I know it's my fault. I know I let everyone believe I'm doing great. I know I smile like a pro. I was cracking jokes at the funeral for crying out loud! When asked how I'm doing, my response these days has been a chipper "Oh fabulous". It's automatic. I don't even think about it.

This is a situation I've never faced. I've never been so close to someone who has passed away. I have never ached for somebody as much as I ache for my Mom. I don't know how to handle it, why should anyone else? I'm intimidating, so is my life.

I don't want to leave my apartment. I want to become a recluse, a hermit. I want to stay here. My older, more mature friends want me to come to their homes all the time. No. I don't like it there. I want to be here. I want to be around the things my Mama gave me, and sit on the chair she loved and cuddle the stuffed animals she gave me.

This has been going on since I was 16. I have been watching this happen for nine years. It turns you into a neurotic freak. Friendships in high school were mutilated through my inability to handle my own life. Your mentality and maturity bounces back and forth between different ages. You're five, wanting your mommy. Your twelve, barely understanding anything, then you're sixteen, trying to experience your own age...but mostly, mostly you're in your late twenties, early thirties... dealing with things that shouldn't even be recognizable to you yet.

I think I'm crazy. I think my brain is split into sections that shouldn't exist. I think I'm screwed up. But I think I'm repairable.

My life for the past nine years settled into a routine. A routine I was somehow able to handle. I compartmentalized the anguish to deal with at a later time. Guess what? It's later. I have to follow my own metaphor and open the junk closet little by little, but I don't feel like it. I just want to keep it closed, and huddle up under childhood memories and melt my brain in front of a television set.

I miss friends. Real friends. Good friends. Friends who are not banished from my life by miles, but instead only blocks away. Did I ever have those? Friends who would drop everything to come to my aid as I did for them? Or did I lose those all in the scuffle? The transition of the life I wasn't ready for taking over my existence.

I have to start over now, or rather... I get to. There's no Mom to care for, no excuse for not moving forward. But there is also no motivation. Now what? First, I have to crack the mask. Kill it, destroy it... allow myself to not be okay. Allow myself to crumble.

It's a very selfish part of me that's keeping that at bay. If I fall apart, I almost feel like it needs to be in front of someone, almost as if I need a witness as proof that I really allowed it to happen. Ideally, of course, this person would be a man who loves me. That's probably the Hollywood Romantic in me, but still... that's the scene my heart is craving. A big dramatic gesture, permission from my love to fall apart while falling into him. How poetic... I guess if I were to wait for such a scenario, I may be waiting quite awhile.

I am so tired. So tired. My eyes hurt. I wish I had a time machine. I wonder how far back I would go? I feel so unbelievably alone. Living alone doesn't help. Every phone call I consider making, I talk myself out of. Why? Because I am a burden. My life is a burden to me, it goes without saying it would be a burden to another.

Goodnight. Badnight. It doesn't matter which. Turn the TV on until you sleep... and then the dreams come. My Mom is in my dreams, every night. Last night, we saw a play. She held my hand and cried, saying this is how we will spend time together. I could feel her, I could smell her, and her voice was so real. So near. My throat closed up, aching with sadness. I woke up, and she was gone. Is this really my Mama keeping me company in my sleep? Can she talk to me there? Can she hold me there? I've decided to believe it's really her, that God has allowed me this miracle. My Mama, my Angel, my hope.

I hope I will see you again tonight. I hope I will sleep longer tonight.