There is no magic here

Hi All,

Well, 11/22/13 came and went. I didn't work. I kept busy, sort of. Spent time talking about my favorite topic: my kids and tried to find the balance between honoring my Dad's life on this first anniversary of his death and still functioning as a sane person. Mostly, I foud I just thought about doing a lot of different things. Here are the things I thought about doing most (not in this order necessarily): buying a bottle of Jack Daniels and drinking all of it while painting my nails black and smoking a pack of American Spirit Menthols in a shitty hotel room that I would pay for in cash and hide in forever or until all of the money ran out, making a mural of photos of my Dad's life, lighting candles and making an alter to him, praying, drawing pictures of my feelings, picking up my kids from school and making them stay home with me, finding lots of pot and smoking it all while playing with my kids (would they like me more?), calling my therapist, calling any number of old friends and crying, playing John Denver, playing Neil Diamond, sleeping all day and letting someone else do everything, hiding, eating only sugar all day, drinking another pot of coffee, running at the reservoir while having a mental memorial of my Dad's life, setting up my own Suicide Survivors walk, becoming a spokesperson for survivors of suicide, never identifying with Suicide Survivors again, calling the therapist who discharged my Dad to say "hi", picking a fight, crying all day.

Needless to say I did not do any of these things. I ate breakfast with my mother in law. I cleaned my house. I looked at old pictures from my Dad's house that I never get time to check out. I notice how much I look like my Dad's mother. I spent time thinking about my Dad as a man and not as a person who killed themselves. I spent time thinking about who he was before. How much I liked him when he was funny and healthy, how much he made me made, how much he loved me and often he was able to tell me and show me that. 

Then, of course, I thought about last year. At 1:30pm I looked at the clock and knew that this time last year he was already gone. I had lost him already this time last year and deep down, even then, I knew it. I thought about how he left me and how I left him and how scared I was the entire time. I thought about what it means to show up. I thought about how some people close to me have told my husband that they hate my Dad for what he did to me. Their hate does not make me feel better. I get it but it makes me know that they don't get it. I know that they have not seen what I have. Th depression, the pain, the hopelessness, the inertia, the thick blanket of nothing that fell over my Dad over and over, without warning, for over 30 years. I know you wont believe me when you read this but he kind of was a survivor, he just ran out of steam and so did I. I wish I had known then some of what I know now but, well, I guess everyone feels that way.

I haven't listened to my voicemail in a while. My one last saved one. Ask anyone who has lost someone suddenly, they have one. Mine is long and at the end my Dad says, I love you...I love you a lot. The end. xxK

two hours before a year

Hi All,

A little less than two hours before it is exactly a year since my Dad's death. I have tried to write this stupid post so many times. Maybe ten. Deleted or didn't finish each time. I have tried so hard to wrap a ribbon around this year for myself mostly. Wanted to come up with some hard won knowledge or wisdom. Kept thinking if I mine this pain just one more time than maybe I'll have some shiny and beautiful thing. Maybe the shiny and beautiful thing is not there. Maybe it is there and I just cant see it yet  because I keep getting distracted by how cold and scary the mine is. I really don't know. I know that much, I know I don't know much.

On my way home tonite I was doing my new/old thing of crying only alone and in the car --which was a trick I had back from when I was trying to not cry all day or at work. I realized wow, I have not been crying in my car for a while. Then I realized, how weird life is. I was pumping gas at Quik Check at a Super Quik Check and it was cold and windy and dark for 5:15 and I looked around at all of us, pumping our gas, and there was like 15 of us out there in this huge gas station with fluorescent lights, pumping gas. All of us in varying states of disarray. Me crying. No one noticing or caring. Me thinking about how so many people are in pain and I need to stop thinking it is just me. Me looking around and seeing that, yes, it could be that many of these people are in pain. Me and Super Quik Check people are connected. We are all here, cold, trying to get home to somewhere warm and safe and ok. Some of us will.

I got in my car with my coffee and donuts and thought about how this cold world that was full of pain and adversity seemed so clear standing at the gas station. In the car it was sort of clear. At home, it would seem a more faint memory. The beauty of my children seems to push out all possibility for self pity, self loathing, mean spiritedness. I wondered how can these two worlds live as one. The world where  my Dad is dead and it hurts with the world where my kids are here and perfect and full of love, and mess, and questions. I want them separate so much. Compartments. Leave the pain in the car. Keep that pain away, down, aside. Protect them. Protect me.

I drive home crying looking for tissues under the passenger seat with one arm. I finally find them in the driveway. I use the last two. I sort of laugh thinking about my Dad keeping donuts under his passenger seat. I think of how it was funny then and now. Think about not knowing much except I should keep tissues in my car. Think about this year teaching me to feel my pain as not unique, to use it to connect, not hide, and everyone so often to buy donuts.  Then, as one last thing, I think of my Dad and how I miss him every single day and how that is ok too. xxK

Running

Hi All,

Today is Tuesday and I just realized that I think I write a lot of blog posts on Tuesdays. Interesting. I actually just started another blog--it's called up2run and it's address is up2run.blogspot.com I wondered as I began this project my year of running in the morning if I was running towards something or away from it? Or both.

I am not sure it matters. The pragmatic part of me says that it doesn't. I don't think it is an accident however that the idea for this blog came to me in early November--at a time when reminders of last year seem to be suffocating me into submission. Grief. It's power cannot be underestimated. I didn't think twice about picking up my Nov Better Homes and Gardens and then dropped it in horror when the first picture of a turkey dinner appeared and made me lose my breath. Maybe this wont be as easy as I thought. No, I didn't really think it would be easy. My Dad's suicide last Thanksgiving sort of made it a marked day for me, forever it seems. I've tossed this around-how I don't want to ruin this holiday forever and how I want it to be good etc. Its complicated because I do want this and then also feel sort of as if, it was predetermined that this Thanksgiving would be painful and I cant pretend it away. I cant run away from it either. It just is this holiday that I once loved and now am a combination of determined and terrified about.

Determined is a funny word. Terrified is too. I don't know what to write other than to be honest and those are the words that come to be about this holiday. My determination which feels so steely at times--fueled w anger, hostility, strength. My fear--cold and lonely and weak. The marriage of those two is where I'm at in relation to this upcoming holiday. I'll do my best to make it good for everyone else--to serve them and to honor my Dad in a way that makes sense. To be real about who he was, what I miss and what I don't miss as much.

Mental illness is painful and damaging. It hurt my Dad and it hurt me. I wish I could go back in time to when he was still on the Lithium and make him promise to never stop taking it. I had no idea just how much it was working, for him, and for me. I wish I also could go back and help him grieve over his own mother's suicide. I wish I could tell him over and over that it was not his fault until he believed me. I would tell him that I know how horrible and painful it is to realize that your parent doesn't want to live anymore and then I would tell him that this is not his fault, was not his responsibility, and that he needs to forgive himself. I would tell him that he deserved a mother that would not be in that much pain and that I am sorry for both of them that he didn't get that and I am sorry for how hard it must have been for him to live with his secrets and pain buried so down so deep. By the time I knew what had happened it was too late for me to help, his pain had eaten him alive. I see that so clearly only now--I see how his pain was buried so deep that the people that loved him couldn't help him. I see how I have to let my own pain out, let it surface, and let the people that love me, help me. And they do. And I'm grateful. xxK
 

Unpredictable, a little Crazy, and too Loud

Hi All,

It's Wednesday night and here I am...today I got a call from my daughter's first grade teacher. He said he was concerned because she was having a tough few days and most recently had hid under a table to attempt to avoid recess. He said he felt that she was having trouble adjusting to the noise level in the classroom and that when other kids (mainly boys) got a little more wild that she seemed to have a tough time. I paused on the phone stuck somewhere between laughter and tears. I thought about both my husband and my own lack of tolerance for loud, I thought about my desire for a home that is calm, peaceful and under control and how much I craved the consistency of this simple thing in the last year. I thought about how hard both me and my husband had worked to get our house to be this sort of safe haven and how now it seemed that was coming back to haunt her.

