I am in desperate need of it.

The weightiness of the situation cloaks my every waking moment, and I need distraction. I find myself staying out later at night, not wanting to return to life as I know it. I spend less than three hours on the internet all day. THREE HOURS! What is there to do on the internet but read about liver failure and how the end will come? I've heard whispers that I'm being too cold, too withdrawn from the goings-on. Upon telling her this, my mother cried bullshit. Mom understands "guarded". She carried my limp body through the early weeks of my separation. She saw the erratic jump from extreme to extreme. She saw my near-collapse. She understands my overlarge capacity to feel, and she understands the necessity to temper my emotion. There will be plenty of time to cry.

She was not happy to hear my coping abilities called into question. The word "livid" comes to mind.

Who is to determine the proper way to react? Who is to say how soon one should come to peace with an unchangeable end? Maybe my last two years, two of the most rotten years in my life, have paid me mercy in these. I know that bad things happen, I know that people die, that people get sick, and that people just up and leave your life...and I know that you can't let it too be your end. Perhaps my mother understands more because I let my philosophy run unchained in her audience. She knows my head, and I'd like to believe that she has garnered a little peace of her own from my musings.

There's only so much gamut you can run before you welcome the battery. I'm just not ready to stop running yet. My grandmother is coming to stay for awhile, to spend her days with Mom. I am not looking forward to it. I am at peace around my immediate family...it is like we're all looking it this from the same angle...the further out I wander in the branches of my family tree, the more skewed and ugly it becomes. I am exhausted.