Not so silent, actually.

Among all the crap that people always tell me, one of the most repetitive is that time will make things better.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to burst your bubble: Time is making things worse.

I’m not sure if it’s because the shock of my mother actually dying has worn off, or because I am finally coming to grips with her death, or because the thick vail of happiness brought upon by the novelty of my new relationship has begun to subside, but I can definitely assure you that things now are worse than they were a month ago.

Instead of crying less, I’m crying more. Instead of easing into a new reality, I feel like I am being repeatedly punched in the face. If 2 months ago my crying was “limited” to once or twice a day when I was alone (in the car/bed/bathroom), now it comes much more frequently and, unfortunately, not always in private.

I just can’t control it anymore. I try so hard not to cry next to my sisters and friends and grandparents and The Boy, that I end up exploding at some inopportune moment, like at last week’s Beer Tweet Up (sorry @ByDahWay, @Itzuvi, @YaelBeeri, @JeffPulver, and quite a few others, and thanks) or yesterday when I was out with friends. I hate crying to and in front of people. Hate it.

And I know that’s what everyone is there for, but they aren’t. Who wants to see someone cry all the time? And it’s not like it makes me feel better when I’m done. I don’t feel relieved, but I have the bonus of feeling bad for crying in public.

Before my mom died I was able to usually hold it in, with the exception of The One Who Calls Me Balls Balls. Not sure why, but the poor girl had to deal with my crying on more than one occassion (if crying in front of someone once is a novelty, imagine it happening repeatedly). So now that it is supposedly over, I don’t want to cry to her anymore. It isn’t fair to her, or anyone else.

I can’t cry to my sisters because, frankly, none of us are OK yet, and all I would get if I cried to one of them is that they would start crying, too. I can’t cry in front of my grandparents, which is sometimes incredibly hard, like earlier today when my grandfather asked me why I wasn’t smiling like I usually am, and then told me that my mother was an angel.

Yeah, not helpful at all.

Crying in front of them is not an option, seeing as they lost their daughter.

My dad is always away on business, and even though he’s been incredibly supportive, I don’t want to cry to The Boy. Who wants to be around that all the time? It’s bad enough that I can get moody (thankfully I don’t PMS). Everyone has their own problems, and they don’t need to have to deal with mine. And don’t tell me that’s what my friends and family and The Boy are there for, because, yes, that could be true to a certain extent – but it can’t be all the time.

So it leaves me fighting my tears on a regular basis and then just not being able to do so anymore. I cried at the tweet up, I cried at dinner with my friends yesterday, I cry before (and after) my ballet classes (which I have not wanted to go to even once since she died, but I make myself go anyway), I cried when I took my 4 year old nephew out for pizza (when he said, “Savta (grandma) Rocha’le is dead, right? I haven’t seen her in a long time” – and then he asked me why I was crying), and I cried when my dad brought letters my mom wrote to her best friend in the States when we were kids (tears came just by seeing her handwriting, not the actual content seeing as I was 8 when they were written), and tears are falling now, which can explain the completely inexplicable stream of consciousness that has made up this post, as opposed to the usual literally masterpiece that it is (kidding).

I find myself wanting to save the dumbest things of hers. Other than her letters, and her blog which I should really save in case it goes offline one day, I want to have her cookies cookbook (even though I bought another one) only because it says her name in it in her handwriting (which is exactly like mine), and I have her perfumes, but I can’t stand to smell them, and I have her jeans shirt with Looney Toons, not that I want to wear it – I had to shove it in the back of my closet because I couldn’t look at it, but I couldn’t bare the thought that someone else would have it – or that it would be thrown away.

And I’m scared to dial her phone number because I don’t know if it has been disconnected and I don’t want to ask my sisters or dad because if it hasn’t been disconnected, I don’t want them to disconnect it since I can’t imagine someone else answering her phone number, but if someone else is on the other line – I don’t want to know, because it won’t be my mom.