In Dreams and Moving Forward

My dad's death is putting me in a position where a lot of doors are opening for me.  I remember feeling so anxious around this time last year, like I could barely put one foot in front of the other without quavering, where I was pushing myself forward but hanging on just barely.  I was stressed about my computer, stressed about finances, stressed about studying Italian.  Even last November, I wrote this about my computer acting poorly.  And I was pretty sure that I was going to be buying a new computer this year.  And well, my dad died and next week I'm driving to LA and I'm going to take his computer which is way newer than better than mine.  Obviously, it's not like he needs it anymore.

Some of the whole distribution of assets and items is just weird because a lot of it is my brother and I figuring who wants what, who needs what, and where things will go.  When I was in LA, I took four bags of books, going through my dad's books and figuring out which were the books he would probably send me.  I am thinking that I'll take another look at books I might want to have.  The good news is that I'm down to three bags of books now.  I guess I've been going from this mindset of, what would my dad want, which isn't really appropriate and accurate anyway.  And actually, unlike my mom, my dad didn't sit around giving me advice on what to do with my life all the time.  So I don't know what I'm basing these mental answers on.

I had a dream last night that I saw my dad, and was talking to him.  I got to talk about how he felt before he died, what happened at his memorial service, and how I felt about all this, and in the dream, he told me that he really loved me and was really proud of me.  It was nice, and I woke up feeling more peaceful than I have in a long time.  I don't think I talked to his spirit or anything like that, but I felt like some part of my subconscious mind, the part where I'm dealing with all these dark and complicated feelings, is working on coping with this, working on moving me to a higher level of not being sad or mad or confused all the time, but just accepting that I'm moving forward with my life.  I think having a feeling of being at peace, that I'm in the right place and doing the right things, is the total antithesis of depression.  And I just feel energized and happy to be feeling this way.

And I'm off to LA next week to attend a Dr Who convention, catch up with friends and family, and have some time off.  It does feel weird to revisit LA so soon because that was where everything went down, where I was stuck for days and days trying to deal with everything, but I also feel good about things too, like this is a new chapter and a new trip.

Weird Moment

It was a weird moment at Target.  I was looking at the birthday card selection, trying to find one for my brother.  And I'll note, that this is probably the first time in my life that I ever got my brother a birthday card.  But anyway, I look in the "for him" section and there is a large selection for family members.  And there, most of them are for dads and fathers (which are somehow separate categories).  Shit.  I realize that I will not ever have a reason to buy any of these cards, and I start feeling the tears coming to my eyes.  There is some level of knowing, where I have known my dad has been dead for about six weeks, but there is another level of knowing in recognizing what exactly that means.  And sometimes it is all little things, like this one space in my life that was held by my father is empty, and I won't have another one.  That's kind of strange and sad all at once, and I felt very struck by that grief, when I was looking at cards.  And not wanting to be one of those people who stands around sobbing in the card section, I moved on to the brother cards, and picked one out and purchased it.

Progress

I am starting to feel not sick and not rashed and not diseased, and that has conspired to make me feel almost slightly optimistic.  I have managed to feel well enough to get back to walking at lunch, which helps my mood a lot.  And really, having some daily exercise instead of sitting slug-like on the couch for days on end like I did while I was ill, well that is helping my mood, my energy level, and even my sleep.  I wish I could tell you that I was one of those people who loves exercise, in fact I would love to be one of those people, but I have yet to find the exercise that I like and mostly I would rather be reading, napping, watching TV.  I know that it helps when it's no longer winter, and it isn't dark the moment I leave work.

I'm finding myself actually energized once again and having the right kind of energy to start looking for a boyfriend.  And with some trepidation, I started renewing an account on a free website.  I think in the past I've tended to just throw money at the singleness problem, and found sites like eHarmony which were just a slog of time and not really a lot of results.  I am finding myself both calm about this in some ways, and also out of practice.  I haven't been romantically interested in anyone for a while.  I think the real problem is that I just don't meet a lot of single men in my daily life, and I tend to have the kind of hobbies that don't attract them, but also I don't feel like I put myself out there.  And doing some online dating is a safe way to start opening the door, opening up a little bit.  Hopefully I can avoid being driven crazy by it.

