The Curse of the Thirty-First

My emotions have just gone so out of whack that I don't know what they are, let alone how to contain them. I don't even feel like writing about any of this is a good idea, for lots of reasons that I have no doubt I'll get to, but suffice to say that if today you come here seeking reasoned, well-tempered, decently thought-out observations, you're liable to be disappointed.

March 31st just hasn't been kind to my family. Granted, there's really only one bad thing that's happened on March 31st prior to today, and that was the sudden passing of my grandmother on this date in 2005. I remember the whole scene like it was yesterday, no matter how much I wish I could forget it: I woke up, went to seminar, and after an uneventful morning was about to go have lunch with my roommate Charlie. I casually checked my phone, saw a voicemail, and heard my father's benign voice telling me to call him back. I sensed that something was up, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. When I called him back, and he told me my grandmother was dead, I fucking lost it. I staggered backwards to the nearest bench and fell to it, waving off Charlie to go eat while my father tried to explain to me how the hell that had happened. When the discussion was over, I ran back inside, slammed the door of my room, and bawled for what must have been at least an hour. It was, and still is, one of the worst feelings I ever had in my life.

I remember those feelings clearly every time this part of the year rolls around -- partly because my grandfather died almost two weeks shy of one year afterwards, on March 18, 2006 -- but I'm sure for my mother it's even worse. She was inconsolable for quite some time, and it took her almost a year to even be able to talk about Grandma without welling up. And despite what she insists, it still hurts.

So for more bad shit to go down on the anniversary of that, of all the possible days in the year, seems less like coincidence than it does karmic bullshit.

Mom insists she's fine, and I'm sure to a certain degree she is, but I'm not entirely sure I am. And like I said earlier, I can't even put a name to what I'm feeling. I'm upset, for sure, and incredibly angry, for a lot of different reasons. (Let's just say a few more names have been written on my shit list in permanent marker within the past hour.) I feel like Mom is really trying to be strong and tough and deal with this, but I just can't entirely believe her when she says that everything really is alright. Because it's not.

But by the same token, I know that this feeling isn't just the result of what happened today. I've been feeling in a malaise for the past few days, and even people that don't know me too well have taken note. In fact, I was pretty surprised at who did notice, almost as surprised as I was at who didn't. (But since I don't want this to turn back into the angsty immaturity of my Xanga days, let's just say that certain things have been duly noted.)

I needed a weekend off to relax myself, and I got it, but certain other frustrations kicked back into gear and unsettled things to the point where I'm not sure the weekend ended up on a higher note for me than it did before. And since then, my interest and motivation have once more plummeted to shockingly low levels, all during the time of the year when I really need these things to start ramping themselves up.

So if I've been able to come up with anything as a source of my current despondency, I have to believe that it's a perfect storm of fucked-up things hitting all at once, exacerbated by today's craptacular revelations. And perhaps even more insulting to my psyche is that tomorrow is April Fool's Day, a day that I have gone on record as deploring. And despite my better judgment, I allowed myself to be talked into not one but two pranks that, had they gone off, would have been really amusing. One, in particular, had me especially excited, and looking forward to springing the trap. Now, I'm not even sure I want to go through with them. And furthermore, I feel like karma is once again screwing me over for going against my convictions.

Not that my convictions are really stable right now anyway. For the first time in a long time, life has started to scare me again. Nothing seems to have been working out in my favor lately, whether little things or bigger issues, and the trend is beginning to feel disturbing. It's to the point where I'm not sure I can lean back on my typical crutch and blame it all on State College because it's starting to feel more pervasive than that. And that's what's gotten me so unbelievably fucked up.