I drove home. I thought about my girl. Who she is. Who I am. How we are similar and how we are different. I wondered about how my Dad's death has influenced her. She was not very close to my Dad because of his own limitations with his depression and temperament and so his death probably more impacted her thru me then her directly but it did have an impact. I thought about things I can control and things I cant. I came home to a happy girl who seemed totally ok, good. I helped her put on her Super Girl costume and watched her run out to the car to go to Daisy's. I thought about 6 and nearly 40. I thought about my Dad and how much he drove me crazy worrying about me. How in the end I drove him crazy worrying about him. I thought about all of that worry.

Will he be ok? Will I be ok? Will she be ok? What if he, I, she is not ok? Then what? Part of me feeling ok is me feeling smart. Part of me feeling smart is me feeling informed and in the know. Part of me feeling informed and in the know is me feeling in tune with those around me. So there is this...when my daughter was with me she was good, happy, ok. And yet she went to school, had experiences that I did not see, feel or know about and then was unhappy and became scared or sad. I want to make that scared and sad go away until I realize (again) that the scared and the sad are both important. The scared and the sad is sort of where the growth is. Do I hate seeing my kids go thru the scary and the sad? Umm, YES, but do I understand that these bad feelings will serve her someday. Yes, I do. I understand that learning to cope with feeling scared and sad is the essence of growing up. Scary and sad things happen all around us. How we learn to deal with those feelings defines who we are. Do we stuff those feelings? Do we act out? Yell? Throw things? Hide? Cry? Just what do we do when we feel unsure or sad or afraid? I don't really know.

I spent some time thinking about ways I could suggest for her to help her deal with her loud classroom. We talked about the girl who she sits next to that turned her back on her yesterday during recess. We talked about what that is like and how, yes, that has happened to me too. We talked about what I like in my friends and what I don't like in my friends and how I have learned to like people who make me feel good when I with them but how that took me a long time to figure out. I left her room with a lump in my throat for all that I know and all that she doesn't and then for all that she knows and all that I don't. I thought about how alcohol protected me for a long time from feelings I didn't want to deal with. I thought about how she came out from under the table and stopped crying and put on a Super Girl costume and flew to Daisy's with her Dad. And now I just sit here and think that when they say in AA that 90% of life is just showing up that they are right and how you can apply that to parenting too. And it hurts to sit with her little girl sadness and it hurt to sit with my Dad's older man sadness and it hurts to know my own. And I feel it all. And I show up. xxK

Autumn

Hi All,

Today is Tuesday and really uncharacteristically I'm home during the day. I stayed home today because I was feeling so sick last night and into this morning that I didn't sleep well and woke up still with a stomach ache. It sort of reminded me of how I used to feel when I was drinking--the waking up and just feeling pain immediately. At the end of my drinking I was drinking with an ulcer and that is just downright unpleasant. Feeling this way today is strange and I cant help but wonder if it is connected with my writing what I think may be the last checks for my Dad's estate. It was so hard to get past the procrastination and pain and do it. I wonder if I made myself sick somehow in the process...Either way, I seem to be mostly finished with the working part of settling his Estate. A process I found to be the most painful and difficult part of this all. Not because it was hard but because I had to show up and do it and all I really wanted to do was hide until someone realized I was still a kid and had my Dad take care of it--like he always used to. The reality that I am the parent and that it is my job to take care of this has never ceased to wake me up and cause me pain. I miss being the kid, and specifically I miss being my Dad's daughter.

My Dad was sort of a chauvinist which may or may not have been the result of his age, generation, temperament but the result of this fact was that he was always trying to take care of me and my sister. I was 30 years old and he was filling my tires or giving me gas money. It used to make me so angry--I thought he didn't realize how capable I was. He tried telling me once that it was just that he was my Dad and it wasn't about my capabilities. I didn't get it at all--I never really got that part until he was gone. That he just wanted to do it for me because he wanted to, not because I couldn't do it, but because he still could. Perhaps, unlike me, he knew that there would be a day that he was not around anymore and he wanted to do what he could while he could. In retrospect that stuff that angered me the most about him--the doing for, the calling so often, the checking in about small stuff that drove me crazy--it is that stupid stuff that I end up missing.  In some small way I also understand a little better now what drove that. How he had lost his own mother in a traumatic and sudden way just like I did and how it makes you scared, and vulnerable, and cautious. All of that energy trying to make sure that we were ok. Energy spent trying to control the people and events around him so that he didn't have to experience the pain of unexpected loss again.

And now my own pain. I too have pushed and pulled at the world around me. Have fought repeatedly the urge to hide both myself and the people that I love the most from a world I fear may indeed hurt them, and hurt me again. When I was about to give birth to my daughter I remember reading that the pain of labor comes from the tensing up after the contractions or in anticipation for them--this made sense to me and it helped for me to invite the pain in and not try to fight it. I can only assume this same logic would apply to this except it feels terrifying to invite this pain in. Like it could destroy me and leave me, like my own father, crippled by the sadness. So here I am--half warrior, half cripple, and one whole real person. A daughter, sister, wife, and mother. Feeling the pain when I can stand it, staying busy when I cant, and trying to find the middle place where I can live.

On November 22nd it will be one year since my Dad jumped off of the Lambertville, NJ toll bridge. One year since I got the call. One year since my world fell apart right down inside itself and I was forced to confront one of my own greatest fears--that he would someday take his own life. Like a train wreck I saw coming and could not stop my Dad had jumped away, taken flight, returned home. I wonder where he is out there and if he'll come back to me in some other mystical way...and I hope he will. In fact, I hope he finds his way back to me soon. I'll be waiting for him, right here, where he left me.
 

React, Relax, Respond, Repeat

Hi All,

It is has been a really long time since I last wrote. I am not quite sure where the Summer has gone. Here it is September already...huh. The Summer was fun, and chlorinated, and swimmy, and sunny. It was in many ways what the doctor ordered as the antidote towards the cold numbness of Winter and the startlingly alert Spring. My grief seems to have changed with the seasons and to have ended up somewhere new and different as we approach Fall. Winter was just nothingness. Spring was pain. Summer was perspective and some relief and some healing and some sadness too but Summer marked a more simple grief for me. I found myself more often missing my Dad and less often replaying the events that lead to his death. Not that I don't still do that a lot but I don't do it everyday or maybe it is everyday still but not for as long. That may surprise people not used to this sort of thing but the thoughts are frequent and by frequent, yes, I mean daily and in the beginning hourly. How did this happen? Why did I do this? Why did I say that? Why didn't I do or say? And then just the event itself as an image burned into my brain that may get smaller but wont go away. Surviving the suicide of my Dad is not how I thought it would be. I am not how I thought I would be.

