It just isn’t real until you see it on the news.It isn’t real until the report is filed. It isn’t real until you see the body, or …
It simply isn’t real, yet.
Life goes on, with the strange and inappropriate jokes; the Teflon-Brain (when nothing can hold the attention); the messing around on Facebook as if nothing has happened; the confused and confusing phone calls with the others who knew them, even if you have never been friends before; the hovering sense of waiting – as if you’ve left the house without switching off the iron.
The self-delusion, particularly the absurd feeling that sleep will bring the cure. To wake up and realise that it’s all been a particularly vivid and unpleasant dream. A trite, cliched, and yet profoundly apt description.
The padded sense of puzzlement, and the absolute absence of attention to anything important, or even unimportant. Work, routine, forgetting where you put the book that was in your hand a moment ago. The feeling of lobotomisation.
These are the days of the automaton. The days of the stupid mistakes. And the stupid questions: ‘Why’ being the most ridiculous. The days of absently wandering from room to room, or not remembering how you ended up at the corner store. These are the dream days.
Stage One.
vagabondparent
