Letting Go

It’s been difficult to describe things lately. They’ve been good, and at the same time they’ve been in the same state they’ve been in since the beginning of this whole Paul-being-arrested thing. Everyday I see my mother, she becomes more frail and in need of a long, happy vacation. She staggers in from work and lies down on her bed. Sometimes she asks for coffee. I always make the same four cups, two large cups for the evening. “You make such good coffee,” she tells me. I curse myself under my breath for not wanting to do it. And then there are times, particularly after she hears bad news, that she cries. She cannot be consoled often and I do not know what to say to help her. I can tell her that I love her very much. “If you love me then you would do something,” she says. In my heart, I know she is absolutely right.

Paul, meanwhile, has done nothing but work, to help himself and our family. Mr. Whittaker, as I noted in my last post, offered $4000 for his services; Paul is about to raise $500 for a small payment towards the eventual representation–now, especially before the trial, as letters must be written. “We shall have to wait and see what the DA says, ” he tells me. He is intimidatingly brilliant. I am but a pretentious music student in comparison to him. My kind of smarts involve reading long tomes and thinking abstractly of things. My critical thinking skills are as about as dull as a butter knife in comparison to Lennard. His critical thinking skills are enough to penetrate through flesh and bone and marrow. That’s something I want to take home and savor and to use to my own advantage.

So here we are, a year later: still at home, still desperate. What can a person do? No money, no way of obviously leaving the situation–who would think of abandoning his own mother and brother to pursue an education full of far away musics and folklore?–very few people to listen, and inside I am dying. Were I to think about school now, it would probably take $40 dollars to apply, a few weeks to get in, maybe several hundred dollars to secure housing, and then of course gas money. There is no purpose in saying we have no crisis on our hands as those would-be optimists want to believe, a serious emergency exists everywhere. I am wondering if it is too late to change schools–changing from Sul Ross to be closer to Ryan, then San Antonio just to be closer to home. City of Mario, who wants absolutely nothing to do with me. And practically everyone who does live there I have no connections to. It would be nice to escape to a different place, but this just may have to wait for the winter. I can’t wait–I need to leave now.

I can’t say anything to Ryan–because why should I try at this point? He never understands. I don’t know what to do. I feel horrible for saying this, but it seems he does everything better in comparison to me. I finally caught him on something he’d been wanting to say to me for so long–that he really never wanted me in the first place, but to shake me loose after awhile and make sure I was in a better position. And then he would leave, off to whatever life held for him. I have to let go because there is no sense in clinging to something like that anyway, even just hearing him admit it killed me on the inside.

I have to concede that nothing is happening and it is all my fault.

Lord God, what is taking so long? Has it finally happened? Am I being punished for something? I know I haven’t been the most kind or compassionate person sometimes, but why me? Why this life? Why these circumstances? What do You want from me? What do You want to do with me? I beg You, please take me somewhere else. I cannot cling to anything but You, O Lord God. There are some times, Lord, in which my mother tells me in her immense grief and despair, “All I want to do is scream”. This too, Lord, I wish to do as well.