October

A year ago today was a bad day, worse even than the one before, and it seems like a longer time since then than it has been. I feel so much older I can't stand it sometimes. My parents came to Virginia for the anniversary and it was not what you might expect- no crying, no little leftover family huddled together. A very different day than the day one year ago, when I went out to sushi with Kai and the police called my boyfriend to tell him to drive me to Fremont. He said, A 510 number, and I bristled. And he picked up, paused, and said, Yes sir, she's right here, and I knew what had happened. I had been expecting it for so long there was relief in it, and after the memorial service was all done and the family all gone I slept and slept, and found myself tired for months. And then I lived in a haze for months.

I am not the same person I was before everything started to go so wrong. I have spent a great deal of my time worrying what other people thought of me- caring more than I could really explain. And then, all at once, it didn't matter a whole lot anymore. Now sometimes I realize I am pretty boring, but it doesn't bother me how it would have two years ago, or three. I am content to be pretty boring, and find I no longer have the energy to put on much of a show. I miss my sister, but I don't, and that is hard to explain to anyone else. There is loneliness in that.

Yesterday I found a wild persimmon tree, and another, and wondered at never having noticed before. Not that I like persimmons, but I do like wild things, enough so that I can forget the bitter sliminess of the fruit and be excited about their existence. I will try to make pudding when I come back. I leave for Pennsylvania on Tuesday, a trip I am taking with my mother to visit her side of the family. I am a little anxious to leave Homagin for so long, afraid I will forget how to live here or forget how to be alone all the time, but okay. Maybe I am afraid of feeling like I did before I got here. I have to remind myself that this place will wait, that it almost never changes, and that the time I will be away is not so long at all.