Change- in the wrong direction....

I feel like I am turning into the kind of person I used to hate.... bitter - cynical..the kind of person I didn't want to be around.  I used to tell those people to forgive, or to savor the positive and blessings - that to let past hurts haunt you only make you the loser.  Stop feeling sorry for yourself, pick yourself up and get on with things.  It happened, it's over -now move on.  And I felt mostly justified for saying those things, after all look at what I had escaped.  Look at what I had lived but managed to come back from.  How ignorant I was.

Even when Jimmy died and it had been 6 or 7 months, I wanted Ally back.  I told her "Jimmy's dead - WE are still alive." I had no idea........ I had no clue what I was talking about.  How presumptuous I had been..... how dare I say that to her?  How dare I think for even a second that I could empathize with her?  I had no idea and I apologized to her for that shortly after Shane's death.  (And sometimes I wonder if that is what this is all about but that's a whole other thought process all together...)  So as much as I want to take my own arrogant advice - I am stuck.  I am stuck and I can not help but mourn for the past.  I mean my brother, my mother - for Gods sake it's my family.... how am I supposed to say "life goes on?"  I don't want it to go on - I want my old life back.  I want my family back and I do not want life to go on any other way.  In that sense, I can empathize  my mom. She felt the same way, I am sure of it.  She did not want life to go on without Shane, and now it doesn't..... It makes sense to me, her death.  In that fucked up way, it makes perfect sense to me.  I do feel that if I still "believed," if my faith had not been shattered -that I would be more at peace.  If I trusted that I would be reunited with them, I would be more able to enjoy the time I have left and maybe wouldn't be so bitter.  If I could believe I would see them again then I might be able to embrace life again.  But my faith is gone - maybe not gone - but not automatic anymore.  I do want proof.  I can't "just believe."  It didn't matter before if I was wrong and foolish for believing in God - it didn't determine whether or not I would ever see my brother again....  Now it matters.  NOW it means a whole hell of a lot if I'm wrong - and that's where I'm stuck.  I want to just believe - I want to be happy and trusting again - I really do - but I just can not feel it and I can not force myself to feel it either - and that really pisses me off too....

and so....

it's been a year and five months... A YEAR. A whole year has passed. It's unbelievable really. I guess the way I have made it a year and a half is that at some point last summer (around the one year mark) I had to turn certain things off so to speak. I couldn't think about the reality of what had happened. I had to stop thinking about what it all meant. I could tell someone my brother had died but then I had to stop there. I couldn't let my head go to the place where he died and wouldn't be at my little sister's wedding or that it meant I would never hear his laugh, or babysit his kids. I couldn't think about the scene at the funeral when they were loading up the hearse and the Dropkick Murphy's Amazing Grace went from the bagpipe refrain to the thrasher metal.
I couldn't think about the three sentences that changed my whole world. My sister's voice at 4am "Sarah.... Shane had an accident."
"is he okay?" I gasp
"No hes deeead" she moaned through tears.
I couldn't think about my dad's voice "I've got to go, the coroner is here. Sarah you've gotta come home." I had to push certain things out of my head.....
the relief I felt when I walked into the funeral home and looked through the windows into one of the reception rooms and saw my brother laying there, the white sheet exposing him only from the neck up. "oh, well there's Shane," I thought with surprised relief. "He's right there." forgetting for a second he wasn't just sleeping.
There are certain things I can not allow myself to think about or it becomes too much. There are certain things I ignore in order to get out of bed everyday. It is so strange to me that even after all this time, the pain is still so raw and savage. It can be crippling, even now. I can discuss the logical side of things....."my brother died in a car accident two houses away from home." I can not however, think about what this logical synopsis means to me emotionally. I can not think about my brother just being gone, it is too much to bear.