Emotions and Relationships

With the change of the page on my monthly calendar, I have suddenly found myself becoming a little bit unstuck.  I am seriously ready for that.  January was the longest month that I can remember, full of heartache, heartbreak, and then a disgusting rash.  I seriously am almost as tired of talking about it as you can imagine, but more tired of people offering me random advice like "maybe you should use some baby powder."  Um yeah, it's not just an irritation, people.  Anyway, almost done with my antibiotics, and I'm wanting to be done talking about that.

In the wake of having this whole in my life with my dad being gone, I feel like it sort of pushed my familial relationships into different directions.  For instance, having conversations with my uncle who is my dad's youngest brother.  I do really like my uncle, but he lives down in LA and I feel often like I do with a lot of men that I'm not really sure what to talk to him about.  I can talk to anyone about computers, cats, movies, books... but I feel sometimes that my skill in talking to random men is related to how much time I spend around men, and lately I haven't done much of it.

So, I try to talk to my uncle a little bit more.  The thing that I find weird is that I'm very comfortable saying to anyone, "I'm sad," or whatever my emotional state is, and just sort of letting that be the case without expecting the other person to "fix" my emotion.  Because I know, believe me I know, through years of therapy that my emotions are MY emotions, no one else is responsible for them, and it's far better for me to express them to someone than to repress them or try to "solve" them because emotions aren't problems or things to solve.  They are like guideposts or depth charges or signals of some sort, but not something that you have to do anything about.  Anyway, when I tell people I am sad sometimes, they say things worrying if I'm okay or not.  Like I know my uncle has said that.  And you know, I'm both sad and okay.  I'm mad and I'm fine.  I am not my emotions, and my state of being is more complicated than whatever my emotion I'm expressing is.  Anyway, when this happens, I feel like it's harder for me to express how I feel because I'm then worrying about if someone is going to try to fix it or not.  I realize that this is a co-dependent type of habit, and I need to stop worrying about what the other people in my life are saying or doing.

I also have been trying to communicate more with my brother, but it's sort of like if you lived in a city twenty years ago, and you knew that city really well, but now that you've moved back there, you recognize some of the landmarks, but there are so many new streets and you aren't really sure how to get to new locations.  And yeah, you could eat at the same old restaurants that you used to eat at twenty years ago, but you want to try something new.  I feel sometimes like it's just risky trying to redevelop this relationship, and that it's just not easy for me.  I recognize somethings, but the rest is a blur.  It's weird.  It's not like being estranged because of some horrible thing that happened, but more of just time and distance blew us apart.  And my language of talking about things, thinking about things is also different. It's not that I haven't changed at all and everyone else has.  Point of fact, we've all changed a lot.

Also, I think being stuck at home a couple of days last week really gave me too much time to think about things, particularly at a level of rumination, that I would have preferred not to go through.  I remember reading about a lot of people who wrote poetry and prose centuries ago, and thinking of that kind of life when you are at home all the time, and yes, you can think deeply and strongly about things, but also you need to step outside your head for a while.  That's why it's good we have TV and movies.  And group therapy.

This Is a Little Disgusting

Seriously, what a crappy week.  After being in the hot tub pool in Calistoga, I started having some itching in the groin region, and by Tuesday night, it started hurting badly.  I went to the doctor on Wednesday, and she and the dermatologist that she called in for a consult both thought it was herpes.  Um yeah, I have honestly no idea how I could have gotten herpes anytime recently, and was having bad luck researching online what the time frame would be (because apparently there are a lot of people who have no idea how they could have gotten herpes either).  Thankfully, the test for herpes was negative, as was the test for folliculitis, which was what I was pretty sure I had.  So it's not really clear what is going on with me, medically, although I'm still taking a shitload of drugs that seem to be working somewhat, including Cipro which comes with about ten pages of warnings including that I might be experiencing nightmares, hallucinations, and the usual gamut of what you get from taking any antibiotic.

The only bright side was that she gave me some prescription strength Motrin which is knocking the pain mostly out.  And a note for being off work Wednesday through Friday.  Not knowing what it was, how sure can we be that I'm not contagious?  The herpes warning that I got was basically to not have any sexual contact with anyone while I had sores, and I'll tell you that was so not an issue.

