Nope, No, Not Right Now

I spent Patriot's Day at work, despite the fact that the office was technically closed, getting my boss ready for trial the following day and dealing with the craziness generally associated with that. I was too busy to check news websites or generally be aware at all of what was happening outside of my cubicle. When I heard the news about the bombing in Boston, it was in passing, and though I wanted to read about it and find out what the F happened, I still had hours of work to do and knew it would take twice as long if I stopped to check Gawker for an update. It was as if my mind said, "Nope, no, not right now, not while you have 300 more pages of exhibits to Bate stamp."
After getting out of work, I had a dinner to go to, and by the time I got home it felt too late in the day for me to get into what actually happened, how many people were affected, and all the things I wasn't doing to help. I was right to wait. If I had gotten into it late Monday night, I might not have ever fallen asleep. I didn't watch the raw footage until Tuesday morning, look at the photos of the blast victims being wheeled away on stretchers, see how much devastation had come to my state's capitol while I was doing stuff that seemed less and less like it actually mattered. Nearly the same thing happened when 9/11 happened. I was in Nova Scotia at the time, living in a house with no television, so I was insulated from how huge that event was. Everything I saw was after the fact, over a month later, and by then, it was old news. I was protected by distance, far from the panic that overtook the entire nation at that moment in time.
I hate how a tragedy like this makes me feel. It's not enough to acknowledge how unthinkable this madness is, I have to think of it in terms of how it is affecting me. Me, who had no loved ones anywhere near the blast site and has little affiliation with Boston as a city. I hate that I turn it around and use a dark mirror like this to reflect how small my problems are, how fortunate I am to have two legs and arms and a beating heart. It takes three deaths and upwards of one-hundred injuries for me to see how lucky I am, that I deserve no pity, and that there are people so much worse off. It is pathetic that things only come into perspective for me when something as tragic as this happens.
Despite all the perspective or focus or whatever bullshit name I can ascribe to it, I have been anxious this week about my parents moving back to the Berkshires. When I say that, I don't mean that I am anxious because I don't want them living near me, I'm just not sure yet how I feel about it. They have been living so far away for eleven years, basically the whole time I have been becoming a tolerable person, and now they are back, and I know it's going to take me a while to be a normal-ass person around them. I have gotten used to seeing them only twice a year, and being my happiest, wackiest, funniest self when they are around, trying not to burden them, being me but with the volume turned up. It's a happy thing, a good thing, but of course it's manifesting itself as slight mania. I now have the freedom to disagree with them, fight with them, have a real relationship with them that is not just a bunch of stops along the way. I stopped over to see them the day they got in, and I had to keep reminding myself that they are here for good, that I don't need to cram in all the time with them that I possibly can before I don't see them for another six-to-twelve months.
The distraction of anticipating their arrival and the panic over how and why and who set off the bombs at the marathon has kept me from thinking about one more thing that would probably bother me more if I had time to think about it. This week, Friday, in fact, would be my fifth wedding anniversary. Five years ago, I was looking at the man I was about to marry, thinking I was going to love him forever, no matter what. That hasn't changed, really. I will still love Gino forever, just not the way I planned. We're still present in each other's lives, still mean something to each other, but there is a bitter edge to our friendship that might never go away. Thinking about how giddy and unbelievably happy I was the day I got married, I can't help now thinking about how broken I was when he told me he wanted a divorce, and I wonder if I ever will be that hopeful again. I think I will, but who knows? These days, yon can't predict anything and at the same time have to prepare for anything. Nothing is certain, except for the certainty that things like this, life changes that come from out of nowhere, are not insurmountable. Nothing is, really. If I haven't learned that by now, I might not ever learn it. Right now, my heart is not breaking for myself and the fact that my wedding anniversary is just another day, it is breaking for everyone affected by the marathon bombing and what they will have to deal with for the rest of their lives.