Leaping Forward

I've had this freaking cough for almost a week now.  It's just been really annoying honestly, feeling sick enough that I couldn't really do anything or get anything together.  I have a big to-do list now, and I am not really making much progress on it.  Nothing that is urgent or time sensitive now that I just submitted my state taxes, but it's still a question of getting stuff done, which I have not been doing.

Everything I read today suggested that since it is Leap Day, we should do something that we don't usually do, like propose to someone or eat some delicious food.  And instead all I did today was go to work, take a walk at lunch, and just try to hang in and work my way through this stupid cold.  Boring.  I would say I'm in a rut but I know I'm not really.  It's easy to be looking down at my feet and feel like I'm not making any progress, but more truthful and more challenging to recognize what I've done lately and how I'm just sort of dealing with all things large and small.

I hope that March brings good things.

Awkwardly Standing Right Here

Facebook loves to suggest random people as friends, doesn't it?  Today it was suggesting that I friend my ex boyfriend R, and I of course am not going to do it, but then I clicked over and saw his page anyway.  And OMG, he's a grandfather, because his daughter that he didn't know about until she was ten years old had a baby.  I am hoping the baby's father knows about her, though I didn't see any photos of him (but who knows what that means).  I also saw his nephew now looks like a young teenager, which I guess he is, and his mom looks like she's doing okay.  Oh and R has a girlfriend.  Which is better and fine, though some part of me feels sorry for her and hopes that he's not living off of her and telling her that she's stupid and crazy and she'd just be perfect if she fixed these few things and it's not like anyone else will love her anyway, right?  I just hope that he's not treating this person like that, because I would like to believe that no one is being treated like that ever in the world, but I know that lots of people are.  Just glad I'm not one of them.

Anyway it's still a little weird because I feel like my life is the same in a lot of ways, and obviously all of those people have moved on and are probably not sitting around thinking about me.  Then again, it's not like I want them to, really.  When I broke up with R, I cut ties with his family, because I think that their dysfunctional safety net was a part of the problem.  A forty-six year old man should have some plans, place to go.  Oh wait, he's fifty now.  So not my problem anymore.  I went from dealing with R's big family and all their dysfunction to dating C who was an orphan only-child.  Obviously extreme.  C was a good antidote to R because he never spent time talking about what was wrong with me, or really, anything for that matter of any substance.

I got back from LA and have felt kind of like I've been coming down with a cold the last few days.  I am drinking tea, taking stuff, and I think I'm at the point where I just need to ride it out.  I have at least six things that I need to get done, on my to do list, and I have not felt up to doing any of them.  I guess the good thing is that I also don't feel the need to flagellate myself about it either.  It will get done.  One way or another.

Sitting In A Restaurant

I'm here at this restaurant that I was going to go to with my dad the day I found him dead. I'm meeting my brother and sister-in-law here for lunch. This place looks like nothing on the outside other than an old warehouse but inside it is vibrant and full of life. I feel like just eating here, just being here, is exorcising some feelings I have had about all of this time in my life.

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.