Eleven Hours.

"Be able to notice all the confusion between fact and opinion that appears in the news."
~ Marilyn vos Savant

55.

What I feel about the situation ultimately doesn't matter, as there's not a damned thing that I can do about it. I can speculate, sure. I can count days, place blame, write short little essays, but in the end, much like all things of the past, the moment is forever lost and Delorians don't run on garbage. 

My mother's death isn't something that gets brought up a lot. I'm not even sure why. I guess it's because people have this ingrained sensibility that talking about things that are considered "taboo" is...well...taboo. It's completely absurd, if you ask me. I mean, leave it to a few radically unstable people in the world, and now everyone dances around certain subjects like life will end right then and there if they get brought up. 

She died when I was old enough to realize, rationalize and compartmentalize what that meant in the grand scheme of things, but still young enough to hold grudges and blame everyone but those responsible. Hey, it happens. It's not fair, but it happens. If that's not a song lyric, then I don't know what is. 

Truth be told, I don't remember much about her, other than the obvious. Just that little bit that was over-the-top. Sad to say, but the subtleties of that woman's existence are forever lost to those that knew her before I came into the picture. Those that "knew her best," I would dare to say. Me? I don't think I ever knew her at all, really. Even to this day, I don't ever say her name, as I didn't really know her as a "person." There's just this vague idea of a shadowy grey-spot where this instrumental force should have been. I'm getting ahead of myself. I think I should just tell the goddamned story. 

My mother was a depressing human being. I guess it wasn't helped any by the fact that she also thought of herself this way, which basically made her meaner than a sack full of rabid weasels, and subsequently lead to her always needing to feel like the victim. I guess that to her, everything in life was somehow stacked against her, which means that she could sit back and take no responsibility for anything that took place around her. 

I guess that's why she drank so goddamned much. On some level, she knew good and damned well what was taking place, she was just too terrified of ever having to own up to any of it to make any real or rational change. In all honesty, the thing I remember most about the woman was the booze. If a writer writes and a painter paints, then a self-destructive single woman with the mind of a teenager and an inability to grasp the basic principles of her own actions drinks. I guess that in a lot of uncompromisingly real ways, the booze was her way of keeping things at bay. It was a tool to her. Not only was it the prime method of her own undoing, but it was ultimately what she used to write, paint, chisel and weave her own tale. 

Throughout the years, I've wondered all kinds of strange things concerning her passing. For one, I never attended her funeral. This has led me to believe, on several occasions, that I may have been lied to about her passing. Anyone that knew me well enough at the time would have known that once I received anything even resembling closure with her, that I wouldn't have looked any deeper into the situation. It's not even remotely unreasonable that anyone who cared about me in the slightest would have concocted such a story to keep me away from her. However morbid that sounds, the reality of having lived it is all the more unsettling. Hell, even to this very day, I've never even bothered to check up on the tale. If it was all hocus-pocus, I accepted it. 

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, it would have seemed that someone in a situation like that, living the lie, the nightmare, the confusion, would have learned at a very early age to stay the hell away from the booze. And if you were talking about someone other than myself, you'd more than likely be right. For whatever reasons, I ended up picking up the bottle, as well. Hell, in a lot of ways, I'm worse in that department than she ever was. I've picked up the bottle, the can, the grass, the powder, the pills, the little sheets of magical paper, the mushrooms. I'm not exactly sure what all of that means from a psychological standpoint, but I'm sure that there's a strong case for "mommy-issues" lodged in there somewhere. 

Last, but certainly not least, I think that in some way, she completely altered my perceptions of people as a whole. After all, parents are the child's model for normalcy. That was the bag that I was left holding, and much like the fantastical lie of the fat man that brings gifts every year in December, I've been carrying it ever since. I got a peek behind the curtain, and I have never been able to see anything but Oz ever since. 

For what it's worth, I think that everyone needs some sort of tool. I think that ice cream works for some people. I think that others carve life into the daily wood with exercise, others dance. People make music, they look to others, they climb large rocks, or jump out of machines that move at the speed of sound, miles above the ground. But the daily art of living can't be crafted without a tool of some sort. Even if that tool happens to be the memory of someone that you can't quite remember ever loving, but can't help but realize the impact that they had on your continued march forward into oblivion. 

54.

3397.
There was no more reason for it.

It could have been anything, really. After all, there were at least 3396 before it, but after having read through so many; seeing the way that a mind works when it clearly isn't working at all... I knew, I just fucking knew...This was the one.