Simply put, it has been so long.

It has been so long since I have written. I wish I could say it is because I have been too busy having joyous day after day, but it isn't true. Heck, I even wish I could say there has been nothing to write about, no emotion worth putting in words, but that isn't true either.

It has been so long since I have felt real. It has simply been so long since I have been a whole person.

Yesterday, Kristin called me, and if it weren't for caller ID, I wouldn't have known it was her, for all I could hear were tears, an occasional sniffle, a few outright sobs. Immediately, I cried, too. The feeling that flooded into me was one that is hard to explain. It's an old feeling, from when I was just a little kid, 6 or 7 maybe. A feeling of fierce protectiveness, more than merely empathy, the feeling I would get when something made Laurie cry. To hear her cry would squeeze my heart, and make me cry too. It is not that I was upset by what bothered her, I would cry because the sound of her tears broke my big-sister heart. When Kristin cried last night, I felt that same feeling, and it's associations. I cried because I hate hearing my sister cry.

Of course, as we talked, I found plenty of other reasons...

You know how there are those stages of grief? Denial, sadness, anger, bargaining, and acceptance, I think they are, though perhaps not in that order. I have been told many times that it is okay to skip around, and repeat some stages, and get all haywire. Well I have come to realize that the step I have been hitting recently doesn't quite fit the labels. It isn't really acceptance, though it's close. It's more like "un-denial." It's like I keep being struck by the reality of it all, over and over. Laurie is really dead. My sister is gone. The reason it isn't acceptance is because "acceptance" sounds like it is probably a good thing, a step in a positive direction, and that is just simply not how this feels. It feels worse than it has since March. I feel lower, more broken, more broken-hearted now than I have since she quit living. I feel like it makes even less sense each day, as I get further and further away from the time when I still had her. It simply has been so long...

PS My mom had to dial the phone and make the first appointment for me, but it got the ball rolling...