first, it’s a party. People come over. They bring food and flowers and booze. They clean. They cook. How are you? They ask, because they truthfully want to know. They bring books and ask you to go on walks. They plan the memorial. They stay by your side on that day of celebration. Like a birthday party, a memorial celebrates a life.

The memorial is the last phase of people gifting you their time. They must get back to their lives. They must get back to the people in their lives. Friends visit only on weekends. The phone rings less. The walks get shorter and scarcer. The carefully wrapped casseroles stop appearing in the kitchen. The flowers start to wilt, dripping their leaves on the tabletop. Like snowflakes and people — flowers melt.

How are you doing? The soft voices that asked the caring questions start to evolve in tone, speed, intonation. And topics. Conversations evolve into the talk of life. The lives of the living.

But I can’t, I do not, return to my life because my life isn’t there anymore. And never will be again. Guernica.

My friends go out for dinners and take day trips to lakes. Some of them eat at home, or at the home of friends. They return to their worlds. Silence now permeates what used to be our home. My house is now empty of noise because it is now missing my favorite sound. Her voice. Now nothing is right..

Now. For whom do I cook? Who do I cook with? How do I comfort others? How do I adjust to a new life without that person’s existence? In the beginning — disbelief, shock, a phone that becomes a cold thing that no longer brings me silly messages from the now dead person. I start feeling more feelings, and they are feelings that slowly start to fade as I acclimate to what’s missing from my life every fucking day.

Then — then things start seeming kinda normal. I notice that the world is continuing. I cry less. I lol. I listen to a podcast. I eat breakfast.

Life goes on and so do I.

I no longer have shock or disbelief to numb me. I no longer have the fresh, bloody cuts to bandage. All I have are what’s bleeding under my severed arteries and punctured organs and smokey images.

Memories. Trees and babies and so much beautiful food. Love. Hate. Sadness.

So many faded, deteriorating, decomposing images Last century’s photographs, drifting and joining and melting.

I know that I’ll remember all of the things again — and again. But my memories won’t be exactly the same. Our memories change, for the better, just a little bit every time we remember them. Our memories are protein.

I knit and I knit. A scarf for Darlene. Darlene will smile. I’ll feel her smile in the yarn coming alive in my hands.

I’ve started knitting

My friends go out for dinners and take day trips to lakes and my friends eat at their homes. The homes of other people. They return to their worlds. My world is too fuckin’ quiet. And that makes my brain a smokey battlefield of memories.

During one of my recentish stays at Baylor Hospital a social worker came to my room. This isn’t unusual. What was unusual was that she came to me to tell me that I qualify for mental disability. The social worker told me I qualify for disability because it can help me access basic health care. It can also help me pay for medical care to deal with my increasingly problematic pancreas. She has already set up an appointment for me at the psychiatry clinic in Parkland.

I qualify for mental disability because I have documented medical records that show I have severe atrophy. Brain damage. People with cerebral atrophy, lose brain cells (neurons), which causes connections between their brain cells. Brain volume decreases. This loss of brain volume can lead to problems with thinking, memory, functioning, and —

The greater the loss, the more brain is fucked. This is a phrase that plays on an infinite loop inside my skull. Every time I look for some item I put somewhere I put myself down for being such an idiot. Then I remember that my brain is fucked. But. Life will go on. And I’ll forget that.

Anyway. Back to Saint Mary’s. Anesthetics activate memory-loss receptors in the brain, ensuring that folks don’t remember what happens during surgery. The activity of memory loss receptors remains high long after the drugs have left the patient’s system, sometimes for days, sometimes longer. We all be unique. Oh! More fun. I almost forgot — get it?? I almost forgot??? Awhile ago I was hospitalized for hepatic encephalopathy, which is a brain disorder that happens when the liver is fucked.

Loss of brain ability occurs when the liver can’t remove toxins from the blood. This is called hepatic encephalopathy (HE). This problem occurs suddenly or it develop slowly over time.

The cause for my high ammonia levels in my body was from iron buildup in my liver. (Also, I have hep C and hemochromatosis.)

Hemochromatosis is a disease that’s easy to keep tolerable. The main treatment is phlebotomy to remove iron, through blood. But, this easily accessible treatment is only easily accessible to people with health coverage. I am not one of those people. Ergo, my body is failing from iron overload and is trying to poison me in myriad ways.

The hepatic encephalopathy incident was so scary I remember a lot of it. Like being literally chained to a hospital bed so I get ammonia drained, and…meds pumped in. I was so fucking fucked in the motherfucking head at this point—I refused to stay in bed. So the big guns—aka needles—were brought to fight the battle to fight the battle with ammonia brain. Anyhow. I’m mental. Je suis officiellement fou. And I was scared.

So I’m going to knit. A lot. And think about being officially mental. Mentally disabled. But hey. Balls to the walls, ammiright?