Here's an Essay. Because Mental Health is Important.

Dear Friends and Gentle Readers,

     I know that I've been going on about being more positive around here, but that's not really being authentic. I have been having a hard time emotionally, and it's really not in me to thing of pleasant or informative things to write about. Thankfully, the name of this blog is "First Person Narrative" and as such, I feel that I am able to forego actual blog posts for a while and just share some of my writing with you. 

     In March, I shared with you an excerpt from a larger essay I wrote about going home and visiting the cemetery. Over the next two weeks, while I do some serious self-care, I am going to share the rest of this story with you. I hope you enjoy it. 

xo,

     Uranium J

Click here to read the first part of the essay.

Part 2

I stopped in today. I don’t know why. I was killing time because I had just been to Winn Dixi for a few groceries and after I had gotten back in the car and was on my way back to my mom’s, I realized that I had forgotten the very thing I had been sent out to get: Bread. In the hopes of not looking like the moron the moron I am, I wandered around the cemetery for a few minutes while I waited for everyone to forget I had just been to the store.

I wandered over to my neighbor Eleanor’s grave first. I can’t ever bring myself to visit her when I am there with my mom. I can’t do a lot of things around my mom. I don’t want to give her any information that she could use against me later. I try to have a poker face at all times. This isn’t the best idea since I am a lousy poker player and what I think is a blank face is always closer to an angry one. People think I am pretty sour as a result. 

I now know (as I had once known and subsequently forgotten) that Eleanor died on June 18, 1998. That was pretty big summer for me, as my dad died two weeks later on July first. I remember being at their funerals and looking across  the field of headstones to an orange house across the street and wondering if the boy who lived there – a boy with whom I was infatuated – was looking out of his bedroom window at me in my time of grief. 

When my dad died, I was a little hurt that he didn’t show up to the funeral – but I now know that I am the only person who goes to funerals not for the dead, but for the living that I care about. It was a nice distraction to imagine him in his room looking out the window and thinking of me. Because that’s how you think when you are 12.