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