yours {h.s.} | {b1.5}

NOVEMBER 28, 2019

November 28, 2019

Called my girls today. Hard to explain how much it broke my heart. Long entry incoming, I fear. Too many thoughts to keep bottled inside and no desire to hide such realities from the therapeutic pages of my journal.

There are certain restorative properties in calling the girls. They're well settled in London now. They love the flat. They are coming into their own and they seem finally happy to be removed from the town where we grew up; the town that was confining them, holding them angrily in its clutches. Freedom was in the future and they finally have their fingers around it. Seeing them living in this stage: happy, unencumbered, lively, and most importantly: together, has more of a healing property than I would have thought. To be plain: I don't necessarily feel like I have to fake a smile. Genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, I feel happy and light when I talk to them.

To be fair, I suppose I still do. That much has not changed. Looking at the smiles on their faces and hearing about Lottie's new school and how Sylvie is growing and how Bunnie dyed her hair again are just things that make me happy. They make the distance bearable. Technology in that sense is good, I suspect. I don't know how I could have moved halfway around the world without the ability to contact them on an instantaneous whim—save from the difficulties in navigating time zones.

But that does little for the reality when the call ends. In paying for their first and last month's rent, the deposit, helping them get settled, in paying for Lottie's school and for the clothes that they all grow out of faster than I can keep up, my own life has taken hold. I'm up to my ears in past due notices and Fletch just gives me a look every time I tell him to add something to the tab. He comes from a good spot and he knows that I have every intention of paying, but the question is when.

Here is the space that I take comfort in voicing the thoughts that otherwise seem too daunting to even think. Not for a second do I regret taking my sisters in. I don't regret assuming responsibility because they are the light of my world and I know that no one else is looking out for them. But, there are certain practicalities that I admit I hadn't considered. Save even from the conversation of my own mental stability of being the singular parental figure to five girls at the age of twenty-five myself, the question remains: how much longer can I hold this up? I don't know how much longer I can pay two separate rents, for two separate stocked pantries, two separate living necessity costs all while surviving on one singular paycheck. Don't even get me started on the conversion rate.

Eventually, something will give and I have no idea what it will be. In the meantime I've preoccupied myself with working extra shifts—as many as I can without being scolded for working too much overtime. This, of course, being an unlikely event as an intern. Still I maintain that the more I work the more money on the paycheck and the more money that I can send back while also having some for myself. Some may say that it is impossible to burn the candle at both ends but to that, I challenge whether anyone has ever put themselves in my situation.

I was at work today. Hence the necessity of indulging in a longer entry than otherwise had planned. The most peculiar thing happened: again, I found myself working with Gracie.

Seeing her was strange. I am not stupid. I'm not included in their conversations, but I would have to be absolutely ignorant to miss that the Fab Four was planning some sort of group Thanksgiving. One that I was not invited to. Not initially, at least. Again: shock from my interaction with Gracie. Maybe she is not as exclusive as I would have originally liked to have thought.

We ended up getting lunch together. She damn near ran me over with a gurney. It fucking hurt and she didn't seem like she actually cared overmuch and I tried to walk away from her. I thought it would be more convenient that way. On a normal day, I can barely tolerate the presence of her. Maybe that's not true. We're drawn to fight and I just found myself realizing that today, especially, I did not have the energy for such activities. So I tried to walk away, at least, until she stopped me. She asked why I was working and I tried to be coy. Said something about fucking nurses—not entirely false, I suppose—and she knew not to take me seriously. She pressed and I was half inclined to tell her right on the spot: I need the money for my sisters. She doesn't know this about me. Hell, I don't know if she views me as human. But in that moment, I didn't care. I was run down and tired and I just needed to spill the words off my chest. Instead, I settled for the English card.

Talking to her is weird. By talking, I mean anything that isn't fighting. She's conversational and has a good enough sense of humor, even if her own jokes are shit. She's a good listener, too. For some inexplicable reason, we opened up to each other. Until that moment she had never confirmed such for me, but, I seemed to be able to tell that she was like me before she even opened her mouth. Or maybe I just wanted her to be. Regardless, I see myself in her now. All along, I have been looking for a friend and I think that I have finally found one.

Conversation had been good. She invited me to her house and I ruined it. Part of me was scared. Internally I am conflicted. I know that I need a friend, but I am scared to lower my guard. The second that I do, I am afraid someone will pull the curtain over me and I'll be left absolutely blind. That my sisters will have no one. So I buried everything that we had just done. I turned the conversation back on her and I made her hate me more than she already does. It was so easy. The ease of it also chipped away at me. I wonder if it is naïve of me to hope that someday, things will be different. That some day, I can look her in the eye and tell her that I meant none of what I said but it came from a place of deeply rooted fear that I cannot easily let go of. Would she forgive me?