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