Working title: something not morbid

Once upon a better time, I wrote a story about family. I told a writing class about mine, and I told them I could make it better with a few words of contrition and reconciliation. I told them I had the power to fix things. I told them it wasn't too late for us to be different. I told them my family could be better.

I thought I was telling them the truth. I thought I was courageous. I thought I was making a difference for myself and for my siblings. I thought everything was going to be okay.

All this is a heap of obvious foreshadowing, though. Can you guess what I'm about to tell you?

It isn't okay. My family isn't okay. My siblings aren't okay. My father is definitely not okay.

I'm not okay.

I'm sitting here listening to a Vaughn Williams choral piece called Rest, and tells me of a girl who is "curtained with a blessed dearth of all that irked her from her hour of birth; with stillness that is almost Paradise". RVW set a C.Rossetti poem quite beautifully. The metaphorical title is very transparent.

And it sounds really good. It sounds worth it. And sitting here at this table listening to choir music is not the place to have this crisis...but rest. All I want is rest from the burden of my family.

I know. I know I'm not responsible for them, and I didn't cause the current state of affairs. But somehow it is my fault. I feel it, even if it makes no sense. There's nothing I can do or say to fix it, but I feel it.

And I just want to rest.