I've run the gambit with my parents. Times when life was good, or so it seemed to my 5 year old self. Times that were scary, yes in my teens they really did feel this way. Times when I was lost, leaving your family for college usually feels this way, but even more so when the life back home turns all shades of gray, and black and green and basically the colors of an ugly bruise. Times when the roles swap and the kids become the parents and the parents be come the kids.
It happens you know!
And I found myself coming to a place were I didn't care. I don't care! It's all to much. And I have to step away and let them go. It's a strange place to be as a daughter. An oldest child. To get to a place where I can no longer let myself care. Care if my parents are happy, if they are cared for, if one day they'll kill themselves, kill each other, or die for no good reason at all. I just can't let myself care.
And then, one parent does die. And for all that talk of "not caring", I do! And then I care all over again. And I hate myself for not caring more.
Today happens. It always does. And today I have to not care again. I do, but I tell myself I don't. It's a game. And I play it, well I might add. And sometimes with much vigor. Openly and admittedly. Because sometimes, as sick and morbid and awful as it sounds, I do feel that being an orphan wouldn't be so bad... unless of course, it would!
