Get Out of the Night

(radical progressive sex positive queer Jew and secret inventor)

One week until I pack up as little as possible, get in the car, and go as far away from here as I physically can. There’s nothing left for me here that I can’t take with me. 

I just miss my grandpa so much today. I miss my grandma every day, but in a way I felt I had gotten used to missing her so much, like that pain was just integral to my being. It truly is. But I didn't even get to say goodbye to my grandpa. I felt it coming and I wanted to go to Los Angeles so badly, but money and time were always tight and by the time they knew it was happening, I wouldn't have made it in time. They called to tell me on my way home from work one night, and by morning I got The Big Call. I loved my grandfather so much. He was everything I always thought a man should be, because he and my grandmother were as close to perfect rolemodels as any two people can reasonably get. But there's more weight to this loss, somehow. The death of my grandfather is also the death of my grandmother all over again. It's the death of something pure and right. It's the death of my childhood. Or whatever may have been left of it. And of course, my mother has now finally and truly lost her mind. Or whatever may have been left of it. So not only have I lost my grandfather, I have deeply and profoundly lost everything parental in my life except for my aunt's protective love and the tenderness of a special few "real grownups," my chosen family. I'm so lucky to have even that much, I know. I know there are people with far less than I have had and I have had so much, so much to love and miss and be grateful for. I just feel weirdly lost right now. I'm 27 years old and when I was 18 I thought my resentment towards my parents was topping out and that soon I'd come to move past it. I had no idea what the next years would bring. I feel that my parents maybe never really were my parents in the first place. They fed their pain and anguish and dysfunction into my veins and heart and made me some kind of unstable mess and every single day I fight against it. I fight against being as bad as they are. It hurts when people reduce me to that, but that's life and I have to accept it. All I can do is learn from them, love them with as much forgiveness and gratitude as I can muster, and let them go. They're already gone anyway.