Memories
The last week has been full of quiet thinking time for me. I generally spend a lot of time thinking about things - not all of them good or useful - but I have been remembering many things, too. With the passing of my father last year I have tried to be very careful about remembering things. The past is important. His life was important. But I've tried to tell myself that the present and the future mean just as much.
I'm thoughtful. Not always about other people or positive things. Not even about my homework, although I should be. But although I have many wonderful memories, I've spent a lot of my short life overwhelmed by remembering, and I've tried very hard to limit that behavior this year. You can't move forward if you keep thinking about what you've left behind, and so on.
There are a lot of things happening in my life right now. And I'm not sure that any of them are bad. But I'm not feeling very well emotionally. I'm hoping that I can make it through the summer and the changes that are coming up before I attempt to seek some assistance for these things. I know that new things can negatively affect someone like me. So, with all of these things happening, I've become very prone to remembering.
First I want to write down some of the changes I am facing; things that we are facing as a couple.
We're moving. This doesn't look like a bad thing. But moving always makes me nervous. I've learned that I'm a creature of comfort. I like familiar things, I like comfortable things, and disturbing the peace that I find in my surroundings seems to disturb the peace I have inside of me. I'm easily upset and confused at this point in my life. (It's ridiculous, really.) So, moving is frightening and unsettling. Packing, unpacking. Arranging furniture. Moving, breaking things, losing things. And we're moving into a very, very old mobile home on property right beside my mother-in-law. And it's a lovely thing, because she's giving us this land and home, but it's still very old and very close to her. I like my privacy. I enjoy having these anonymous neighbors that don't trouble me. I don't ever have to think about them. So living beside his mother in a home that we are actively going to have to maintain, that we're responsible for, frightens me.
Whew. Secondly, we're both starting another semester in August. I've mostly enjoyed going back to school. I like being a student. I enjoy learning new things. But my performance has been consistently horrible. I don't learn things as easily as I used to. I'm not good at asking for help. And my emotional issues really do get in the way of my studying and completing things on time. My SAP status is at a WARNING again, and that worries me. I'm not sure how much longer I can slide by without being thrown out of school. So this semester I have to really, really push myself, and I think I'm not going to be able to do it without asking for help and seeing doctors and all of those things. And that's not a good thought.
My husband is wavering on the job front. We don't really have a stable income at the moment. So that is stressful. But I am confident that he'll resolve that at some point, and we'll get our loans for school soon, and everything will be okay. I hope.
There are just little things. Like those. And they weigh on me very heavily because I have trouble keeping perspective, I guess. So, we've also had Father's Day come and go, which bothered me. And now the next month is going to be the real deal: on 7/13/2014, it will mark one year exactly that my father has been dead. I'm literally afraid of this day. I know I'm going to feel bad. I know that I need to face it head-on and work through how I feel. It has been a hard year, and I personally feel like it is okay to deal with this in an emotional way. But I don't think anyone else really feels that way or understands. And that's stressful. People are like, look, you need to get over this. You need to move on. It was a year ago. Which is perfectly fine, except that I'm twenty-three. Most people have their parents around until they get a little older, and I just wasn't ready to lose my father.
Whew. Okay. Remembering. Memories.
So, part of working through this grief has been remembering good things and bad things. I've been working really hard on remembering everything objectively. I want to look at those memories and say, okay, this was bad, but this other part was good. The sum total of my memories and experiences should end up being positive. And I dwell on negative things a lot more than I should, so this is challenging. Normally I just avoid memories. But lately I've been sort of ambushed by them.
The thing about my memories is that they are a really, really strange mix of good and bad. I know everyone has childhood issues. Everyone has bad things happen. But a lot of people don't grow up in an environment that places these things side by side every day. And I did. So there are a lot of negative emotions that are mixed in with these good emotions, and there's probably some trauma or whatever from having such a ridiculous childhood. I try really hard not to say that it was bad, because it wasn't exactly bad. But it was like an episode of General Hospital every week, and I really can't explain to someone how that has made me into this weird person that I am.
Sometimes I think that I want to write a book about living with a sick parent. It's not something that everyone can relate to. But it's something that can cause problems, even when your parents love you very much.
My childhood was really weird. I thought that I had the most beautiful family in the world. It was actually very confusing sometimes, because even as a child I remember feeling things very intensely, and there are a lot of conflicted moments in my memories. But I just knew that my family was wonderful! If you had asked me at any age before 10, I would have sworn that my mother and father were the most beautiful people in the universe and they were the most in love people in the world, too. I was really convinced of that most of the time.
And that's good, because you should feel like your parents love each other. You really should. It was nice to see that because it balanced out some of the more unpleasant things. As an adult I realize that the love and safety my parents represented during good times just really made them magical. We were very unstable, and so when things were good, I tended to feel like they were just absolutely blissful. There were a lot of things that I suspect I was willingly ignorant of. That's probably how I ended up able to love and respect both of my parents eventually.
