Swish

.14

Monday mornings were an absolute bitch. 

Technically, they were a bitch on a good day, but on a day after a bone rattling nightmare and mental breakdown?  That's where the 'absolute' in absolute bitch came in.

The scalding shower I'd immersed myself in did nothing to scrub away the memories of the nightmare, what could've been a repressed memory itself, but I needed to know more before I made a snap judgement. 

This was my only family left, and I had to tread carefully. I couldn't lose them, too.

After the accident, my grandmother and grandfather on my mom's side ceased all contact with my father, and since I was my father's daughter, well... I was forbidden from contacting them much like he'd done to me with Jared and Eli. 

Although, after last night, I wasn't sure where that no contact rule stood with Eli, but still. 

My dad's parents were both dead, alcoholism killing my dad's father's liver and subsequently himself, and my grandmother on my dad's side passed away only about three years ago from heart failure.  That one still stung my eyes with tears when memories of her pierced through my carefully constructed veil of protection against the harder emotions to deal with on any given day.

With grief, one learned how to cope in many different ways.  There was compartmentalization, my favorite, which included not thinking about things you didn't want to think about at that moment, distracting yourself with more pertinent issues and then never thinking about them again (or trying to, at least). 

Then there was the other option, the actual dealing with grief option.  That one was still a little hard to grasp for me, but I promised myself that by twenty-five, I'd have it all handled like a well and true adult, feeling the feels for real instead of pretending they didn't exist and then hoping it would all just go away.

Okay, maybe that was denial, not compartmentalization, but hey- I was only eighteen.  I still had seven years to master the art form of handling grief and its after effects.

With my mom, I used my dad as my anchor, and I guess he used me, too. With me gone for school, Kara and Sara had become his anchor and I was...adrift, I guess?  Lost in the tide of students and the monotony of schoolwork, my only reprieve being singing and performing.

Thunder rocked me out of my thoughts, the light patter of rain beginning to pebble the roof with its footprints and picking my outfit of the day: jeans, a t shirt and sneakers, since my rain-boots were back home, nestled between my old Crocs and my formal heels.

"Hey, are you okay?  You came in really late Saturday night and you hid under your covers all day yesterday and didn't really say a word.  I figured I'd give you your privacy but I'm just hoping you weren't planning on skipping classes to mope again..."

I faced Hazel and her mop of red hair scooped up into an artfully mastered messy but atop her head, dressed in an outfit similar to that of my own to face the rainy day ahead.

She was right.  Sunday had been wasted with Netflix in bed with a pint of ice cream in my mother's favorite mint chocolate chip flavor, which had subsequently become my favorite, naturally.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine.  Promise.  Just some family drama I don't want to bore you with.  We still on for practice this afternoon?  I have to leave early to make my five o'clock shift at the gym, so that gives us about two solid hours in the choir room."

"Yeah, sounds good to me.  I think Bea wanted to go over her song and make sure we were keeping it on the setlist for our next show."

"Okay. Want to walk to first class together?"