Not a Blogger

Last week I had intended to change direction a bit. I was going to write about the Phillies and my dad and relate it all back to the struggle of terminal illness and the importance of universal health care. It was supposed to be a happy story to balance out all of the woe-is-me.

Unfortunately the Phils lost and the House chickened out on a viable public option allowing the air to escape from my post with a pronounced pffft as it zipped out of the room.

Then my jerry-rigged facade of alrightness fell over during a meeting at work and exposed my pet elephant and his ever-growing pile of shit that I've been meaning to take care of but can't seem to find the time.

Sometimes 'forever' just seems completely unmanageable.

Note to Self: When you get upset at work, cover your face with your coffee cup before your chin starts to quiver and keep it there all day if necessary.

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Philosophers will tell you that there's no such thing as 'nothing.' The very act of thinking about nothing gives it a certain somethingness that can't be ignored—nothing is as real as a ham sandwich.

Science gives a similar answer. Even though it may seem that everything is mostly nothing dotted with tiny clumps of stuff, the empty space between the bits of matter behaves in a way that must be categorized as something.

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When R died, a little space opened up in my heart. Comfort and concern slid right through the hole with no resistance or reaction. I couldn't find a name for it and it wasn't like anything I had encountered before.

It felt like nothing.

Over time it just became part of me. All of my remaining something rearranged itself and the nothing spread out and made itself at home. The whistling hole was gone but I was somewhat less substantial.

People who had all of their something intact could pass right through me. Only those with a little bit of their own nothing felt solid.

I never really intended to start a blog (or even read one to be absolutely honest). Prior to April of 2009 I was a newspaper reading, dog-walking, knitting Luddite with a neglected FB account. Then dozens of friends and co-workers completed uncomplicated pregnancies and birthed healthy babies in spring of 2009 and I took to the internet in search of anything that could make me feel human again.

One thing led to another and now I'm a Luddite with a poorly maintained, ineffectively semi-anonymous set of grammatically flawed ruminations that I started writing just to seem less like a rubber-necking weirdo when I read other peoples' blogs.

There's not a whole lot of candor and variety here. My husband calls my style 'charmingly old-fashioned.' I describe it as 'Johnny One-Note.' I don't aspire to become a real blogger with a catalog of interesting stories that cover all aspects of my life (though I do appreciate reading real blogs). I just want a little bit of space to try to turn my nothing into something.