It's exhausting to have to read and gauge the response of and study body language for people you'll forget months or years from now. It's a waste of time, but you can't help it.
For a while, everything around me started to decline, and I could watch myself drop and not worry about it because I trust myself.
The days I spend like this ruin the few days I have with people important to me.
The past three times I've gone to see my mother, Angela, in the course of a half year, I'm speechless. There's nothing to tell her anymore, and it leaves me feeling empty. I have to pretend to not be fucked up in front of her, as if it's all temporary and eventually going to get better. Next month it'll have been four years without her, and that everything between that day and now felt excruciating.
I'm not friends with anyone who knew her, and I have to shelter or hide whenever I'm around any relative of my family. I feel alienated.
I can't remember the last time anyone was happy for me when I saw my mother, I get scolded by my grandmother for not bringing her different food, food which I can't prepare and have no money to buy, and my solution is to not visit her on the days my grandmother will arrive.
Every time I go, I am driven a half hour away from the house I stay at, and watch the freeways go by, and fake a conversation with whoever is driving.
The billboards on the side of the freeway are about gambling. Losing money isn't a gamble, it's a donation.
I wait for the family member who drove me to leave the car before I go in with them, because I cherish the moments between the time I see my mom.
I walk into this retirement home, seeing people who are closer to death than they have been their whole lives. Often times you'll hear nurses speaking languages you don't understand while patients scream in pain.
I walk in the room my mom is at. Her room mates are never there.
For the hundredth time, I see an aging woman staring at a television, because the remote is the only thing she can do with her left arm, the one that isn't paralyzed.
And it truly hurts to see how horrible she looks. My mother had the nicest teeth and the nicest hair I had ever seen. Her gums are swelling and her hair looks no better than an old broom, with black and gray bristles.
She can't speak anymore, and she loved to talk so much. She only grunts out of curiosity, and points when she needs you to sit down.
When you sit down, it's the happiest I've seen my mom in recent years, and she's so excited to hear what you have to say. If only she had the stamina to pay attention for more than a half hour.
And I sit there and play with my hands and stumble on my words. She looks at me, anticipating what I could say next, because she's been waiting to see her son and have him speak to hear for the first time in four, five, six months.
The hardest part is saying good bye, because it repeats the day I found out.
I was at my dad's fiance's house, a month away from finishing seventh grade, and I was arguing with my sister about a Wheel of Fortune Family Board Game, and my dad calls my sister and I over to the couch.
He's never looked so conflicted and he's never looked so pained.
My mother hated being called mom, so she had us call her Honey, because during I Love Lucy, Ricky always yells "Honey, I'm home!" and my sister and I adopted that habit.
My dad tells us that Honey has an aneurysm, and while riding her bicycle with friends she had a stroke, and her last words were "Something is wrong." right before she fell into the brush of the California desert.
That wasn't supposed to happen. What was supposed to happen was me going to go up over the weekend to see her in San Jose, and meet all her friends. She had so many friends because her job required her to travel, sometimes for months.
I remember I made her a promise to finish all my work and study so I could see her again.
When my dad finished the sentence with 'aneurysm' in it, I immediately began to cry. The year before I learned from the book Tangerine taught me what they were.
He told us she had a stroke. I can't imagine how my father felt at that moment, having to give his children the worse news of their lives.
From that day, every dream I had was never the same, and every major decision in my life I couldn't think about without my mother on my mind. I couldn't think the same way.
For two years I couldn't tell anyone about it. I just couldn't handle it.
I moved out of Tujunga and into her apartment in Montrose. I never spoke as much, day to day, from then on. I can remember the first summer after that experience, where I would come to an empty apartment, and yell and scream and talk to myself to keep me amused, so I wouldn't feel lonely.
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