It is 10:55, according the the glowing red digital clock across the room. I don't want to feel what I am feeling right now: this electrical pulsation of rage through my body. I don't want this anger towards my father for what happened. There is a taste of metal in my mouth. This has a power of its own and it courses through me in an uncomfortable, foreign way. The lessons that I have learned in dbt, of Buddhism are hard to reach right now. I want balance and calm, but find myself poised for an invisible battle instead.
I read an email from him as I was getting ready for bed. Communicating is hard for me at this point. I don't check email as often as I should, I hate talking on the phone when I am not at work. I call my parents because I love them, because I feel like even though Hannah is dead and my parents are directly connected to that, I want them in my life and don't want to lose them.
The email from my father was a short one, with a dig at the fact that I hadn't jumped at an opportunity that he gave me to employ my sons, to instill in them a work ethic. My sons, whose sister is dead. My sons, who are battling darkness, grief, depression, self blame and confusion. One of them has been very sick, the other on the edge of hospitalization for depression.
The edge of guilt in that message has me lying here in the dark, shaken at the level of emotion that this raised in me. My muscles are tensed and I want to rail.
I don't want to hate him. She told him that she had been raped that evening at dinner. He told her that lots of people are hurt by others and to get past ìt. She swore at him. She said ,"why do you hate me?" That was the last thing she said to anyone.
We can't ever see her again, hug her, tell her we love her. She will never be an aunt, a mother, have a career. What's left of her ìs ashes, objects and memories.
11:32 Sleep will not come tonight. I will lie here in the room next to where she died, in the room that was full of paramedics trying to bring back my dead daughter. Tomorrow I will be tired and I will ache from the clutching tension, but I will get up and go to work before the sun is up. My father will sleep peacefully in his house on the hill, get up when he wants, have a leisurely morning and go work out. Hannah will be more memory, less person. Time will go on, the red numbers changing in the dark. Each one of those changes in number is a second farther away from that angel baby with the strawberry, the girl on the skates. 11:49 I want to avenge her for my failure to protect her, the girl who went to Boston with me, the wounded girl that Eric raped, the valedictorian and feminist, the believer in good. I know that punishing the people who hurt her won't help. I want to forgive, to have peace, to help us all heal, but it's hard and this anger needs to be dealt with but I don't know how. I am afraid if I begin to let it out, it will hurt everyone. 12:04.
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