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