When you’re feeling bad nobody really wants to know. I think that “How are you?” is kind of meaningless, it’s just stuff we say. I think Nat knows that, on some some level. Maybe to him it seems like there’s so much stuff you’re just supposed to say, and none of it gets to anything real.<\/p>\n
So what is real for him? If it’s just what’s in front of his nose, then how does he deal with complex feelings? Does he feel them and not understand them?<\/p>\n
Maybe that’s the way you’re supposed to be. That’s what I was told, long ago: “Just feel your feelings.” Right now that’s what I’m doing and it feels putrid. I’ve been carrying Nat-guilt around ever since I dropped him off yesterday. Guilt and grief.<\/p>\n
I hate the way his brothers have to be told to say goodbye. I hate the way he has to be told to say Happy Mother’s Day. For all of them, it’s just a lot of words.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile I’m sick of words and I’m sick of feelings. And I want someone else to be in charge for a change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When you’re feeling bad nobody really wants to know. I think that “How are you?” is kind of meaningless, it’s just stuff we say. I think Nat knows that, on some some level. Maybe to him it seems like there’s so much stuff you’re just supposed to say, and none of it gets to anything […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-3c","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}