Lessons I Must Learn
even when I wish not to.
This piece is from October 28, 2022. It’s been four months and one week since I have written this piece. Today, I am sharing it for the first time.
If I should be learning anything from this moment in my timeline it should be something like life is limited, live it while you can or enjoy every moment while you can, but I am not learning anything along those lines.
Being put in such an awkward position, as this so is, my brain can’t help but ask what the point of it is. Is it karma? Is it like, a necessary life lesson? More so on that subject, is it just what life is about? Life and death.
At this moment in my timeline there has been one so very prominent repetition in my conversations, this random obsession people have with themselves. I mean, everyone is obsessed with themselves to some length, that’s just what people do naturally. However, I’ve always had a character trait that can immediately recognize when someone I love is down.
Whether it’s the simple slouch of someone’s back or the way their smile isn’t as rambunctious as it was ten minutes ago. So why can’t they do that for me? I’ve been quoted as the “yellow” friend for years. Whenever I get down and a little sad, I’m acting weird and mean or I’m embarrassing to be around. That’s the question I have. Can you not look past yourself and ask what is wrong with me? Can you not ask me if I’m okay rather than asking if you’re okay with the way I portray my feelings?
I had a conversation with a friend this past week at lunch and she was steadily filling me in on a book she was reading. I was listening, like a good friend does, but my brain was screaming at me that something was wrong, and I need to go home, and what can I do to make life better for the people around me, and you better not say a word Madelyn, you’ll ruin everyone else’s day with your sour mood.
“You’re supposed to ask what I got. Act like you care,” she quoted.
My grandfather’s dying and I can’t talk to anyone about it without seeming self-absorbed, I thought.
“You didn’t give me time to ask,” I smiled.
I’ve always waited for the day to find someone who can look at me and automatically know something is up and to ask if I need a hug, besides my parents of course. I feel like there’s always that deep craving for a friendship beyond false romantic happy silly fantasy world books and the best friend coming of age movies I watch. If someone’s life can be written that way, why can it not be acted in such a manner? I have waited my whole life for someone to look at me and ask, “Are you okay, genuinely?”
Such a question can never be answered.
There are so many layers to my life currently where it’s been flipped upside down in the span of three days. Well, yesterday it was three.
Someone picked up my pan and tossed it up, hoping for it to still be holding the pancake on the way down. We all know life doesn’t really work that way. Oh, and by the way, I am the pancake in that situation. Oh, and by the way, I am the pan tosser in that situation. Oh, and by the way- again, I am the pan in that situation.
Late last night around 11:04, exactly 11:04- I pulled up my call log for this, I called my father and snuck out to the driveway to choke out sob stories of my current distress and how messed up life is because why must you go through the action of literally watching a loved one wither away?
This is where I remind myself, Madelyn, you are the yellow friend. Madelyn, you’ll ruin everyone else’s day with your sour mood.
I have sat in my bedroom multiple times this week and said, what feels like, hundreds of times, I wish I could go back to the person I was a week ago. Where I could talk to my mom openly about how I felt and was joking with my dad in his kitchen and was walking through the house and not listening for every creak in every air vent and every scratch in every carpet.
But, I cannot.
That’s another messed up thing about the life I’m living right now. I’m suffering the consequences mentally because someone I love refuses to take care of themselves. So, what am I supposed to do? Wither away just like him?
I was on the phone with my dad that night, like I previously stated, and he told me, “Stop acting like he’s already dead.” In my 15-year-old mind, he is. He’s dead and gone with the wind and I will never get him back. I feel like my father doesn’t understand that I am not mourning him, I am mourning who he will forever and always never be again.
It’s in our God given right to float away into ashes and back through the dust as we get older. Everyone here has an expiration date is what I’ve always heard. Knowing doesn’t make it any easier.
After his first diabetic shock on Sunday, I knew it would never be normal again. It was like this sinking eerie feeling, this is final. Negativity ringing in my head again and again. This is final.
With his head gashed open and his nose split across the bridge, my mind whispered, Madelyn, this is final, love.
Final for what? His future? Mine? Yours? My mothers? So many questions for the world final.
I was raised to believe I had the power to change anything and everything. Maybe it’s the naivety I’m still carrying around from when I would carry a glass doll on my hip like my life depended on it or when I would try to smoke pretzel sticks because I saw it online and wanted to try with my friends. None of this correlates with power, yet it does in every which way. It’s not understandable, even to me, the person typing this out with her brother’s icky gaming keyboard.
That belief in my power changed and it wasn’t a good feeling. I still had this glimmer of hope that I had the power to change anything and everything and yet it was stripped away from me with one grunt of pain through a shared air vent.
What does a young girl do in that instance? Pray? Journal? Cry? Go to her mom for help? Call her dad in the dog hours of night? Text a friend? What was I supposed to do besides everything and anything, yet nothing at all?
Nothing in my life currently makes sense and this shift happened in one day, or two, or three, or four, or maybe five depending on how tomorrow goes.
It feels life threatening and life ending at the same time. Although we all know it’s not. Perhaps it’s that power I had to change anything and everything a week ago being taken that makes me feel so weak currently.
Or maybe the fact that I’m fifteen and my cousin is just steadily reminding me that my eighteenth birthday is getting closer by the second as if that makes life any easier. Once I’m eighteen maybe I’d be immune to this feeling of helplessness and being fearful and hopeful and oh so confused at the same time. It lacks sense, heavily, as we can all see.
If there is anything that I am learning in these days of my life is that people will always resort to themselves rather than to others. Do I want to live in such a way? No. Will I probably resume that route because it’s what’s mandatory for girls of my fashion? Maybe. Am I ashamed to say that? Yes.
I am steadily reminding myself that I just need to wash my hair and I’ll be fine, but I can’t seem to get up the courage to stand in the shower for thirty minutes, even though I know it’ll do me an immeasurable amount of good. I’d rather lie in my bed and feel my heating pad burn my stomach than wash my hair. Where is the sense in that statement?
Like this is where my life ends, in between the lines of the lies I make up in my head. Like my grandpa is already dead and my friends don’t notice something is wrong with me and I can’t talk to my mom the way I used to currently and I don’t know if I’ll be able to ever again.
Maybe one day I’ll look at this and understand this chapter. Even if it’s not one I want to read. Even if it’s not a lesson I wish to learn.