howcouldiknow

Last time I wrote on here was July 15th.  Three days later I get a phone call from my Dad saying that my brother was having a breakdown.  The next day I got on a plane from Chicago to Columbus, Ohio and my brother was checked into a hospital for two weeks.  Other than a weekend visit back to Chicago I have been living in what used to be the house I grew up in.  Now it is the house left after a messy divorce, the home of my father that has been taken off the housing market for now.  For two weeks I lived with my father while visiting my brother in the hospital.  For two weeks I have lived with my brother and occasionally my father as he tends to his other responsibilities.  A week ago we got into a car accident and totaled his car, I had my first panic attack, and then my first encounter with poison ivy.  I started smoking cigarettes again.  We both stopped drinking.  I admit I have had one or two secret beers.  I want to stay in Columbus, stay involved, and stay in control.  Within two weeks I am going to fly back to Chicago semi-permanently and if I still have a job, then go back to work.  Get myself financially stable and begin a process of regular visits to see my family.  Leaving is likely to be one of the hardest things I am going to face.  And once past the initial separation I know I am going to feel completely isolated and out of place in the familiar surroundings of my coffee shop job and Chicago apartment.  I am not the same after this.  I am not complaining.  I don’t really care if it sounds grandiose or melodramatic.  I know I am stronger than I thought, more honest than I thought, and I am craving to put this to use.  Now.  Almost three months out from graduation from RIT with a BFA in photography and a minor in Art History.  With goals of Museum studies of Visual culture grad work.  Now I am looking up social work and counselor career tracks, teaching degrees and public school positions.  I wish we could have visible scars, aberrations in our tree rings to mark events such as this.

I guess I could go get a tattoo.

TIMSHEL.