We had a lot of fun. We had a Friday family night when I started school, because they understood right away that there was something about school that made me deeply unhappy. (I use this as proof that I have always been a homebody. Always!) So we watched movies and made forts out of blankets and just had fun. We took walks in the park a lot of times during the week. We swam in the summer, played outside in the snow in winter. They went to some of the school events as chaperones. Mom worked in the library as an assistant for a few months. Dad came to lunch with me. We had picnics. We bonded. We spent time with my aunts and uncles and cousins and made trips up to see my other set of grandparents. I mean my childhood was filled with these great moments, but they were all punctuated by unpleasant things like arguments and hospital waiting rooms. They even did their best to make the bad things good: for years we would go to these doctor appointments for my father in Nashville, and we would stop to visit museums or interesting restaurants on the way. It was amazing. They never left me out of anything, either.
It was just good. But, you know, there were bad things. Prominent bad things. They argued. He was sick. Very obviously sick. I don't think there was a day when I wasn't acutely aware at some point that my Dad was in pain. It put a sort of sad shadow over everything. And for months we spent one day a week at the hospital for his migraines, because they were so awful. And there were monthly or bi-monthly doctor appointments in other cities. There were bad days when he hurt too much to spend time with me. (He was basically my playmate, so his absence was a noticeable thing and it made me sad to know that he hurt.) There were really bad times when he got bad news that I didn't understand. And there were the really, really big things, when he would fall and have a concussion or break a rib. Stuff like that.
One really bad thing that I try not to remember floated to the surface a few days ago.
One year, I was probably four or five years old, I accidentally hurt my Dad. Now, I knew that he was in pain and there were things that I couldn't do. I wasn't supposed to touch his left arm or hug him too hard or anything like that. And most of the time I was okay. But I was only a little girl, and I couldn't always be perfect. So one day we were playing Candy Land. And this must have been when the game was still kind of new, because I remember being so enchanted with it and having so much fun. But I knew at the end that he had let me win. I knew it, because I wasn't completely unobservant as a kid. And I just thought, how great it was that he loved me so much that he would let me win this game, because it is my favorite game! And I jumped up and hugged him. It was just pure enthusiasm and I got carried away. I flung my arms around his neck and squeezed. I had probably hugged Mom this way or seen other kids hug their parents like that. But it was something that I couldn't do to my Dad, and this is why.
He just collapsed. He fell backward and I suppose he passed out. He wouldn't wake up for a while. And so I sat there and didn't know what to do at first. I remember thinking that a washcloth might wake him up, so I got a washcloth wet with some warm water and put it on his forehead. I tried to talk to him. He was very slurred and groggy, and I think he tried to tell me not to call Mom. But I knew that it wasn't quite right, because he still couldn't move or get up. So instead I took myself to the phone and called 911.
I was just a little girl. Four or five years old. But ever since I was old enough to start learning my phone number, my parents had to teach me how to call 911 and report an emergency, too. So I called. I think I must have been very calm. I know that I didn't remember the number for Mom at work. But after a little while these paramedics came to the apartment and started taking care of things. They had a record of our family in the hospital and so they sent several paramedics. A few of them took me outside and helped me put my shoes on and asked me what had happened. I had to tell them that I hugged my Daddy too hard and it hurt him. And I just didn't know what kind of damage I had done. I was very worried that I had made him more sick or something.
I think that he was probably okay. I don't really remember it very well. I was told that they recorded the phone call and later used it for training in emergency response classes, to show how carefully to handle children and what a good job I had done or something. I'm not sure how true that is. But I can never forget that day, even though everything was okay in the end. It was the first time that I was really on my own and responsible for what happened to my Dad. The first time that I was at a hospital by myself, waiting for my mother. It was a real test of my ability to handle a crisis!
And to this day, I deal with hospital problems and medical emergencies much better than any other problem that I have ever faced. Which is honestly kind of insane, when you think about it. But that's the sort of thing that I've been remembering. Good with bad. And it really, really has been making me wonder about myself and my personality. How much of who I am is because of these events? Would I be on medication if I hadn't lived like that? Would I have had more friends or more fun if I had been in a more stable home environment? I'll never really know. But I do know that it would be interesting to write a book about that, because dealing with those things is hard for any kid and I remember how hard it was to relate to other children. It's not something everyone can understand easily.
Oh, gee. Enough for now.
I'm thoughtful. Not always about other people or positive things. Not even about my homework, although I should be. But although I have many wonderful memories, I've spent a lot of my short life overwhelmed by remembering, and I've tried very hard to limit that behavior this year. You can't move forward if you keep thinking about what you've left behind, and so on.
There are a lot of things happening in my life right now. And I'm not sure that any of them are bad. But I'm not feeling very well emotionally. I'm hoping that I can make it through the summer and the changes that are coming up before I attempt to seek some assistance for these things. I know that new things can negatively affect someone like me. So, with all of these things happening, I've become very prone to remembering.
