Coming Home - Part 2
Coming home...part 2
This post is a follow up to the story I began on February 23rd, 2021. Please refer back a few weeks if you would like to read the beginning.
Our car was pretty messy. I can't remember the exact place we had just gone, days before the hospital, but I remember we had taken the dog somewhere. It was very obvious with all of her hair weaved into our black fabric seats. My lunchbox from the 29th was still in there too. I remember that the lunchbox had leftover hummus in it…which was probably not great smelling by then.
Anyways…
There was dog hair all over the car. I usually get annoyed when the car is really messy, but I didn't. I didn't really care about anything. I just wanted to go home. We had a few bouquets of flowers, most of which, we were able to stand up in the backseat. (Well J got them to stand up because I didn't help with any of that.) I did hold on to one of them, so it wouldn't tip over. We drove across to Kaiser and dropped off my prescriptions for pain and blood pressure medications, and then went home.
It felt like the whole drive home was not real. It also felt like the longest drive of my life, even though it was only 15 minutes. Here we were, driving home…in silence. I don't even think we cried for most of it. It was a weird silent car ride, where we were both comprehending what happened, and the fact that I was alive. Here we were, alone…wondering if we would ever feel joy again. That is when we came up with our term "blank face". It is hard to describe, but here is my best shot at it.
Blank face: When you look out at the world and think everything and nothing, if that is even possible. No emotion. No feeling. No anything. Quiet. You are just looking around and feeling like the world is moving, but you don't feel like there is a point to any of the things going on. This soon turns into a new version of "blank face", where you are in public (or at home) and you can plaster a smile on your face or talk to people, and yet you still feel nothing. It is the feeling of a giant void. Or the feeling like your face is numb, and you really DO NOT give a crap about anything, but in a calm manner. Like you could probably get punched really hard in the face, and not even react. Have you ever watched the Vampire Diaries or the Originals? If so, I think maybe it would be like the feeling of turning off their "humanity switch." Or something like that…
So we drove home. We went down our usual backroad with lots of greenery and ranch houses. We had a few annoying drivers around us, and for the first time ever, we both just stared at their cars at and let them pass. Because who cares. What a small thing to care about in the scheme of things.
We got home to our neighborhood, where I always love seeing all of the kids playing outside and yelling and having fun. I had never been so happy to see the street empty. We parked in the driveway and walked into our house. And guess what?
More silence.