I disappoint myself some days with how I cant just rise above it. I surprise myself other days with how far I've come and how much I've risen above it. Some days I feel strong and clear and ok. Other days I feel the opposite--and not as ok. Lately, I have been better about not questioning my own sanity. In the beginning I wondered often if his mental illness was happening to me. My therapist (God bless her) continues to assure me that this is not the case and as she is reassuring me I wonder how it must feel to have to reassure someone of the same exact thing almost every time you meet with them. She doesn't seem mad or surprised though, so I think it must be (at least a little) normal.

The times when I have disappointed myself the most are related to my family--not my children but my sister, my Mom, my husband.  I cant even put into words how much I have wanted to save them from this pain, to protect them from this pain, and then when that failed how much I wanted to then (at least) be strong, sane, and helpful. I wanted to go on my first vacation since my Dad died and help everyone. I wanted to smile from the moment I woke up until the sun went down just out of gratitude and wisdom and compassion but instead I was exhausted, anxious, and emotional. Yes, I had moments of smiling and playing and relaxing but I also had a lot of other moments where I was just getting thru it. Slogging thru it. I might be the only person who ever slogged thru Amagansett but I did. I saw the beach and cried. I thought of how much my Dad loved the Jersey Shore and I cried. Tears down beneath my sunglasses. Tears while the kids made sand castles. Tears while my husband walked away with my daughter on the beach. Tears when no one was watching, tears when they were. I felt like a failure. It took me almost until the vacation was over to relax. It took until a few days ago to forgive myself for being hurt, selfish, sad and to accept that and own it.

9 months ago my Dad took his own life. The severity of the pain, the completeness the loss, shattered everything that I thought I knew about myself and about life. Where I sit tonite is in a new place and I am, in many ways, a new person. The other night a man was speaking at a meeting about being suicidal--I could barely sit and listen but I did. I wanted to say something to him after but the words would not come, stuck inside my throat they stayed. I thought You are important, I said nothing.

A week later I saw the same man. I walked straight up to him and I opened my mouth. I said, "I am sorry that I didn't say something to you the other night when you were speaking but I am really glad to see you here tonite. I said "Depression is awful and Im sorry you are going thru it." He smiled. I could tell it meant something. I felt the force of the words and then I grabbed his hand before I walked away and held it tight. He smiled.xx
 

Wings, Tears, and Water

Hi All,

Today is Wednesday and I am trying to prepare to go away for a few days. I guess it is a reflection of really who I am that I have to write as part of preparing to travel. Anyway, a lot to say and I apologize in advance if it does not come out as my most eloquent post. I've been so busy handling my father's house on the weekends that I've not really been able to reflect or even think. Some interesting things have happened lately though.

1) I got the furniture from his house and now it is in my house and contrary to what I predicted---this seems to be somehow healing. It is strange in the hows or whys? I realize that grief twists and turns and is unpredictable. Something I think will be fine is really hard. Things I think might be sad are not as bad as I thought. I am learning not to predict how I will feel and just try to be present. Sometimes being present is really hard. Not hard I cant do it but hard I don't want to. I want to hide from sadness or anger or confusion. I want to hide often.

2)Talking about it, to the right people, does help. Yesterday I was dealing with some work crisis stuff that was related to suicide and I ended up talking about my Dad to my colleague at the end of the day. I did this because I know that I get really triggered on this topic and I'm scared that if I hold it in then I'll end up messing myself up somehow. Anyway, I talked about it and really was struck by how I still carry around this sense of regret. Not guilt, but regret. There is a difference. I don't feel responsible but I do see how at some point I just gave up on "fixing" my Dad. I don't feel bad really about this as much as I see this as something that was inevitable for me. I reached a point where I felt I had nothing left to give. Where I felt empty and hurt and finished. It struck me yesterday that my Dad and I reached this point at the same exact time. I don't know what to say about that exactly other than it is a sad thing to realize.  My colleague was saying to me "it was not your job to fix him" and she is right and I know this. My head knows this. My heart breaks on this still. I feel in my heart that it
 was not about fixing--I knew that then and I know it now--it was about something else. Some nebulous thing that had been done and could not be undone. History. Destiny. Illness. The hardest part continues to be acknowledging my own powerlessness to protect the people I love from a harm I see coming from years away. It is not my job to see it or to change it. And so a tiny part of me wishes I hadn't seen it at all. Like a train wreck you see coming and have to stand and watch. The powerlessness is the thing to be reckoned with. The powerlessness brings me to my knees over and over. Fills me with fear. And, I guess, ultimately leads me back to a higher power for guidance, strength, and refuge.

3)The water. Since my Dad's death I seem to have a mixed relationship with water. My Dad jumped off of a bridge into water and he drowned. I wish I could say that I don't think about this but I do. I think about drowning--(not about me drowning but about him) . I try not to and then I give up and just do. I like to run near the water but I still cry when I see it. I still have visceral reactions to bridges of all kinds and am trying to accept that too. I want to fight it so much and just be ok and pretend. Pretending just seems so much easier sometimes and then I realize pretending just makes the pain last longer and makes me feel disconnected and shitty. There is no hiding from this pain. It demands attention and respect. I see that. I get that. I need to feel this and move thru it. I guess I am just in it. I am in the thick of it. 6 months out with no shock or numbing left to hold onto and I am just floating along in a sea of sometimes better and sometimes worse and hoping at some point I'll bump into something that makes sense--I guess sometimes I do.

4)Love. And I am learning in a fundamental new way about love. I am learning that people show up for me in the only ways that they know how. It is not my job to figure this out or break it down. It is my job to accept the love that I receive in the multitude of ways that it is offered to me. My Dad, when he was healthy, offered me love in ways that I often felt critical of. It was not love in the form that I wanted.  I had years of wanting my love to show up in a Brooks Brothers suit and take me to a Country Club where our name was recognized. I had years of wanting my love to show up in pain splattered jeans and take me to a studio where our name was recognized and respected. Wealth. Status. Art. I had years of wanting my Dad to be a different person than he was. I had versions in my head of other people's Dads and my ideal was a composite of this I guess. Recently I am starting to get it though--that the people in our lives--our family, real people, are not like characters in a book or movie. We know them in the ways that make us uncomfortable and have sharp edges and gaping holes. My job right now seems to be love the people in my life who are there now for who they really are and for how they show up for me. I love my husband for driving that crazy UHaul thru 8hours of roundtrip NJ traffic and packing and unpacking the things that have finally brought me peace. I love him for not being hungover or mean or unhealthy and for taking care of himself in a way that sometimes seems foreign to me. I love him for not letting me fall down into myself in the thousand ways that I imagine I could without him. I love my Mom for the million times she picks up the phone and listens to me be sad or ramble or be mad. I love her the most for always picking up the phone. It is hard to imagine something more fundamentally perfect then knowing your Mom will always pick up the phone. And I love my children easily for the ways that they are different--for how she didn't do her part in the play because of the crowd or because of her cat or because she just didn't want to. I love her fear and I love her courage. I love him for playing Tee Ball and trying so hard out on that field. I love how he cant throw yet but tries so hard anyway. I love his trains and how he plays with them in his own little imaginary world. I love these people right now for just who they are. Not for what I imagine or how they could be but for who they are right now.
I am learning that one thing. How to love these people.
xx
K

Art Lessons

Hi All,

Tonite is Wednesday. What a strange few days it has been. I realized tonite something that, every so often, I realize. Living in negative space is uncomfortable and unpleasant and does not have to be done. Whenever I begin thinking about this topic--negative thinking--I very frequently am reminded of the art lessons that my parents got for me when I was maybe 9. The women who was teaching me was a very amazing teacher and artist. She had me do all sorts of exercises and one of the thing things that she taught me how to do was draw negative space. It is a very interesting exercise which basically forces you to look at whatever you are drawing in a totally different way. It is hard and requires concentration, patience, and practice. None of these things I had in large supply at 9 or 10 or 11 or whenever it was that I got my lessons.

