I Am Going to Regret/The Day That I Was Born

This is why my voicemail is not set up.
.                                                                   Bea called three times half an hour ago.
.                                                                   One right after the other,
.                                                                   I watched my screen flash
.                                                                                                                 ;Ma;, ;Ma;, ;Ma;.

I’ve been thinking about this. About being no contact during a catastrophe. What does it mean when your mother is dead when she isn’t? I know people break no contact all the time for all kinds of reasons but I cannot imagine my life with her in it for any reason. She is not someone to me any more than the person who lives five houses down is. Blood doesn’t mean we aren’t strangers.

‘Nobody in this house
Wants to own up to the truth
I crawl in shotgun and reach into his mouth
And grab hold of one long
Sharp tooth’

I spent four hours making quiche filling from our overage of eggs, just to steady my hands and to keep me off the internet for a while. And she destroyed the small banked up block of near peace I worked hard to make myself at the end of the night. Just like that I’m right back into high gear, humming along with panic and panic and panic. She’s been at Sibling too; at least twice today _{<we having both declined further relationship after my wedding>}.

‘I start
Wailing
The lion roars’

Dad still flies back on Tuesday. No change, no improvement to his decisions. He could stay there _{<but he won’t>} and isolate in his girlfriend’s big house. I am so concerned planes will already be grounded by then. His girlfriend says she is sending him back in a mask, at least. He won’t agree to come here to isolate once he’s home. I am seriously considering kidnapping my father. I don’t know what else to do. _{<not that anyone does right now>}

‘There’s no good way to end this
Anyone can see
There’s this great big you
And little old me
And we hold on
For dear life
We hold on
We hold on’
– Mountain Goats