My breaking point

It was yesterday when I got to know my cousin Pär is here that I lost it. It tipped me over my breaking point.

My back was doing better in December and over the holidays. I could start looking forward again. Mid January was more problematic and February 1, the day for the opening of the European Capital of Culture 2014, I turned acute.  And then more acute. And even more. And I have absolutely no idea why.

Trouble 2 and Audrey spent the nights here for the first 1,5 weeks. After that my neighbor Josephine who works for the home care company Civil Care has been helping me out in the mornings and evenings. I can’t get out of bed myself. I need help getting dressed. And as before, I need someone making me breakfast and dinner. Sometimes my great neighbors Jenny and Hannes are filling in too, just because they are super nice. I don’t take the stairs downstairs anymore and going to the bathroom is always risky business.

Today my beloved aunt Eva is turning 80. There is a birthday party for her going on right now. I called her yesterday to congratulate and tell her that I couldn’t be there today. Aunt Eva is the sweetest person, and it was when she expressed her concerns for me that I acknowledged the sadness over my situation.

Being acute the way I am now needs my total focus. The pain and fear of knifes in my back rules me 24-7. There is no room for being sad. No room for tears. I can’t loose it, because I need to keep myself together. Surviving, minute by minute. I am brave and I am grateful for the help I am getting. It could be so much worse. This is just pain. Yes, it could be so much worse. But Aunt Evas warm voice tipped me over, and when she told me Pär was sitting at her kitchen table, the tears came.

Pär is my cousin, one year younger than me. We grew up together, practically as siblings. He lives in Miami since more than ten years back and we don’t get to see each other that often, but now he is here, surprising his mom. And today they are all together and I am not there. I can’t be there.

I hang up and just cried. Not only about Pär and Eva but a film opening in the evening that I couldn’t attend to.

Trouble 2 has been working intensely since October with his first short. He has been doing a lot of film cutting before, but this was his debut as a director. He came up with the idea together with a friend, wrote the script, directed it, and spent months cutting it and composing the music. Lulin is a 26 minute soft horror movie, shot here at the end of the road, and yesterday was the opening night.

The odds that I would be able to be there were high. But Josephine and I had a plan. Her dad would babysit her little daughter, and if I had one of my better days, we would drive into town, watch the 26 minutes and then rush back home and put me and her daughter to bed. It might have worked.

Only, Josephine turned sick and our plan failed. And here I was, on my couch, crying my eyes out over this state of affairs.

Lying there, an old memory came over me. We were in Seattle on an ice skating rink up at Aurora. It was Autumn who took us there. Trouble & Trouble were on the ice with their American aunt Autumn and their dad. I couldn’t skate of course, because of my back. But I enjoyed watching my family having fun on the ice. Then Trouble 2, about 10 at the time, came up to me with tears in his eyes. It took him a while to express what was going on. He was sad because I couldn’t skate with them. 

I was very surprised, positive my sons were having the time of their life with dad and Autumn, and now it turned out Trouble 2 missed me out there. He actually wanted his mom. I comforted him the best I could, but of course what happened made me really sad. Not only about here and now at the skating rink, but my sons having a mother who couldn’t fully be a part of their lives. And it also made me see myself and the sadness in my situation.

And that’s what I felt like yesterday. I know Trouble 2 was way too busy (exporting the final version of the film only two hours before the opening!) even thinking about missing his mom attending his big event, but it just wasn’t right me not being there. What’s the point? What’s the meaning of Universe or God or whatever not letting a young man accomplishing something extraordinary having one of his parents in the audience?! I should have been there! I just should have been there!!

And I so wanted to be there for myself too. Being a part of the experience. A big moment shared, a joint memory for the rest of our lives. But I wasn’t. As I wasn’t a couple of weeks ago when Trouble 1 was on stage with his guitar and big screen illustrations, a part of a storytelling performance I had been coaching with Nils, a client. I wasn’t there. I was lying on my couch caught in my pain. Surviving, minute by minute.

I am having happy reports from both events though. Nils' story and Trouble 1’s music and paintings made people laugh and cry. The final export worked (three hours before the show crucial parts of the sound was mysteriously gone!) and the film was running smoothly. 

There are pictures on Facebook of course, and they are a bit overwhelming to me. The short Lulin takes place in the woods, and to make the show even more of an event Trouble 2 wanted to make the theatre a forest. Mom, can we take down some trees for dressing the room? Sure, absolutely, there are plenty between my house and Alida’s! In my mind I was picturing a small grove of some Christmas tree size fur and pine at the entrance of the theatre.

Well, that’s not what the pics are showing. The film crew is surrounded by BIG trees, like really big, how did they even transport those? And do I have a clearcut between me and Alida and Josephine? It looks fantastic though, and I am sure being a part of the whole Lulin experience really was something extra.

March is my favorite month of the year. I am sure the base for that feeling is my childhood birthdays. But it’s also the month when the light is coming back, snow melting dripping from the roofs, birds signing their early spring songs reminding us the summer is coming our way once again. 

February on the other hand is my worst month of the year, because of how damned cold it usually is. This year has been different though, record warm, grey and foggy and only 7 hours of sun. It sure has been awful though, but for other reasons. I am hoping, praying and begging that March will wield it’s magic wand, bringing sun and light into my locked up body, making me dance. Releasing my life.