Needless to say that the lessons did not stick but the practice, the thinking, the concepts did stick. In fact, I often find myself coming back to some of her teachings and nodding to myself. Yes, she was smart. My negative space drawing actually came out pretty good. It surprised me at the time that my negative space drawing ended up looking remarkably similar to the actual object. The only person who really knew my trick was me. I realized then that what I look at, quite literally is what I see.

A few weeks later I was copying Picasso upside down. Again I was forced to abandon my own ideas of what was in front of me and instead just draw what I saw. That time my picture was downright good. I was stunned to see when I was done that I had copied a Picasso pretty well--never knowing while I was drawing what I was looking at. I had drawn what was there, the lines, and that's all.

So how does any of this go with recovery, my day, or anything else? I realized today that I was drawing in negative space.  I mean I felt it. I felt how my attention, my thinking, my lines were drawing what was missing. No one else might know this but me, but I know. I know that what might be an interesting drawing exercise is a downright destructive thinking one. When I look at what's not there then that is what I see and when I allow what's not there to inform what is there then I am really, well, done for.

My father's death in many ways could be blamed for my negativity, my anxiety , my "stress" but I know that is also a lie.  My proclivity towards the negative, the obsessive, the destructive side of things is something I talk about openly. I spent years drinking, smoking, and thinking obsessively about what I didn't have or might lose. I didn't consciously do this--I just sort of ended up there. A habit. A pattern. A lifestyle. An addiction. This time my pain knocked me down down down inside of myself. I have written about finding out about his death and wanting to go outside and just scream at the night but when I look back now I feel as if I was falling. Falling. Falling.

When I came to I was at the bottom of the inside of myself. I was in my deepest fears. In my oldest insecurities. In a primal place of darkness that I thought I had left behind years ago. It has taken time, patience, and strength to recognize just where I am and just where I have been. Where I am is trudging back up those stairs. Plodding. Slowly moving one step at a time back from the bottom. I try not to look back because I am not sure I can stomach the view. I try not to look forward because I don't want to lose my balance. I am just staying focused on the steps. One at a time. Forward. Up. Forward. Up. Forward. Up.

The first day I woke up after my father's death I remember I thought to myself how will I do this day? How am I supposed to do it? My brain so trained told me one step at a time. I remember thinking about that as I walked down the stairs and into the shower. One step at a time. I thought that thought so frequently that day and into the next and the next. The next right thing. One day at a time. Let go and Let God. The AA slogans that once made no sense to me have returned to me over and over when I need them. So when my friend asked me the other night if I thought about drinking after my Dad died, I wasn't lying at all when I said, No, I really didn't. The truth is, I thought about living. xxK
 

Spiritually Fit

Hi All,

Well, I got thru my anniversary meeting without totally falling apart. I did have an amazing thing happen to me though and I need to share. I was sitting waiting for the meeting about to begin and I turned around and right sitting in a row behind me were these four men in the program, all sitting in a row, who had each privately told me about a suicide in their families that altered them. A father, a brother, a wife, and a failed suicide for himself. Each of these men had come to me and shared their pain and stories with me. Had reassured me at a time when I didn't know which way was up that I someday would. One of them said to me very sternly--"Stay away from the guilt kid, there is nothing there for you." Months later I understood just how wise these words were. A few of them gave me phone numbers and offered to speak with me whenever I wanted, if I wanted, about how I was feeling. Each of them made me feel that I was not alone and that I could stay sober even if my Dad had taken his life, even if it was traumatic, even if it hurt, even if it hurt a lot.

Seeing these men sitting there, behind me, I felt suddenly and for the first time in a very long long time that I was right where I was supposed to be. I felt that I had ended up in this place, with these people, for a reason and that I was safe and loved. It was such a strong and powerful feeling that I almost began to cry. I felt that each of them had been sent to me for a specific reason and that they were and are a fundamental part of my healing. I felt that our pain, shared, was manageable.

And this feeling of togetherness. This sense that our pain brought us together, united us, and healed us...this made me feel lighter, made me feel hopeful, made me understand something. That we need to share our pain with each other not just because it is unhealthy to hold it in but because when we do that it connects us in a deep and powerful way. These men are my people. They are my family in the world of understanding a pain that is sometimes complicated, isolating, confusing. Their presence soothes me and holds me together. No, life is not easy and No, this year was not easy and it scared me and it hurt me and it did not go how I wanted and I didn't say or do what I wished I had and half of the time I am just hanging on and looking over at them and believing that if they can do it, then so can I. And maybe that just this...this hanging on and looking to others to show us how to do it. Maybe this is what it is all about. xxK

 

April 25

Hi,

Tomorrow is my sober bday party. 9 years. I have such mixed feelings about this 9th year and have so many different and big emotions that I am a little, or maybe a lot, scared. I have this bad habit of narrating my own life events before they happen and then deciding exactly how I want it to be. I want to look pretty and grateful and humble and together. I want other sober people to think that they too, if they keep staying sober, will also be able to get my particular brand of pretty, grateful, humble, and, well, great. Deep down I know though that this year has sucked beyond compare. Has hurt too much. Has made me cry too much. Has made me behave badly too much. Yell, at my husband, yell at my kids, yell at my Mom...ok maybe not yell but a video would surely reveal moments of pain, strain, stress, not me at my best self or even close. Petty, tired, confused, bored, disappointed, agitated, self absorbed, lonely.

This was my 9th year sober.

It was not the years past. Grateful. Sober. It was not the first year where I glowed. Or the second where I glowed more. Or the third, engaged. Or the fourth, a baby! Or the fifth, a house and almost another baby. Or the the sixth, so tired. Or the seventh, a new state to live in, Or the eight, feeling more at home in said new state. No, the ninth was heart break. The ninth was loss.

I earned it. I am proud of myself but I am also scared. Scared of the reality and depth of my feelings. Scared of scaring other people. Scared I will disappoint myself and others with my lack of grace, or just brokenness. I still see it though, that maybe this 9th year was the year that defined my sobriety. The year I hung on. The year I was carried. The year that almost, but not quite, took me down and then didn't. Happy Sober Bday to myself. I admit it, I made me proud--even if my nose was running the entire time. xxK

April 10

Hi All,

A few things. I just realized that it was April 10 (my husbands bday) that was the day I had my last drink. My first sober day was April 11 and so this April 11 it will make 9, years since I last I had a glass or two or three or four or...of wine. Anyway, today it is almost April 10 and that makes me feel strange. Every year it makes me feel a little strange in early April how the air feels, how the light is, how things are. I guess because I remember still fairly vividly how I was back then.

