Wicked insomnia tonight despite the precautionary measures I took. Unfortunately, it's too late to do much else. I'm screwed.

It's partly my own fault. I feel guilty for neglecting my apartment and plants and my poor, poor freaked out cats. I feel guilty not being physically present for my parents. And in my guilt-induced insomnia, I played with my phone and tried to clean up my texts. First I accidentally resent old drafts to people I really don't want to talk to. Then I looked at my inbox and the messages from my brother. I deleted so many of his because he'd spam me with crap, and I really can't tell you how bitterly I regret that now. And then I got to the other texts. The ones from mom, from waiting in the ER, and then the ICU, and just... things getting worse and worse. And how I stupidly thought it was a replay of the last time, that it was scary as hell but ultimately it was going to be OK.

And it wasn't.

Incapable of talking and feeling so very, very alone, I texted just about every number I have, regardless of relationship. I feel kind of bad about that, because I definitely texted people I normally wouldn't share something personal with. I guess it was an automatic reaction, someone please do something, tell me it's going to be alright, let me please make a fool out of myself, utterly humiliate myself by overreacting to a nightmare, just please let this not be true.

I imagine this is the emotional equivalent of a traumatic amputation. The immediate blinding pain of loss followed by the long drawn out healing process replete with phantom pain and maddening itch and all manner of complications. And then Grandma, which was like chopping off a little more. If it's not belaboring the metaphor, I suppose that tonight I ripped open my stitches. God, it hurts. Come Saturday, it'll be a month. I guess that's right, but I've frankly lost just about all perception of the passage of time. I mean, my brother? Cannot be gone an entire month. It's just not possible. Come a week from tomorrow, it'll be what should have been my brother's 29th birthday. I should be trying to buy him Yankees tickets. I should be planning when I'm going to make nut and poppyseed rolls for Easter (no raisins for Grandma).

It's just all wrong, and it is never going to be right ever again.