Hi there.

If you’re reading this, apologies. I’m writing this for no one else but myself, as I fear if I don’t empty my head, the pressure may be too much to bear. Consider it a writing exercise. Or an update for the clutch of you who ask how I’m doing. I’m uncomfortable saying it, so here’s a bit of a proxy.

Fair beans if you want to avoid it. No harm, no foul.

Right, then.

Off I go…

Five years ago today, my mother died after a 5 year battle with breast cancer. A battle we thought she had won.

She hadn’t.

Four years ago, I lost my grandmother. My mother’s mother. The loss of her firstborn daughter broke her.

Shortly after that, I lost my cousin to breast cancer.

Then I lost my grandfather. My mother’s father.

Then went my other grandfather. My father’s father.

Surely that’s enough, right?

There must be some kind of quota. Or perhaps like jury duty, where Death wouldn’t call again for another 3 years.

Nope.

A little over a month ago, my sister died.

And I’m at a loss. A great deal of loss, actually.

Every time I think I’ve adjusted to the new normal, and had a fair go at it, life takes a great big whack at the knees, just for the hell of it.

I’m not a talker. I have very few people in my life… Practically none, really… That I talk to. I am a great listener, however. And I’m a talk with-er. I care a great deal about others, and the wellbeing of others, and how others are doing, and how their lives are going, and can I be of any help whatsoever and don’t hesitate to ring me up if you want to talk.

But just not about me. Because I find me to be a terrible disappointment surrounded by unbearable loss.

With a cherry on top.

Heck, I can’t even take a compliment.

Anyone who knows me knew just how badly gone I was with my weight over the years, and have noticed that I’ve been making a concerted effort, after determining that I was doing nothing more than killing myself slowly, to take that weight off. I have not, nor have I ever been, a thin person. I have always been fat. Always. Over the past 2 1/2 years, however, I have lost over 300 pounds. I checked my medical records. The last time I weighed under 200 pounds, I was 11. And that is sad. But that was my life, and all I knew.

And many people have remarked upon this weight loss, and congratulated me on it. And I don’t know how to react. I don’t feel normal. I don’t know what “normal” is, to be fair. But I am a bag of loose skin that will take ridiculously expensive surgeries to “fix”, so I’m told. (See previous updates on why I always wear a jacket, even to my detriment, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.)

Ach. Enough.

I’m rambling. I knew I would ramble, even before I started writing this. But I knew I had to put something down, just to get it all out. I had to ramble, because rambling is movement, and momentum, and that’s what life is, until it stops.

I often sit and stare into space, and think of the things I’ve never done, the things I’m not doing, and the people who are no longer here to see the things I might do. And I feel sorry. Sorry for never having done those things I never did, and for never saying those things I never said, and for all of the things that now I can never say or do.

But c’est la vie. Right? Shuffle shuffle drop. And try to make the best of things for yourself and others until you do.

And ramble on.

Check.

-Ken

Comments: None