SIX MONTHS

It's exactly six months now since my mother faded away into that long night, and yet sometimes it feels as if it's been no time at all. An entire winter of technical "orphandom" has passed and the necessary forms have been coming and going, and the glacial movement towards resolution has inexorably moved onwards through the web of time, but still doesn't seem to be approaching anything like a real conclusion, and so it goes, and so it goes, the endless blink of an eye, fitted around "getting on with it", "returning to normal" and "pulling ourselves together" whatever any of those terms happen to be.

Although "normal" feels like a relative term these days anyway.

I wonder really how I'm supposed to feel…? Whether this is "normal" now…? Whether life is always going to feel this strange…? Or whether I'm dragging it all out for far longer than seems reasonable to everyone else, all of those "normal" people I see hustling and bustling their various ways through life…?

Somehow work has seemed peculiar ever since the proverbial "it" occurred, and my focus appears to remain shot to pieces. I am, as they say "getting by" but I don't feel much like the person I once was. Meanwhile the oddest things can cause me to feel very emotional, whilst I swing from moments of crushing despair, to ridiculously embarrassing displays of high euphoria which I regret almost as soon as the utterances have escaped from my mouth.

And still things don't appear to be getting done, or, at least if they are getting done, it feels as if they're getting done very slowly indeed, whilst the "stuff to do" pile just feels as if it's getting larger and larger and larger, and when the "stuff" does get done, the level to which it gets done by seems to be inadequate or lacking in some way.

The telephone calls seem half-hearted; The cards that ought to be sent are left far to late; The forms sit around still waiting for some attention, and so on, and so on. I no longer feel as if I can be relied upon, most notably by myself, because sometimes I feel that I am, in fact, by myself, even when I'm not.

It may depress me to find that I'm living amidst unmitigated clutter, but I seldom manage to drag myself into action and actually do something about it, and now we're getting to the time of the year when the outdoors is calling out to me and begging for attention and yet I still sit around thinking about it but not exactly doing anything to actually deal with it.

Stupid thoughts come crashing in out of the blue and when I least expect them. Strange, peculiar states of being that confuse and depress me in almost equal measure; Things I ought to have done; Things I should have said; Effort I could have put in but chose not to. And then there's the other peculiarity, that strange sense that the world has changed forever, even though it appears to be plodding on in much the same way as it always has done.

Somehow, despite the obvious ludicrousness and fantastic nature of the feeling, I feel less "protected" that I used to be, less "looked after", less "watched over…"

It's as if the careful eye that I once felt was looking out for me has somehow switched its focus and moved its attention elsewhere, as if the observer who was once inspecting my every move for signs of hope and redemption had finally given up on me, consigned me to the dustbin as a failed project, and begun to look around for other, worthier benefactors, because I have been tested and found to be wanting.

Do we ever truly get over such things as some people seem to suggest we should?

I really don't know.

It's been an odd half year and I find myself at a different point on whatever arc it is that we all have to experience from time-to-time to the thousands of other people who also have to deal with these situations in their own lives. I know that I'm no different to any of them, although so many of them seem so much more capable of dealing with these things than I appear to be.

And yet, somehow, we plod on towards the next significant milestone, or another anniversary, and another moment that marks and cements  the new normality into place.