fear comes in all shapes and sizes...

I just read a wonderful guest blog post at ScoutieGirl, by an online friend of mine, Kathy, who continues to inspire me.  She talks about fear and overcoming it, and it got me to thinking about my own life.  It might not be the same things we fear, but I can relate to those feelings.

For me, there is so much fear and anxiety in my life and I never deal with it in a healthy fashion.  In a way, as my therapist said, it was part of how I was able to survive not only losing my dad as a child, but also to live in a house with an alcoholic mother, who could turn on a dime.  Sometimes she was fine, but most of the time she was cruel and unavailable in the ways I needed her to be there for me.  I know she loved me - I'm still the first to defend her at all times - but she didn't really know how to show love.  She tried to do it with presents and trips, but that wasn't really what I needed. 

My life was all about things.  Abstractions and emotions weren't tolerated or understood.  Dreams were wishful thinking that had no place in my life - I was always told to "grow up" whenever I talked about my love of writing and getting published one day. 

I feel like even in her death, my relationship with her continues to be all about things.  She had so many damn things - I don't believe the woman believed in getting rid of anything - and they are everywhere in the house.  It's suffocating and yet, I haven't been able to bring myself to do anything about it.

It's been two years.  I know it's beyond time, and I get so mad at myself for constantly putting it off, like it's the story of my life thus far, especially since I'm not connected to most of her possessions.  My good memories of my mother are barely attached to any physical items, but still it's so hard. 

There is so much stuff.  Both my parents were crazy pack rats, it seems.  I know, definitely, that my mother was (One of the many problems with a parent who dies when you're a little kid is that I have no idea who my father was as a person.  He was just daddy.)  but there is so much of his stuff I'm willing to bet it was a shared passion of theirs.  I don't even know where to begin with a lot of this stuff.

I'm also torn about nostalgia and attachment I feel that I should have to certain things.  I have none.  There is no attachment to anything because, even if something was important to my mother, she never told me why or the story behind it.  There is nothing in the majority of her things that makes me fondly remember her.  I look at all her stuff and get anxious and annoyed and upset that the only way she ever felt truly able to show love was through shopping and buying me things.  

The things I like to remember about her are how she took care of me when I was sick.  She would let me sleep in her bed, and always pulled out Princess Bride (my favorite) for me to watch and would make me feel loved and protected.  I remember how she took me with her to vote when I was little and shared with me her love of politics, even though later in life she would bemoan that I was a liberal hippy.  I remember the two of us singing in the car (badly) along with Michael Buble, someone we both loved and one of those rare moments where I felt like we had something in common.   Those are things I remember and none of them involve stuff.

Most of all, if I'm completely honest, I continue to avoid her belongings because it causes so much to bubble up to the surface - anger, sadness, loss - and I've made a lifetime of choices that involved avoiding all things emotional.  I'm working on it, but I'm scared that a flood of everything will come rushing out of me if I deal with this.  It's ridiculous and silly and I feel like I should be beyond this.  Why can't I just let go?  Why am I holding onto the sadness and so much anger? 

It's time, though.  I can't move on and allow myself to be happy while I'm clutching onto a past that wasn't even that great and things that don't matter in the end. 

It got me to thinking how much fear controls me in so many bad ways.  It paralyzes me.  I keep myself from going after things I want because immediately I get afraid of what it all means.  Change.  Making mistakes.  Failing.  Just typing this, I get slightly anxious. 

I'm working on it.  I must keep working on it.  Change isn't bad and fear no longer deserves the control over my life I've given it in the past. I've lived through a lot and I'm still standing.  I'm stronger than I give myself credit for - I need to process that somehow and believe in myself.

A good place to start would be with a few boxes of my mother's stuff and donating it to people who could use it.

random thursday night thoughts...

If there is a bright side to large snow dumps, it's that I read a lot more.  And watch a lot more television, which I'm sure some would argue is a waste of time, but obviously, they have never gotten sucked into the show, Fringe.  I've made it through the first two seasons in a week and have just started the current season (three). 

I'm currently finishing up a re-read of the first Harry Potter book.  I also just started Glad No Matter What: Transforming Loss and Change into Gift and Opportunity by Sark.  My mother died two years tomorrow and it's still this huge cloud over my head, following me around and miring me in storms.  I have this cycle of being really angry, feeling guilty, feeling sad, and angry again.  I've been working with my therapist and journaling and hoping that at some point I'll see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I'm hoping this book might help me use my creative strengths to further my journey. 

Now I'm off to read some blogs and play with my new phone.  I've finally entered the 21st century and gotten a smart phone.  Mostly because my five-year-old phone randomly stopped working and I feared being trapped in the snow or some sort of emergency without a way to call for help (as though I live in the woods and not suburbs of Philly).

wherein I babble about grieving and my dad...

