Season of Darkness

Sometimes you just get tired. Sometimes you’re tired of being alone.

I've got lots of friends, wonderful family, and I am loved. I always feel loved. But there are days when you look around the house and you miss family. Friends come to visit, and then they leave. I never feel lonely until they leave. I have the world’s best roommates, but we each live our individual lives, and the house is empty a lot.

Winter is a season of darkness. As long as I can remember, my memories of winter are shaded in different hues of gray. I don’t know if I’m vitamin D deficient, or in need of one of those fancy sunlamps, but I've always thought of winter as being almost the equivalent of darkness. Even the sunny days feel dark somehow.

The car, my beloved Betsy, is a source of a lot of worry these days. I feel like every single time I go to start her, something else is wrong. Lately, it has been every single time: bumpers, cracked windshield, wiper motor…

Get it together, Betsy.

But seriously, friends ask why I don’t just buy a new car. They haven’t seen my bank account. They don’t know my loan repayments each month. I wish they would just stop suggesting it. It isn't going to happen. It actually kind of hurts my feelings.

And here’s the really stupid thing. Every time something bad happens to the car, it feels like I’m losing Mom Mom all over again. Betsy was a gift to me from my great grandmother. She’s gone now, and I guess that in my mind, I've sort of come to see the car as all I've got left from her. In a way, the car represents Mom Mom.

I cried like a baby when I skidded on ice and for the first time in my life, had a bit of a car accident a few weeks ago. I felt like I had let my great grandmother down. I know that you’re not supposed to put this much care and love into a car, a material possession, but I can’t help it. Mom Mom was the only grandparent I've had who was there with us kids for our entire lives, who cared enough to make time for us, to see us, to love us. I mean, I had 25 years with her. That’s a long time.

So, I haven’t let go. Instead, I've put all of my grief into this car, this hunk of metal and (from the way the front bumper shattered with only 8 mph impact) plastic.

I guess that I’ll slowly figure this all out. It’s not a cry for help. It’s not a declaration that my life sucks, because it doesn't. I’m just tired. I’m still grieving. And some days, I just come to the realization that I’m far from the people I love most, and I have to do this on my own.