Anyway at least I didn't take any photos of what was going on, and I definitely am not sitting around bitching about this all in great detail, or at least, trying not to.  But in all honesty, I have been in a bit of pain and a few days of sleeping 12 hours made it pretty clear that I'm fighting something here.  I also felt mentally a lot of pain, shame, some self-loathing for no apparent reason other than sitting around having my body betraying me.  I'm a lousy patient.  I hate being sick.  I don't like telling people about my problems in great detail, or going on and on about my symptoms, and I tend to minimize my negativity.  Which probably would explain some of my bouts with depression, honestly.  Hard for me to say, I'm sick, I need help.

And really, I've been having a hard time being at home alone a lot because it makes me think of my dad, and how he died.  And it's difficult.  I don't really know how to open up about it, where I am now, without feeling like I'm just wallowing in sadness and negativity.  I have to remind myself that it's all natural, normal, part of the process, but some of the fear and pain has really caught up with me lately, and the feeling of loss.  And the blur of that whole day and how much I had to process and what a waste in some way it all was.  While I tell myself not to feel guilty for not trying harder with my dad and getting him to take better care of himself, I still feel guilty.  Or not calling him more, reaching out more.  I feel guilty about that (but obviously not enough to reach out to friends when I'm in pain).  I think about how I've been on my own for a while and for various reasons, have been trying to parent myself.  And that is sad too, because it's not just that I'm sad that my father is gone, but I'm sad that he checked out on life and our relationship in a lot of ways.  I know there's nothing I can really do about it.  But knowing that doesn't make me feel better.

What Has Been Left Behind

I am finally going to have my one on one therapy appointment tomorrow.  My therapist was ready to schedule something earlier, or do a phone appointment, but I figured this would be fine.  I remember how inconsistent those feelings were my first days, and not even sure how one goes about talking about loss in a therapeutic setting.  I heard about these grieving groups that Kaiser has, but it's not like I am having a problem with grieving.  More of my issue is what do I do with my life now.  But that's another story.

This weekend, I went up to Calistoga because a friend was up there for a long week of trying to get over a relationship, and she invited me up for a night.   I wrote about our dining experience at Gals About Town.  I didn't use this picture I took at the outside of the restaurant in that post, but I thought it was kind of interesting.

After the trip to Calistoga, I was finally able to plug in my camera and upload my photos from my trip to LA.  I'm a quick unpacker when I come back from travel, and almost always feel like I just want to unpack and put my suitcase back right away.  I did that when I came home, but I didn't really feel up to putting all my photos on my computer for some reason.  It's weird to see the photos I took before my dad died; they feel like the photographs of a different person, a different me, who doesn't realize that soon her life is going to be different.

I took four bags of books from my dad's place, mostly the books that I figured he was going to send me at some point.  I kind of wondered about some of them that I thought he would have sent me, but are a few years old.  Like, would he have sent them at some point?  Was he done reading them?  I feel like there are always going to be tons of unanswered questions about my dad and what he was thinking, and the last months or so of his life.  And I never will know what really drove him, what he really felt.  I think often I try to get at the inner workings of him, to understand him, feeling like it would help me understand myself, and my childhood.  But that opportunity is gone.  It's not like he left me a note or anything.  I kind of wish he did.  I don't think he was particularly introspective and it probably never would have occurred to him.  The closest I came was seeing some of the things I had gotten him over the years that he had saved.

This weekend, I was talking to my mom when I was driving back from Calistoga, and she claimed that she and my dad went to the French Laundry at some point.  Well, my parents were separated by 1978, so I figured that this was not possibly true.  According to Wikipedia, the French Laundry was opened as a restaurant in 1978 so maybe they did go in the last year of their marriage.  But it wasn't like Thomas Keller was working there, and I'm sure the menu was different, and it's entirely possible that my mom didn't remember this correctly.  And in the past, I'd just call and ask my dad, and of course, I can't do that.  And I remember talking to my dad about the French Laundry at some point when I first heard about it, after seeing examples of some of the food on some TV show.  Maybe he mentioned they went there?  I wish I could remember this or just ask him about it, but I can't, and how much does it matter?  But I myself really want to eat there some day.