I wish I could sum it all up perfectly and say something motivational about sobriety, about life, health, hope. I feel strongly that many people have helped me save and then change my own life. Really, I just did what other people told me to do for a really long time and even when I was not sure they were right. I stopped doing things my way and started being open to doing things different. It took so long though and for so many hours and days I felt sad and broken and alone. I had so many moments of wanting to go get a drink or light a cigarette or smoke a joint. So many little infinite minutes of not doing what I had done so many times before. I think in those not doing moments, in that resistance to my own habit, I found something...or found someone, myself. My brain it seems had gotten stuck doing and had stopped being able to give me good advice. Learning that I could resist an impulse, a desire, a thought was uncomfortable and painful and humbling. It took time. Then more time.

Only recently have I come to really understand what the last 9 years has been about. Growing up. Taking responsibility for myself and then taking responsibility for my thoughts and actions. Holding myself more accountable and then being gentle with myself too. Learning that I can be happy and sad, strong and fragile, loud, soft and everything in between and that I can be sober thru all of it. This last few months has taught me so much about my own pain, about how I can either make it work for me or allow it to destroy me. I will leave you tonite with this sort of funny cooking metaphor that I came up with. Maybe life is like making gravy. Right before that chicken burns to a crisp there is this moment, deep, dark colored, and so close to being over the line. If you add the liquid then and it is hot and you scrape and work quickly what you end up with is amazing gravy. It is learning how to use the almost burned that it takes time and skill to realize. It is not being afraid of burning anything. It is patience, skill, and faith rolled together.

So this pain is like my dark bits for my gravy. I let it stick, hang around, develop--I dont freak out or move too quick. I know that at the right time I am going to add the broth, which in this case is love, and I am going to use this pain, this dark stuff, to make my love darker, richer, more complex.

I look back to nine years ago tonite...I was in my last blackout. I did not know that then. I thought that I was just having my life. Making my bad choices. Having fun. I had no idea that my life was about to change in a profound and startling way the very next morning. The hows and whys of that night and the following day are complicated but simple. I finally got it. I finally let myself feel the fear, pain, shame, and remorse without pretending it away. And that pain that I had been denying for so long, roared up, and moved me right out of my own way. xxK

Happy Birthday Dad

Dear Dad,

Happy 75th Birthday. I miss you. I think about you a lot and more often lately I am able to think about you not your death--which is good. It hit me last night that you are gone and it was hard. I want to feel that you are still with me which I do sometimes more recently. I know you are. My own brain can be my worst liability. If I shut my thinking off then I am ok and my heart is open and you are with me. I will try to stay with that today with just being with you. It is hard bc you are not here but I am strong, or can be strong. I am sorry for how hard things were at the end of your life between us. I wish I could go back and do it over but I cant. Am stuck here knowing that I made mistakes, have regrets, and need to accept that. I know deep down that you forgive me or are working on it. I forgive you too and I am glad you are at peace finally.

I love you.
xxx
Karen Anne

Hi All,

Today is Wednesday, April 3rd.  I've been writing about my Dad's death so much lately that sometimes I forget how this all started. So, that said, I am going on a walk down memory lane tonite. My walk one week from today exactly nine years ago. That would take us to April 10, 2004. In 2004  was 30 years old. I am not going to blog about my romantic life at that point except to say that I was with a man who I did not deserve, and really did not fully appreciate until a few years ago. (I will also add that the only reason I am not going to write about that part of this story is that it is not fully mine and I dont think it is fair to share other people's lives in the same crazy way that I share my own without getting permission and since we are no longer in touch this would be impossible.) Anyway, in 2004 I was working very hard not to be a daily  drinker. I was doing this thing I guess you could call my attempt at controlled drinking. If you dont have an alcohol problem this may not make any sense but if you do then you can appreciate the special hell that this project creates.

So there I was dating this nice man who was willing and able to give me the life that I said I wanted and yet it seemed something was missing. I was living alone with my dog and down the street from the very same house that I had moved to in my previous relationship. When I had moved into that house, I thought I would live there, with that man, for a long time. Imagined I'd have children there or around there. Thought things would turn out different. When I found myself alone, in an apt, up the street from where I had imagined my future I became scared, confused, and desperate.

I had moved on so quickly and with such velocity that I dont think I even really knew then how I felt and what I wanted. I was drinking much less in an effort to prove something to myself about my maturity or my life or myself but when I did drink, well, it was not pretty, not controlled, and I was not ok. April 9 I found myself in NYC visiting my old roomate and looking to begin drinking at 3pm. I began at a bar in the East Village that was in a basement and very dark. At 9pm I vaguely recall being in the bathroom with a man I didnt know. By 10p I remember looking in the mirror and feeling totally disconnected to the person who was looking back--after that it is all sort of black and brown spots. What it was mostly, was terrifying and, in retrospect, life changing.

That black out and my realization after it that my drinking was not working, had not been working for a long time, and basically had never really worked was life changing for me. It all happened in April. So April is a strange month for me. I remember the weather and how sad and scared and lonely I was in the beginning of the month. Remember just how desperate I was at one point to get my old drinking partner back and how confused I was, even at 30, about what love was--what it felt like to be loved and to love. I had pain, need, desperation wrapped around and in between it all. It's painful and sad to remember those times not just because of my regrets about the people that I hurt but also because of how much I hurt myself and how vividly I still remember that pain.

But that pain did do something for me. It moved me from a place of victimhood, desperation, and addiction towards a new and very different place. It did not happen overnite but it did happen pretty quickly. Once I stopped fighting the pain and just felt it...it moved me. And once the pain got inside me and I allowed myself to feel it and not anestheisize it then I was changed. The pain forced me to be honest. It forced me to get help. It forced me to show up for myself and stop hiding behind bad relationships and drama. And when the alcohol, weed, and men that loved them both more than me were all gone...what was left...was me. Stripped down and without any bells or  whistles I began anew. Began to peel away the lies that I told myself until what was left was real. Over the last 9 years I have peeled, stripped, and peeled and stripped and then built it all back up and up and up until I was solid, strong, real. In the last 4 months my new self has been shaken, pushed, prodded, and knocked down. At times I've wondered if maybe I was wrong to think I was strong at all. Have questioned my life, my choices, my sanity. Have reached out and then shut down. Have opened up and then closed again. Have pushed, pulled, and tantrumed and thru it all, despite it all, I've remained...myself. And that is something that

Guilt Recovery Program

Hi All,

Today is Wednesday. Yesterday was Tuesday and was a not great day. Work was hard, my clients were pissed and ungrateful and blaming. I was tired and felt hopeless. I backed into a parked car after Seder around 9pm--and by the time I had driven home just felt done. Both cars were fine but the accident just seemed to really drive home the theme of the day which seemed to me to be Karen Sucks. As I lay in bed reflecting over it all, I realized that I missed my Dad and I didnt talk about it, not to anyone. For one of the first times I felt that I didnt want that to be the center of the conversation, didnt want to walk thru the sympathy, or attention, and so I just ignored it and hoped it would go away. Not only did it not go away but instead of the loss pain, I just felt artificial, and pretend, and sort of both plastic and disconnected. I realized I'd actually rather feel downright sad then feel like I'm pretending to not feel sad. Pretending it seems is not my strong suit.

