Daily Writing Challenge

M-7

Are you okay? I asked.
I might have gotten some dust in my eye. I answered..
No, are you okay?
I would have glared at myself if I could..
Really?
What does it matter?
It matters..
To me?
Of course. I am pretty sure how I feel.
Then why am I asking if I am okay?
Because...
So now I do not want to answer that question either?
Why am I asking?
Because...
...I am not okay.
I am hurting.
Why?
I glare at myself again. And blink loudly.
Why?
Because things are going to change...
...because we are going to be tight on money...
... because Papa is dying...slowly...
...and I can not even help him.
I can not relieve his discomfort, his confusion, his pain.
I can not reassure him that everything is going to be okay.
I can not make him aware of reality.
He thinks he is still in the army, that he has children that do not exist, that "the seekers are stopped in a bus outside and they are coming for him."
He does not know when he is.
He does not know where he is.
I do not know if he is sure who he is.
And then all of a sudden he is lucid, and he's going to clean his apartment and cook dinner for him and Nate, and he is not really lucid then either...he is just a different kind of gone.
That is the real trouble... Not that we are going to lose him... But that we really already have... And now we are dealing with a childlike stranger that looks like him, and sounds like him, and just is not him, and we can not just throw up our hands and be done with it because somewhere in there he just might be trying to get back to us.


Are you okay?
...
...
...
Are you okay??
...
...
No...I am not okay... And I do not know what I need to be okay.


So I need a thousand words today and I am sitting at three hundred fifty words give or take right now. It is ten in the morning. I have to go to the store and pick up twenty pounds of chicken hind quarters for Easter dinner. They are fifty eight cents a pound right now and I would fill my freezer with them if it were not already full or almost full. That is the cheapest meat has been in a while and I am leaping on it.. I have sixty rolls of toilet paper. I would only have twenty two if Walmart would have let me buy one twelve pack. But the only option it would give me was a four pack of twelve packs.. the other options were ridiculously expensive per roll like I could have gotten a three pack of individual rolls for seven bucks. Anyway now one of my bedrooms looks like 2020 all over again. Sigh.

I am not okay.

I should try and get a little bit of rest. I have not been sleeping well.

I should get up and eat breakfast so I can take my pills. My antidepressants are in my morning box and from the sounds of me it would be a bad idea to miss those. What to eat though? There were no leftovers left last night. But there is bacon and tomato from the night before. My wife made guacamole yesterday and I would love to polish it off for her, but it would kill me. I am anaphylactically allergic to it. Not quite sniff a peanut and blow up like a balloon allergic but enough that I have to be careful not to cross contaminate. Six hundred and thirty words down and only three hundred and seventy left for the day. My hand keeps going numb from typing on my phone.i just did not want to pull out the computer to write this and it needed to be written...

I am not okay.

That was only another forty words. It seems like it should have been more. I feel like I have written more than a thousand words worth of words today today. Some of them were really rough. I am managing to get this challenge done and twenty six paychecks butwrite today am behind on the poetry challenge and the Bradbury challenge. And I need to do the contest challenge for the month I think. I might have done an entry for the contest challenge but I do not think so. Two hundred forty words left today and I interrupted the flow of words with breakfast.. now I am on my way to the store to pick up the chicken and some other stuff. I have to get a few things for Papa. Pepsi, muffins, and creme filled cookies, and this is all while we wait for his insulin to show up. Yes he is diabetic and no he does not want sugar free. He is on palliative care now and that is just a step from hospice so... I guess I get him cookies? He does not want to be sick. He does not want to be old. He does not want to be confused. I can do nothing about those wants.. he wants cookies. I can give him cookies. I bought him thirty dollars worth of cookies snack cakes and muffins. I also got him a twenty four pack of Pepsi.
I hope that gives him a little happiness. If Nate lets him eat them. Seventy words left to write now.

I am not okay
Will I be okay?
...
...
Ever?
...
Things happen. Things change. Bad things happen. Bad changes come. You do not just stop breathing because of them. They are not endings. There it only one ending in life and that is when you die. We do not know what comes next. He is dying, that is an ending he will not be around anymore. Yeah but he will still be with me. It is just a change in our relationship. I said goodbye to Mom and I still feel her.

I am not okay.