daruma

So today is the day. It's been one year since I got the phone call that Brian was dead. That day is forever burned in my memory for so many reasons. It was Mother's Day, and I was working brunch at the White Dog. At 9am on a Sunday, we were all miserably hung over and dreading the day ahead. At 9:30 our manager (who was a very close friend at the time) came to me and the bar manager with tears in her eyes and pulled us outside to let us know that Willie (everyone's favorite cook) had passed away in the night. When word spread through the staff, everyone was devestated. We all spent the entire day serving happy families like zombies with puffy eyes. When our shifts were over, we headed to the bar next door and spent the entire night drinking whiskey (Willie's favorite), crying, and toasting him. Fast forward to 11pm, and I'm stumbling through my door (literally, I remember falling up the stairs to my apt at least 3 times) with the kind of headache that only comes with crying for 13 hours and drinking for 8. It was like a scene from a cheesy Lifetime movie. The second I walked through the door and turned the lock, my phone rang. It was Brian's roommate, who hated me. Thinking it was an angry drunk call, I ignored it. When I checked the vm (which I still have saved on my phone for some sick reason) it said, "Cass. It's Mike. There's been an accident and Brian's hurt". In my drunken stupor I thought it might be a ploy to get me to call back so I could be berrated and insulted, but I did. When Mike picked up, I knew by his voice immediately that something had happened and it was going to be bad. He told me that he couldn't just leave a vm telling me what really happened, because the words wouldn't come out of his mouth. Even now as I'm typing this, I can feel how my chest seized up and my limbs went numb when I realized what he meant. After a breif moment of trying to catch my breath, I just hung up. The next 2 days are really blurry from there.
Bri's funeral was the day after Willie's and I chose not to go. I don't know why. My soul is still split on that decision. Part of me feels like it was the right thing to do, and part of me regrets it. I don't know. I never will.
I decided to medicate myself today by going and hanging with my 6 year old goddaughter for a few hours. She reminds me that there is actually beauty to life, and reminds me to try and remain on my semi- Buddhist path. I may be biased, but she is the smartest 6 year old I've ever seen. She definitely has her mom's cynicism, her dad's creativity, and her step dad's sarcasm. When she was 5 she prank called me. This is the vm I got... (cue adorable kid voice) "Is your refrigerator running? Because if so, you'd better leave work RIGHT NOW and go home and fix it! OK? OK". She made today so much brighter and put things into major perspective. When I'm around her, I feel like I want to make the world a better place so she never has to suffer.
I'm thinking it's time for a major life overhaul. I don't know what that means yet, but I'm ready to actually succeed for once.
Hung out with an ex last night (the one who moved to NY when I broke his heart). It made me wish we had never dated and didn't have a past together. We act like brother and sister, and the physical attraction just isn't there anymore. We had a blast and it was nice of him to distract me.
Once again, my thoughts are all over the place, and I'm sorry to the poor souls who actually find themselves reading this. If I wasn't too lazy to use a pen, I'd keep a private journal instead of bombarding strangers with my thoughts.