I woke up this morning determined to not let Tuesday wreck Wednesday. (I would l say that some meta version of this is how I am running my life lately.) And so I took my shower with determination to not bring the Karen Sucks theme into Wednesday and then I decided that I would not even worry about that theme and just accept that if that theme came up again than so be it. Acceptance. My day was smooth, low key, somewhat productive and not...reactive. I cant tell you all how often my bad days somehow, somewhere involve reactivity. Often.

Today was clearly not yesterday. I'll say it again for both of us. Today was not yesterday. Obvious and suddenly so soothing. Today was not yesterday because it could not have been no matter how hard I might have tried to made it the same if I wanted to. And here is what I then really realized for the first time in nearly four months. November 22, 2012 will never happen again. I will never have to have that day or night over again. Never again have to have those conversations or feel those exact feelings. They are over. In the past. Done.

Will I feel pain? Loss? Grief? Will I feel angry? Hurt? Sad? Guilty? Broken? Will I feel unable to accept circumstances beyond my control? Yes to all of it. Yes. Almost definitely I will be forced to deal with all of these different emotions and feelings and thoughts because they are all part of life. The idea that this exact scenario is over though is something that I honestly feel sort of relieved by today. I mean, it is done. It has happened. I dont have to try or expect or wait. I just have to put it where it belongs--in the past.

Along with the pain in the past needs to go the guilt. The guilt is the thing. The pain hurts, has brought me to my knees, but is somehow finite and clean. Loss. The guilt is  different because it is not finite, is not clean, is somehow cerebral and heavy and thick. A few weeks ago it happened with me and the guilt. This moment that I now wonder if maybe happens to all survivors of a loved one's suicide...I had the clear thought: this was my fault and everyone knows it. There it was. I had felt bits of this thought before but never this certain. I felt so hopeless and sad in this moment. And then I knew what had to be done.

I had to say goodbye to the guilt not temporarily but forever. I mean I had to close the iron door on this unproductive, untrue, and destructive emotion for good. Guilt, it seems, is a luxury I just cant afford. Because this particular guilt could destroy me piece by piece from the inside out. I told myself, I'm done with guilt. Then I told everyone else that I could think of.  (Just like when I quit drinking, I safeguard myself by telling everyone my plan so I know that everyone can hold me accountable and being vain and sort of committed to living  with integrity this has been somewhat effective.) And so the guilt is over. No one has asked me if it is easy to stop feeling guilty or not? If they did I think I would say it is very similar for me to stopping drinking. It is not hard to do anything once we decide that we want to. It is the in between that hurts.

So if you are reading this and are going thru something similar I would suggest that you too try this. You tell yourself that this guilt is no longer an option. Self: guilt is no longer an option. Just like I once said, Self: drinking is no longer and option. Then you hold on for all of the weird shit your brain does to get around itself. While this is happening you find lots of other things to say and do and think about. And when all else fails you pray and reread why you thought this was a good idea. 3 weeks away from 9 years without a drink or drug. 1 week and four days without guilt for my Dad's death. One day at a time, baby. xxK

April is the Cruelest Month

Hi All,

April. It looms ahead on the horizon. Before April is the end of March. The end of March is happy. My daughter's bday, 6. The beginning of March is happy, my mom's bday, more than 6. But always there is April. Last April I cant remember. I have always hated April...too cold, too windy, not May, not even close to May.

I am not sure what to say about things lately. My job is so busy. I have been there long enough to see the good and the bad. The easy and the hard. It is good though and solid and real. It means something to me this place and these people. It means something to be at a shelter.

And my children are good and beautiful and perfect. Nearly 6 is a brilliant age all freckles and eyes and questions. Sometimes I am not sure how or why I was given these miracles. And 4 so sharp and wide eyed and earnest. It is too much sometimes to live with their goodness and innocence. It forces me open, to be present, and then there I am present and open and unable to protect myself from the pain that inevitably arises. I remember. November. April.

April is my Dad's birthday. I try to remember his birthdays that I spent with him, but I cant. Sometimes I remember good things and I am happy but mostly I just have the picture in my head. I try to alter the picture. Latelty I have been trying to imagine him jumping off of a bridge and flying into the sky with big wings soaring, free, happy. Sometimes this works. The other times it is just the picture.

I try to be of service to others and sometimes I think maybe I am. I try to do the right thing and sometimes I do. I try. I want to do better or more. I want to fix things or change things. I want people, all people, everyone to know this was my Dad and he is gone. I want them to feel the loss. I want them to understand what happened to him, to me. I want just one person to feel differently about things because of this...

And that is that. The way it is tonite. xxK

 

A year of Surrender

Hi All,

Tonite I spent time listening to some pretty smart people talk about surrender. I admit it, surrender is not my strong suit. In fact, I think that lately I might actually hate the word itself. And hate in this case is not too strong a word. In the first few days and weeks after my Dad took his own life I was numb and then dazed. I could not quite get myself to face what had happened which seems strange since I thought about it all of the time. I was in a constant state of unpleasant visualizations coupled with a mind that seemed unable to accept those pictures as real.

Having done my share of a therapy and having been lucky enough to have not one but two amazing therapists to work with, I know and have known for sometime that my  proclivity towards replaying images and thoughts does not serve me well. So, I tried to stop the pictures and mostly did or at least lessened them. Change the channel I would hear my therapist saying or move a muscle change a thought I would hear my friends say. Distraction is a good thing during these times. But the truth is and was that even though my obsessive mind does not serve me, the pushing out of all of the thoughts does not always serve me either. I need to find a  place in the middle. A safe place.

I read that Einstein said that our most important thought was if we believe that we live in a hostile or friendly world. I read this in another article that I sought out after hearing someone speak tonite on Surrender. This woman said she is spending a year with the idea of surrender. This idea spoke to me. I thought of myself at times actually unable to speak the Serenity Prayer in meetings. Here are the words I cannot say:

God, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Generally, I can muster the courage to speak the courage portion but it is the acceptance part, the first part that even still sometimes chokes me up. Who knew I'd be come a person unable to speak the phrase to accept the things I cannot change without crying or feeling like I might. This is where Surrender enters the picture. I find myself stuck at a crossroads who will I become with this new experience? An angry person? I sad person? A broken person? A scared person?

Though I confess to often being all of those things lately it is not who I want to be and it is not who I will allow myself to be. At some point I need to...surrender. At some point I need to accept that this event has happened and like all other events that have happened and will happen--I believe--it was meant to happen and I cannot continue to feel I should have or could have done something different to alter it. After all, who am I to know how things should be. All I seem to know is what hurts and how to protect myself from that pain. Only the protection is not real and only protracts the pain.

So I will say this...inhale the pain, let it fill me up, let it break me open, and swallow me whole.  Pain like a wetsuit heavy and black and slippery all over me. Keeping me safe from more pain. Protected. Insulated. Alone. It is so tempting to give into it because I am tired and scared but I wont do it. I will do the opposite. I will step out of this heaviness, scared, naked, and willing to surrender to this friendly universe that I will trust and love because I dont have a choice. xxK

The F Word

Hi All,

No, not that F word...the other one. FEAR. Tonite, I am going to write about a unique kind of fear. The fear that happens after unexpected loss. I think the clinical word is traumatic loss.

