Grumpled Up Feelings

Well, this is a new way to begin. This one isn’t going to be a letter to my mother, because even in death (yep, I said it, death, so blame me, I don’t care), anyway, even in death I wouldn’t say the things I’m about to say to her.

I’m jealous of a character in a movie. Isn’t that just the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard? It is to me, and I’m the one thinking it.

Okay, let me back up and start over. Nicole and I have been watching movies. My first day here, she showed me my friend Bert’s website and podcasts. Well, it was like a magic voices spell, only even more vivid and without knowing what was going to happen next. I could hear everything that was happening to him, during a very bad time in his life, as clearly as if I was right there. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t see it. In a way, it even made it more vivid, because if I had been watching something on a computer screen, I would have been outside it. As it was, the screen in my head worked just fine, and it sounded so close that even though I knew all the events were years in the past at this point, I have to admit I still got a little carried away and made a total fool of myself and broke down crying. Of course, Nicole came running over to see what the issue was, and all I could do was gabble and babble about it sounding so real! I didn’t think she’d get it, but she seemed to. She said it was culture shock and it would be okay. We sat together and talked for a while, had some hot tea, and then finished listening together, and somehow I felt more anchored with her arm around me.

After that, she said maybe during our down time we could watch some movies of different kinds to help me get acclimatized to human culture better. Of course I had all kinds of human culture studies at Shya-Roven, but all those classes can never completely prepare you for the real deal, because they’re taught by leps who have never even seen a human in the flesh in their whole, considerably long lives, which is total nonsense and I don’t care who knows it. Anyway, I was all for the idea, so we started taking turns picking movies to watch together. My first pick was a movie called “Beauty and the Beast.” There were two versions of it, and I wanted to watch the one with cartoon drawings first because there’s just something fascinating about watching moving pictures. But Nicole begged me not to play that one because I guess her little brother watched it so much when she was a girl that now she can’t stand the sound of it. She’d been hearing all kinds of good things about the newer, live action one, so we watched it instead. We’ve watched other things since then, but that one has become one of our absolute favorites. Nicole turns it on while we take care of the babies or do stuff around the house, and I just about know all the songs from it by heart.

Today Nicole got the audio book version of the movie, so we can listen to it and have something fun and interesting to keep our minds busy while we do this big cleaning she wants to get done before we go away next week. We haven’t even started listening to it, but I can’t wait. Here’s the part I can’t tell Mama, though. I’m so jealous of Belle. I wish my dad was like Maurice.

Warning, spoilers ahead, so if you haven’t seen the movie and want to, don’t keep reading. Okay, sure, Maurice was super sad that his wife died. Sure, he never got over it. Okay, but he went on with his life. And he didn’t just go through the motions, either. He really got on with things and gave all that love to his daughter. He didn’t just walk around like an empty shell for the rest of his life. He did his very best to give her a good life. He was kind and gentle. Yeah, a little eccentric, but just so gentle and so good! Why couldn’t Daddy have been like that? Why did he have to just let himself go when Mama went to High Country? I know that’s not what she wanted. I know she wanted him to keep living. Why couldn’t he have found it in himself to rise to what life threw at him and protect us? Oh, I don’t mean overprotect, the way Maurice tried to do. But why couldn’t he have come out of his grief enough to let us know we still mattered to him?

What’s going to happen if… no, when, he decides he’s just tired of living this way? What’s going to happen to our family then? Who’s going to bind us together then? Stars know it isn’t going to be me. I’m never leaving here to go back to that miserable life. I won’t make the same stupid mistake Mama made. I absolutely will not give up this life I’ve worked so hard to have and go back and be at their beck and call all the time. Oh no, no sir, not me, not ever.

I thought writing this would make me feel better, but it hasn’t. I just feel even more crumpled up inside than I did before I started. I need to go find something to scrub. That usually helps. What I’d actually like to do is throw something or hit something. Not someone, just something. I have no idea why I’m even thinking these things. I never thought about it before. Life was just the way it was and you just had to make it through the best you could, like my aunt Dilli told me when I was a ling. A fem’s life is hard and I learned it young. Why does that suddenly seem so unfair to me?

Maybe the cynical leps who say it’s not good for us to have so much to do with humans are right. I don’t care, though. I want to be a part of them and I want them to be a part of me, forever.