Past and Future Thoughts

I'm actually finding that I'm looking forward to blogging about my feelings sometimes lately.  I didn't want to blog yesterday to participate in stopping SOPA and PIPA (and I guess I could have blogged and said that, but I really doubt anyone comes to my blog for news or politics anyway), but I was kind of thinking about a lot of things yesterday when I was doing laundry (one of my dad's favorite activities) and wearing this hoodie of his that I took from his house (which sounds mercenary somehow).  I never was, have never been the kind of person who wants to take clothes from someone's house, or asks if I can borrow this and that, so like his old wedding ring, it is something that I wouldn't have if he weren't dead.  But anyway, it still smells a little bit like him, and the smell is beginning to fade, and I think about what my brother was saying about taking someone's handkerchief and putting it in a ziplock bag so you could still smell them and remember.  I know that memory is going to fade, also the memory of how he sounded on the phone.  I think a bit about what it means to honor someone's memory, which is another kind of memory because I'm doing the things that I remember him doing.  Like laundry.  Or watching something particular on TV.

So much of what I'm doing now is just living my life, waiting to adjust to the way my life is now, which is not all that different from the way it was before.  That might change sometime in the near future, because I do feel that sort of groundswell of wanting to change my life in ways, or figure more of what way I want to change.  On a very basic level, I fear dying young myself.  My dad was only 30 years older than me, which doesn't seem like that much.  I probably won't even be retired in 30 years from now, with the way that Social Security and whatnot is going.  Though who knows about that one.  But thirty years doesn't seem like enough time for everything I want to do with my life (much less reading every book I want to read) and the thought is propelling me to seize the moment and not hold back with making choices and going in new directions.

I do keep waiting though to make any rash decisions because I want my brain to normalize, stabilize, where I am now.  I haven't felt particularly grounded since this all happened, and a large part of that was being in LA way longer than I intended.  I am by nature a bit of a planner, and I had mentally prepared to be down south eight days and it ended up being five extra days.  The phrase "Enormous Changes at the Last Minute" from the Grace Paley book kept coming into my head the whole time I was down in LA, and even know, I associate it with that trip.

Cleaning

My friend L that I have known since I was in junior high came over yesterday.  We were going to go to lunch and talk, but I mentioned that I wanted to finally get a file cabinet (something I had been talking about for years) and organize paperwork that I wanted to save and get rid of stuff I didn't need to save.  And she took it upon herself to help me go through years of paperwork that needed to be shredded, and also when I was opening old envelopes, she was going through my kitchen and organizing and cleaning.  It was pretty awesome.  I don't feel like I'm a very organized person, nor am I good at being really organized, and I usually don't find it the slightest bit fun at all.  L on the other hand, seems to enjoy the whole process, and she is really good at doing it.  I probably should have asked her sooner.  Also I have a whole other room full of boxes from when I moved into my place over five years ago that are still unpacked.  I'm sure I can throw most of the stuff out (in fact, some of the junk in there is probably my ex boyfriend's and I know I can dump all of that), but it's just a question of gearing myself up to do it.

After she left, I looked around at my cleaner living space, and I just felt weird.  I think there is nothing like the experience of sorting through some of my dad's stuff to make you think about how much crap you have and how little of it is really needed.  Having everything organized makes me aware of what I have, what I have to do, and what I need to deal with.  But it was also difficult sleeping, thinking about things in my life, and where I want to go from here.  Thankfully today is a work holiday and I didn't need to be up at the crack of dawn.

Belief and Anger

Recently I've had some anger.  Anger is never really easy for me to express and process, which explains a lot of my past passive-aggressive behavior and a lot of that feeling of swallowing my feelings.  Anyway, I have been dealing with being angry at other people, like my mom, and the fact that my dad is dead, and not really necessarily being angry at him.  A lot of what I have felt since that moment I knew my dad was dead was that he is over, that I can't talk to him, communicate with him, or negotiate with him in any way about anything anymore.  It annoys me that I can't ask him anything either, but I think the one thing that I was able to accept immediately was that my dad's life was over, and he's gone.  It would be comforting to have some beliefs here, belief that he's in heaven or something, and that if I talk to him, he'll hear me.  But I just can't/don't believe like that.