Tonite it is Saturday night. The weather here was not so good, light snow, freezing rain, and general yuck. I had plans but decided to stay in. My husband had plans and decided to go. I was looking forward to a quiet night at home, hunkered down, with my babies (now age 4 and almost 6) when something else went down. The kids were tucked in. The fire was crackling and it started. The fear. My daughter so ridiculously tuned in says it is too quiet tonite, it feels scary. I am not scared in the monster way that she is so I can confidently assure her that we're ok and she should sleep. This works, for her.

Meanwhile, I am in my own place. I start remembering how Thanksgiving night was really quiet. I start remembering how the house was clean and the kids were asleep and then the phone rang. I begin to go there to that place of remembering and also imagining. I am there but here. Another night, tonite, another phone call...it could happen I think to myself. Powerlessness. Loss. I almost cannot move. I clean. I keep cleaning until nothing in my house is even a little dirty. Powerlessness. Loss. The phone is not ringing, but it could. I begin to imagine the worst kinds of car accidents and the worst kinds of phone calls. I finally step outside my door to listen just in case I might here sirens. I dont. It is quiet outside and sharp and cold and heavy. I am alone.
I tell myself that this is my imagination and that it is probably even normal. It is only 3 months since my Dad's death. Only 3 months since the phone call.

I stand still and try to breathe in and out, slow, in and out, slow. I look out the window at the dark snow and yard. I try to stay here and not go there to that night, that place. I am half successful. I go there briefly and come back. I do this often. I go just for a spilt second into the bad and then come back to the good. I am stuck in between. I want to both remember and forget.  Remember the good and forget the bad. I tell myself this. I will myself to erase the phone call. Erase. Even while I am trying to forget I know I never will. This pain it is in my body the same way my children's birth is. It is physical this loss. No one tells you that but I will.

I will tell you that the this loss, this intentional death is seared into my body and mind and I am like a cattle--branded. This loss is like that. Burning. I always before thought of loss as cold and empty but not this. This suicide, this killing, is hot and burning.

I tell you this because I know it is ok. I know it needs to come out. And the fear of losing others it is real and an after shock that I hope someday will subside. Maybe it never will or maybe I'll learn to ignore it and move on. It is hard to know. Maybe, or I guess definitely, it was always hard to know...I thought I knew something and I was wrong. So all of the knowing now it is different, and conditional, and shaky. I sit with my new shaky conditional unsureness and I am aware of how it was always this way. How I just thought I knew things but none of us really do. These thoughts make me uncomfortable. Various anesthectics run thru my mind. Alcohol. Food. Shopping. TV.

I sit here. Quiet. Feeling the fear. It is real and not imagined but the ideas that got me here are not real and I need to stop and I do. I am sitting at my kitchen table writing my blog on my computer. My husband is on his way home and as I write this I look up and I see the headlights of his car. xxK


 

HEAL ME

Hi All,

Today is Monday, President's Day. I had to work. It was a long day at work. I was busy and felt that everyone I talked to felt disappointed in me and that I wasnt doing enough to help them. I felt this in a defensive and sort of mad way. I felt my very least favorite feeling. Powerless. A close cousin to my other least favorite feeling. Inadequate.

I tell you this not because I need to break down my job or peformance but because I know myself well enough to know that this is more about me than them. And these two feeling specifically are definitely my new go to trigger feelings. I am not sure how to handle them except to be aware of them. Notice them. Invite them in. Be their friends. Hello powerlessness. Hello inadequacey. Hello to my new old desire to save people. To fix people. To heal people. Hello to these old friends that I now see as enemies. Hello. Hello. Hello.

Where did you come from? What is it about me that keeps inviting you back? Leave me alone. You mess up my work and make me over personalize and under perform. You are not helpful and you are not wanted here. Powerlessness? I will not work harder than the people that I work with. Inadequacey? I will not assume responsibility for someone else's choices nor will I take more responsibility for another person than they take for themselves. I will not feel guilty or apologize. I will be strong. I will be kind. I will be compassionate. I will be present.

I will not live in other people's problems. I will not use their problems to avoid my own pain or discomfort. I will accept my own sadness, my own loss, my own pain. I will not hide or deflect. I will not be sarcastic even when challenged with sarcasm.

I will do my best. I will look at my part. I will challenge myself to find new and creative ways to empower myself and to empower those around me. I will connect when I can. I will be open when I want to close. I will be open. I will be open. I will be open. I will pray to the Universe. Heal me. Heal me. Heal me. I will close my eyes and envision a giant sewing needle stitching my heart, big loose stitches will bind me back together, and it will hurt, but it will heal.
xxxK
 

Reaching Out, Reaching Down, Reaching...

Hi All,

Today I saw a psychic medium. I cant decide if it was smart or sad, intuitive or pathetic but I know that it didnt hurt me and might have helped me. I know that my deep sense of being totally alone and separate from my Dad was somewhat abated at least for thirty minutes. I know that it is a little sad to think that I needed another person to help me with this or that I needed to pay someone to tell me that he is still with me, but I did. I mean I really needed that and I am glad I did it and glad it is over and glad I can take it with me.

I sort of see this experience as me reaching out and I think it is good to reach out. I think it is good to find other people who can help me and I am glad that I am able to do that. I am glad I dont feel ashamed or isolated in this pain. I am grateful for my willingness to try different and alternative things. I am grateful also that people are starting to talk about mental illness more openly and I hope that continues too because it helps, it helps to be able to talk about these things without fear or shame or anything except compassion--for myself, for him.

It is strange how the time is passing and yet the pain remains, constant, dependable. A giant loss. A gaping hole. Time makes the pain more familiar, and not so jarring, or scary. It feels like part of me and not in a super traumatic or big way, just something that happened, another experience, a layer. Sometimes it wakes me up out of a deep sleep, breathless, wait...just wait. I am there on the bridge. Wait. Please. Wait.
I am there saying something. Wait. I am trying a different approach. More compassion. Less desperation. Wait. I am not so attached to the result. I am more calm. Wait. I am not a daughter but just a stranger. Wait. I am trying something new. Wait. I am so close to getting it right. Wait. I am...here...Even in my dreams he doesnt wait. It is always the same. He is gone. I dont see it, but I know it. Even in my dreams I cant save him.

When I wake up I tell myself, I am ok. Acceptance. I tell myself this has happened and it is ok, you are ok, I am ok, and I am. I am ok. I am sad and a little lost or maybe a lot lost but I am ok. I am intact. I will go on. I will be more than I was before, not less. I will hug more. Laugh more. Show up more. Smile more. And, yes, cry more too. I will be and do more because I understand something more. I understand pain more which means I somehow understand love more too. I love my Dad. I love his pain being over. I love what his life meant to me and what it means to me now. And this love it hurts on the edges but in the center it is like all of the other love I have. It is pure and it is good and it is healing. xxK
 

Pink Glitter, Full Moons, and Revisionist History

Hi,

Sunday night. A full moon. A bitter cold streak of single digit weather in the last week. A headache that seems determined to stick around and the pain, back. I knew it would be back but enjoyed the reprieve that the work week seems to bring. Business. A mind able to stay on other things when its told to. Work that matters to me. Engaging people who deserve my attention and assistance. I am grateful for all of these things. Grateful for them like a drowning person is for a life boat. I know these people, this work, these distractions are my survival. My rescue team.