It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses. ~Colette

I've been thinking a lot about my dad lately.  There are always random instances where I think of my father, though it's usually in the vaguest notion of having a dad rather than the actual man.  In the past, I longed for the idea of a father there to protect me much more than my dad, who has always been a mythical figure/ghost in my life.

There are small moments I remember.  The man was crazy obsessed with me playing sports and got himself ejected from some of my soccer games.  I would have to listen to him go on and on about why my team lost on our drives home, but then he would take me for ice cream or to Springdale Farms, just the two of us, and we would talk.  I remember him taking me to the local private high school and telling me that one day I could do whatever I wanted with my life as long as I worked hard for it and that I could go anywhere I wanted (which, of course, made me all the more bitter when my mother was quite the opposite about things).  I remember his temper and how I used to live in fear of him finding out if I was bad.  I remember little bits of good and bad, but he was just daddy.  Not a real person with flaws and passions and his own bucket of issues.

It's understandable.  I was eleven when my father died of cancer and even when someone would share a memory of him, it was their story to tell me, not my own.  I didn't know the man.  It's sad, for both us.

I used to ask my mother about him, but she got annoyed so I stopped, and  she rarely brougt him up herself except when she was drinking and then it was never *good* things.  Instead she would tell me these things that just made me wonder what the hell was wrong with the both of them and why they ever got together at all.  Sure, there were random humerous moments like when she found out that I was a democrat and she said, "You and your bleeding heart liberalism!  Your father is somewhere laughing about this!"  Mostly, it was just better to avoid the topic all together.

I only ever got glimpses of who he was through other people's eyes, like my godmother or his best friend, Norm, who used to help my mother around the house.  I only discovered that he shared my love of writing when we packed up my childhood home and I found some of his stuff.  I really miss that connection or understanding of where I come from.  I feel like there is this whole half of myself that I will never know about, a part of me that might not feel so alien because hey, maybe I'm not weird; maybe I just have my dad's snarky sense of humor and perception of life. 

It only became evident to me since starting therapy and dealing with my numerous issues, that I never grieved for the man at all.  Or for the little kid I was who grew up without him and the adult I am who is utterly clueless to most things where he is concerned.

While he was sick, I remember little glimpes of things.  I remember him and my mother having really bad fights.  I remember various trips to the hospital to see him to say "goodbye" to the point that I asked my mother, "Are we sure this time?  Because I've said 'goodbye' a bunch already and it's getting really tiring."  I remember the last Christmas he was alive and how, even as a kid, no matter how much everyone tried to make it seem somewhat normal, I just knew that everything was about to change and not in a good way.  And I remember my mother waking me up in the middle of a February night to tell me that my dad had passed away (I always think of George Carlin with this - passed away...he died...he didn't pass away or expire or whatever else) and asking my sister and I if we wanted to see him before he was taken away.  I chose not to and went back to sleep.  I feel bad about that sometimes, even though he was already gone, and that I was likely protecting myself the best way I could at eleven. 

Since my mother died of a heart attack in 2009, I've run the gamut of emotions, all within the same hour at times, and it dawned on me that while I'm grieving her - the good, the bad, and the ugly - I need to grieve for my dad too.  I have to allow myself to get angry with him because he left me with her.  I have to feel sad for myself because it wasn't fair and it's okay to think that.  I have to say it's okay to cry about it now because I was always so afraid to do it before, because I had to be brave and strong like everyone told me.  And I need to see him the way I do my mother.  I put so many of my issues and anger on her shoulders because she was always there.  It's not fair to either of them.  They both had faults, they both let me down in a lot of ways, and they both took care of me as best as they could.

It's sad, really.  My therapist calls it a breakthrough and thinks it's good, but it's hard to be in these moments.  I feel almost guilty writing this out, worried about what people might think, but I'm so sick of living that way.  I've spent my entire life worried about protecting everyone else, trying to be that good, strong girl, and I buried my own emotions.  My mom and dad let me down in the worst way in that regard - they were the parents and I was the kid - and I'm allowed to feel this way.

I just wish I had someone around, other than my therapist, to tell me that it was okay.

my body remembered Mother's Day before I did

Both my sister and I have been sick this past week.  She had a flu/cold/upper respiratory infection, while I ended up with some sort of stomach/nausea issue, where I kept throwing up.  I'd start to feel better, go to work/do stuff, and it would hit again.

Friday, after talking to my doctor because I just couldn't get myself to work without feeling like crap (my sister was back on her feet by then), I realized that I think it was mostly mental/anxiety/stress leading to it.  It also hit me that Sunday (today) was Mother's Day.  This is only the second Mother's Day without my mother, and last year, since she had only been dead for a few months, Mother's Day felt no different than most days.  Maybe that's why I think this year, despite being overwhelmed with the "Don't forget to celebrate mother's day" media bombs, I had repressed a lot of my feelings about it.