I think because my dad's death was so unexpected and sudden, it has made me feel like everyone around me is going to die at any minute.  I have that feeling of life being very fragile and easily snuffed out at any moment.  I've felt like that for a few weeks and let me tell you, having your own death hanging over your head every day really fucks with you.  I know, logically and rationally, that my existence is going to end sometime.  But I prefer to think of it far far out there in the future, and not imminently looming over me.  I have been feeling as if each moment is my last, each meal is my last, and each random bodily pain (gas, foot asleep, etc.) is some impending shadow of doom.

Don't know if I can find comfort per se in this, but typing it out is making me find some humor in it.  All along in the last two weeks, I've felt like I have had a lot of feelings, a lot of emotions, and I feel kind of like one of those game show contestants in a telephone booth with dollar bills swirling around, and trying to catch as many of them as possible.  But I do feel like those feelings and emotions buffeting me are somewhat understandable, relatable, and I believe that I'll make it through this experience somewhat richer and more emotionally aware than I was before.

Stages of Grief

I finally had group therapy yesterday and I got to tell the story of how I found my dad, dead, and things started feeling more real.  I think giving a voice to my feelings of denial, saying it aloud, made me realize that it was a strategy of dealing with things, but it wasn't going to last and it wasn't very effective.  I have heard of, learned a lot about the whole "Five Stages of Grief" business.  And I'll just say here and now that dealing with my dad's death has been a lot different than any other kind of grieving I've had to do in my life.  A lot of that is about where I am now in my life and my ability to process my feelings.  I remember thinking the whole time when I was in LA about how happy I was that I have had years and years of therapy, because it really helped me to start dealing with things just a little bit even when I was in shock.

And now, the shock is really wearing off.  In the last 24 hours, I've been sad.  I think I have a hard time distinguishing sadness from depression, and I know that a lot of my efforts to really push depression out and away from my life make it so that being sad seems destructive to me, and that I just don't want to stay sad for a long time.  But I realize sometimes that it's important to sit with the feelings, to feel the feelings as they are happening, without judging them or pushing them away.  So, I'm sad.  I go through my sent emails, and see the mail that I sent to my dad trying to setup a lunch date with him.  I went to his Facebook page for some reason and then was looking at the list of his friends and wondering if I should friend the ones who were at his funeral.  And wondering why he didn't post more stuff on Facebook, why he didn't have more friends there.  I know it's irrelevant, but then I think of that anyway, and wish I had more idea at his inner life, his inner workings.

C took me out to dinner tonight, well more accurately we met for a dinner which he paid for.  C actually wrote me a nice email saying he was sorry about my dad (and I think here that C is the last boyfriend who will have ever met my dad, and that's a little bit sad, but in a way, my dad hated pretty much every guy I ever dated except R, and you know, my dad's opinion of relationships and men is not really related to mine).  And C yet again reminds me how I'm not aware of his inner life, his inner workings.  I dated the guy for a year and a half, and honestly felt sometimes like I had no idea what he was thinking.  Whereas with my dad, I knew somewhat of what he was thinking, but it seems very two-dimensional to me now.  Did I ask him how he was, what he was thinking?  Not enough.  But anyway, seeing C reminds me that I wanted to date someone who can express stuff verbally, and someone that I can express my feelings to.  And I think about how there might have been times when I might have seen C and wanted to get back together with him, and how the more time passes, the more I think that I want more than C had to offer me.

I know these five stages of grief aren't going to run in order, but I wish sometimes that I could move to acceptance sooner.  I guess that is universal, always easier to go through your life accepting things as the way they are and not fighting at the fates, or denying things are the way they are.  Or sitting around and crying.  I remember going through a lot of phases in my life where I would cry and cry incessantly, and even though now when I am really sad, I don't feel like crying in the same way.  I don't feel the need to cry.  I feel more of a need to think about the sadness, to process it, to move on to accepting things are the way they are.