When I say that my pain came back--make no mistake--it was never really gone but it seems to have subsided or shifted into a shape that I could manage. I felt sort of vaguely in control of it. Then it was Sunday, today. I dont know what happened to me. I was ok, moving thru my day and then I was struck down with...loss. A song on a cd someone I used to know well made me. A Bruce Springsteen song I think aptly titled "You're Missing"--and I am transported to emptying my Dad's closet, going thru his stuff, laying in his closet on the floor the night before his service because the clothes smelled like him. I am there and I cannot move from there. I am there while I am in the car, riding along, my kids are talking, husband is saying something, the radio is on, the sun is out and...I am not here at all it seems at these times. At these times I am still on the closet floor, unable to really move, just wanting to stay there where I think maybe I can feel him or smell him or maybe I can just pretend this was all a bad dream and I'll wake up and it will be ok. I will have been in a coma or accident and dreamt it all. I have thought that. I have wished that.

And so I cry. I cry for my pain, for his, for both of us. For Mental Illness, for depression, for the pain we cause ourselves and each other when we can't connect and stay alone. I cry and then I stop. I get up. I make Valentine's with my kids. I put pink glitter on everything and feathers and more glitter. I think of making a Valentine for my Dad. I think of how he used to always buy me carnations when I was little, pink for Valentine's Day and then green for St Pattys Day. I think about how I depended on that, could count on it, usually. I think of the complexity of my Dad. How he valued his family but couldnt really let us in and how he was proud, and would not ask for help, and then how he did and wouldnt accept it. I think too much.

I call my Mom. I say nothing or something but not really this. I could be saying anything it is just words coming out and filling up space. I dont say, help me, I cant breathe, I miss my Dad. I am scared I will lose you too, or lose my husband, or lose my kids or my sister or my anyone. I dont say that. I say I'm ok. Things are ok. I dont know why but I cant say the truth outloud. I am an epic liar during these points. I think of my Dad, alone is his house, sad, depressed...I'm ok hon, thanks for calling.

My Mom tells me she found something I wrote about my Dad from 1990, calling him my hero but writing about his depression. I was 17 then. We talk a little about how long this has really been going on. A strange phenomena seemed to have occured after his death where I wanted to say his illness was really stable until the end but my writing contradicts this. How much I want to rewrite our history to make it cleaner and easier. For both of us, I want this. His BiPolar and my desire to heal him it seems started much before 2012. My life and identity growing around and out of his like a vine. My pain over not knowing how to fix it found its home in a bottle. His pain, sadly, ongoing.

Full moon. Pink glitter on the floor, on my sweater, in my hair. Waiting for a pink carnation that wont come this year. xxK



 

Sticking with My Story...

Hi All,

I just re-read my last post about "my story." It seemed so clean, hopeful, true. Too bad I cant seem to stick with my own story. My monkey mind is just jumping around bouncing between blaming myself, blaming mental health professionals, blaming my Dad, blaming is so increadibly unproductive, so totally misguided, and (at least for me) so full of pain. When the pain of the loss gets too much I realize that I begin to blame. It doesnt matter if I blame myself or someone else it all feels ugly. It all feels wrong. To be honest, it feels exactly like what my Dad would not want me to do.

My Dad was proud, maybe to a fault, rigid, and the product of military school, the 1950's, and male patriarchy at its finest. He was a chauvinist, I think,without even really knowing it. He grew up in a world that encouraged him, a white, college educated, military man to excel because of course he would, should. Throughout his life I think my Dad was confounded when things did not go as he expected or planned. When things were not as they should have been. Often I felt as though he simply refused to accept things as being different than what he wanted or needed them to be. Ultimately, I think this proved to be isolating and painful for him and for the people around him too. His inability to accept a life that was not at all how he felt it should have been.

There was love, beauty,  and kindness all around my Dad but I fear it did not look as he thought it should and so he missed it. My Dad is not alone in this...problem. There is a lesson here and it is for me too. Life is painful. It is. People disappoint us. Life maybe disappoints us and it is hard and it is not what we expected. If we are prone to black and white thinking it is so easy to feel as though things have not turned out right. I feel that I am on the edge of that kind of thinking right now. I feel the pull of the darkness, the sadness, the hopelessness as I walk thru my day but I notice it as...well...ok. I notice the sadness as ok. I try not to think I should anything. I just am. I seek love, beauty, and kindness in unexpected places, in any and all places. I am trying very hard to get the shoulds out. No more judgements, no more disappointments, only what is true--I loved my Dad and he was exactly as he was supposed to be, all of the time, and even now. xxK

 

The Choices I Have

Hi Friends,

Tonite I was thinking about a few different things while sitting at yet another of many AA meetings. I was thinking about how increadibly quickly I can default my crazy alcoholic brain into feeling sorry for myself. Given recent events in my life it probably is obvious that I have a lot of material to work with lately...and that is when it hit me. Self pity IS my alcoholism in action. When I start feeling sorry for myself I am immediatley transported to self centeredness and victimhood. It is not a fun place to visit let alone spend any amount of time. It is in fact very isolating to really feel sorry for yourself because to do it really well you need to be certain that you are in a uniquely painful position. I will convince myself that my pain is unique and different in order to really wallow. Why? Because feeling sorry for myself only really is possible for me if I first convince myself that no one else really even can understand my pain, let alone relate to it.

To really get my expertise on this topic you would have had to see me in action after 3 or 4 martinis back in 2000. At this point in my life and after this amount of alcohol I was sure to tell anyone who would listen about my particular family drama, my victimhood, my terrible job, mean boss, and downright sad life. I told these stories to myself outloud and in my head. I told these stories about my pain that made my pain unique and different. I had special pain and you would surely drink too if you had my exact sort of pain...

And so it went. I drank and drank and then drank some more. Thought endlessly about my life, things that had "happened to me" was my narrative. Rarely did I talk about my own choices. Rarely did I pontificate on how my own choices had impacted my life. Instead, I choose to think about and talk about how other people's choices had impacted me. I sort of pretended that my life was the sum of other people's choices. I sort of believed this.

Today, I know that my thinking back then was...unhealthy. I can see clearly that I do have choices. I dont always have choices about what happens around me but I do have very big and important choices to make about how I respond to what happens around me. I have a choice about the story that I tell myself and the story that I tell you too. So what will my story be? Will I tell you that my Dad took his own life to hurt me? Will I say it was mean? Awful? Hurtful? No, I will not. I will tell you that my Dad suffered from a chronic mental illness called BiPolar Disorder that, like most mental illness, got more severe and destructive as he aged. I will tell you that I am lucky he somehow lasted 74 years despite chronic thoughts of despair and hopelessness. I will say that he waited until he knew that both me and my sister were ok and then he finally ended his own pain. I will say that even his final decision to jump out of this pain was colored, if not determined, by an illness that I can only hope and pray I will never truly understand. This is my story and this is what I will say. xxxK