Add to it that my sister was sick in the same way that my mother was the last time I talked to her and it was a recipe for disaster.  You see, my mother had the flu, she swore she was getting better.  The last thing I said to her was, "Do you need anything?  No?  Okay, goodnight."  And the next morning, I woke up and she was dead.  Gone.  No explanation, no time to accept it, and no preparation like I had with my dad (which is a story in and of itself, being eleven years old and constantly going to the hospital because it was time to "say goodbye to daddy" again and again - the man was testing us and himself, I think), and no more chances to deal with all of the unresolved issues with my mother.

my dad & mom

I miss my mother.  We had so many issues, I could fill a magazine rack, but outside of that, she was my mommy.  She ended up having to raise me and my sister herself because my dad died when I was eleven and my sister was eight.  For tons of reasons I'm still trying to work through, it became a very tight unit of the three of us.  It was us against the world.  Everyone else seemed to fall away, caught up in their own lives, and even once I was an adult, it became really hard to be an adult apart from my mother.

I wish I could say that I don't notice her absence every day.  Whoever said it only takes a year to grieve is a big liar or much less codependent than I have ever been.  I still wake up some mornings from dreams where my mother is alive and it takes a quick second for it to dawn on me that she's really gone.  I still see some weird reminder of her and want to sob or yell about how unfair this is.  Why did this happen to me?  Why didn't I check on her that night?  Why did this happen?  

Mostly, I feel so confused and torn, much like our relationship.  Because I know my mother loved me, that she would give her life for me, but our relationship was tumultuous at best.  We fought all the time, her motto with me was, "if I can't be honest with you, who can" and constantly made me feel like a loser, and then would wonder why I had such issues with self esteem.  She was unhappy and had her own issues and for some reason, I was the one she focused that unhappiness on...and because she and I were a lot alike (combative by nature), our fights could get epic and really mean.

She wasn't perfect, but no one is.  I was harder on her because my dad died before I could truly recognize his imperfections and that made my mother's so much more obvious to me.  I would create the perfect dad in my head, who was never cruel or didn't get me or told me to stop dreaming so much and be practical.  I know that wasn't fair to her, but it's something I'm only starting to realize.
 

I think, on this Mother's Day, that's what makes me the saddest.  She never wanted to talk about her life, her friends, her relationship with my dad...and once I was an adult, I was so on the defense with her, that I had no patience and couldn't allow myself to be real with her.  I wish I had been able to have this sort of insight before she passed away, to make sure she knew that I loved her no matter what and knew she tried to do her best for me and my sister. 

All I can hope is somewhere she knows that I love her and forgive her for all that she did (or that I perceived she did) wrong, and hope she can forgive me.  I hope she knows that I want to be the daughter who will make her and my father proud, create a good legacy based on all the great things they taught me - to be intelligent and kind and to care about what happens in the world.  And I hope she can see that I'm trying to take her loss to make good changes in my life, to try to make something out of losing her that helps me become a better person.

Really, I just want to say:  I love you, mommy, and I'm sorry and I miss you very much.  I would take another night of fighting about your crazy Republicanism that made no sense over almost anything else.

Note:  I read a much more eloquent piece on Slate, Remembering My Mother on the Holiday She Hated, by Meghan O'Rourke

life is a learning experience...

My response to this week's writer's workshop at Sleep is for the Weak.  I chose prompt # 3:  What new skill would you love to learn, or have you learnt something new recently that you can share with us?

I think about this sort of thing a lot lately.  It was a big thing right after the movie, The Bucket List, came out - accomplishing all those things we put off, but really want to do.  I created a life list.  But it fell into the background like things tend to do when I'm busy, crazy, and lazy.  A strange combination, but a perpetual state for me at times. 

And then my mother passed away unexpectedly last year.  She was awake at night, talking to me about random stuff, and the next morning she was dead.  No warning, no nothing.  And part of my whole grieving process has been a sadness for her because I know she didn't accomplish all that she wanted.  Logically, I know that most of us will never accomplish everything we want.  We aren't granted the infinite amount of time to conquer the dreams our minds can think up.  But we can do some of it.  We can make ourselves happy and try new things and live each day like it's the last.

Over the past six months, my life list has come back to forefront of things.  I've started being more open and more courageous and mostly, more willing to fail.  It's part of why I never did number eight on my life list - learn the guitar - because I was afraid I'd be so bad.  It's funny this prompt appears now when I'm in the midst of what I've been calling my "year of me." A time to focus on myself and not feel bad about it, a time to learn who I am and who I want to be and the journey to get from here to there.  The chance to start learning all those things I've always put off for another day.

One thing I still want to learn:  I have not conquered number eight - learn the guitar yet.  I really do want to learn how to play.

One thing I've learned recently that I can share:  there are no guarantees in life and we only get one chance at this thing - might as well be happy while we're at it.