Myself

Acknowledgement

by Jemal Yarbrough

Warning! Whining dead ahead, please delete page before the debris of self-loathing, regret, and petty annoyances ruin your day and eyesight!!

Lately, I don’t know if I even know myself.  Small things I used to ignore or not even let me enter my consciousness now grind away loudly in my head, and I feel as if some are there just to purposefully make our lives more miserable.  I keep trying to forgive, to ignore to live day by day yet I feel so full of emotion that I manage to puke up small hissy fits or too sharp retorts to people who just happen to be in my eyesight..

Between her bouts of nausea, pill giving, constant asking if she’s ok, I have lost sense of who I am and what makes me tick.  Gone is the schedule to write, to read, to sustain myself, and I realize I need to get back to basics as I completely alienate myself from everyone.  I seem to have just become reactive and living emotion to emotion, and that doesn’t quite make me a pleasant person to be around especially if you are her best friend or my new brother-in-law.

Yet there is more to this than me being just self-pitying  In all of this, is the cry of my love language: acknowledgement.  I come from a family where we are quick to appreciate and recognize what we do for each other, yet I am with someone who is heading to possible depression as she copes with a disease that has stolen away so much of her energy and heart.  We sit apart across a gulf of resentment, and self-pity, and while I call out to her, I seem to be just by myself, destined to wallow in a shallow pool of self-hatred and guilt.  Our friends are trying to help yet are some too young, some too selfish and some just indifferent.  Then there is the special category of people who seem to be waiting for for me to beg for forgiveness and all I can say is that they will be waiting a long time.  Finally, there is the extra special category of self-important people who for one reason or another are not reaching out because they are “hurt” by my sentiments.  To them, I say a big fuck you and please get out of my life.  I pity myself for being dumb enough to be friends with them in the first place.

I also know that two simple words from her could change all of this.  Two small words that if I heard occasionally or perhaps in the form of a card, a poem, a line or just an intimate moment.  Two words that would make the day just go faster and more worthwhile instead of the constant and steady silence in our room and house.  Two words that could cleanse away this wall of resentment between us.  Two words from her that could make me feel like a husband rather than just a caretaker.  Two words that could ease the heaviness in my heart and dampen my reactive nature.  Two words that would make the 3 years of hell we had prior to her illness fade into black.  Two words that would mute my hurt and anger at the world and those close to us because I am lashing out blindly. Two words: Thank You.  Just that.  Thank you.  I do not need anything else.  Those are the words that will sound proof me from my constant doubt, worry and self-hate.

Thank you for reading. Thank you Lord for never leaving me alone. Thank you Family for always being there are at my lowest moments and just bringing me up with your presence.  Thank you ex-friends for teaching me the value of friendship and finally thank you to the ones who selflessly come out of the wood works and shown the true measure of caring.

 

 

Myself

2010

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Image by gynti_46 via Flickr

You weren’t a good friend, come to think of it you weren’t much of anything except a source of constant grief.  I am not sorry to see you go, in fact I would say I am glad but I am not going to even dignify that sentiment in relation to you.  But then I realize I have something you cannot take away which are my friends, my family and best of all my brand new wife, Preeti so perhaps I can begrudge you a bit of a farewell.  Except today is just another day, and that’s how I plan to spend it.  No parties, no celebrations just a night in with my beautiful Preeti, just the 2 of us lying next to each other, savoring the closeness and the love of all the ones dear to us in memory.

You weren’t easy to deal with.  From taking a dear family member, giving me a stroke to afflicting the love of my life with a life changing disease, I can definitely say you have made it a mission to be memorable except you are not.  I am not going to give you that power.  Instead, you get this tiny post almost 2 hours before you die in my memory.  You don’t exist, and if you plan to tell your friend 2011 to do the same, then it will get the same middle finger.

I am not bitter.  I am not angry.  I am just done.  I know what I have in my life, and guess what, I know I am rich in that.  Forget money, forget fame, forget the material things or the many meaningless promises I have made at other New Year Eve’s.  I have what I need and want.  Now all that’s left is for the rest of the year to recognize that they have  been reduced to numerical symbols, meaning nothing except for the passage of time.  If you thought you were going to beat me down, 2010, you were mistaken.

Hear me out 2011, you might want to stay on your best behavior before you, too become another torn out calendar.  You have been warned.

Also, 2010, FUCK YOU.