First I want to write down some of the changes I am facing; things that we are facing as a couple.
We're moving. This doesn't look like a bad thing. But moving always makes me nervous. I've learned that I'm a creature of comfort. I like familiar things, I like comfortable things, and disturbing the peace that I find in my surroundings seems to disturb the peace I have inside of me. I'm easily upset and confused at this point in my life. (It's ridiculous, really.) So, moving is frightening and unsettling. Packing, unpacking. Arranging furniture. Moving, breaking things, losing things. And we're moving into a very, very old mobile home on property right beside my mother-in-law. And it's a lovely thing, because she's giving us this land and home, but it's still very old and very close to her. I like my privacy. I enjoy having these anonymous neighbors that don't trouble me. I don't ever have to think about them. So living beside his mother in a home that we are actively going to have to maintain, that we're responsible for, frightens me.
Whew. Secondly, we're both starting another semester in August. I've mostly enjoyed going back to school. I like being a student. I enjoy learning new things. But my performance has been consistently horrible. I don't learn things as easily as I used to. I'm not good at asking for help. And my emotional issues really do get in the way of my studying and completing things on time. My SAP status is at a WARNING again, and that worries me. I'm not sure how much longer I can slide by without being thrown out of school. So this semester I have to really, really push myself, and I think I'm not going to be able to do it without asking for help and seeing doctors and all of those things. And that's not a good thought.
My husband is wavering on the job front. We don't really have a stable income at the moment. So that is stressful. But I am confident that he'll resolve that at some point, and we'll get our loans for school soon, and everything will be okay. I hope.
There are just little things. Like those. And they weigh on me very heavily because I have trouble keeping perspective, I guess. So, we've also had Father's Day come and go, which bothered me. And now the next month is going to be the real deal: on 7/13/2014, it will mark one year exactly that my father has been dead. I'm literally afraid of this day. I know I'm going to feel bad. I know that I need to face it head-on and work through how I feel. It has been a hard year, and I personally feel like it is okay to deal with this in an emotional way. But I don't think anyone else really feels that way or understands. And that's stressful. People are like, look, you need to get over this. You need to move on. It was a year ago. Which is perfectly fine, except that I'm twenty-three. Most people have their parents around until they get a little older, and I just wasn't ready to lose my father.
Whew. Okay. Remembering. Memories.
So, part of working through this grief has been remembering good things and bad things. I've been working really hard on remembering everything objectively. I want to look at those memories and say, okay, this was bad, but this other part was good. The sum total of my memories and experiences should end up being positive. And I dwell on negative things a lot more than I should, so this is challenging. Normally I just avoid memories. But lately I've been sort of ambushed by them.
The thing about my memories is that they are a really, really strange mix of good and bad. I know everyone has childhood issues. Everyone has bad things happen. But a lot of people don't grow up in an environment that places these things side by side every day. And I did. So there are a lot of negative emotions that are mixed in with these good emotions, and there's probably some trauma or whatever from having such a ridiculous childhood. I try really hard not to say that it was bad, because it wasn't exactly bad. But it was like an episode of General Hospital every week, and I really can't explain to someone how that has made me into this weird person that I am.
Sometimes I think that I want to write a book about living with a sick parent. It's not something that everyone can relate to. But it's something that can cause problems, even when your parents love you very much.
My childhood was really weird. I thought that I had the most beautiful family in the world. It was actually very confusing sometimes, because even as a child I remember feeling things very intensely, and there are a lot of conflicted moments in my memories. But I just knew that my family was wonderful! If you had asked me at any age before 10, I would have sworn that my mother and father were the most beautiful people in the universe and they were the most in love people in the world, too. I was really convinced of that most of the time.
And that's good, because you should feel like your parents love each other. You really should. It was nice to see that because it balanced out some of the more unpleasant things. As an adult I realize that the love and safety my parents represented during good times just really made them magical. We were very unstable, and so when things were good, I tended to feel like they were just absolutely blissful. There were a lot of things that I suspect I was willingly ignorant of. That's probably how I ended up able to love and respect both of my parents eventually.
We had a lot of fun. We had a Friday family night when I started school, because they understood right away that there was something about school that made me deeply unhappy. (I use this as proof that I have always been a homebody. Always!) So we watched movies and made forts out of blankets and just had fun. We took walks in the park a lot of times during the week. We swam in the summer, played outside in the snow in winter. They went to some of the school events as chaperones. Mom worked in the library as an assistant for a few months. Dad came to lunch with me. We had picnics. We bonded. We spent time with my aunts and uncles and cousins and made trips up to see my other set of grandparents. I mean my childhood was filled with these great moments, but they were all punctuated by unpleasant things like arguments and hospital waiting rooms. They even did their best to make the bad things good: for years we would go to these doctor appointments for my father in Nashville, and we would stop to visit museums or interesting restaurants on the way. It was amazing. They never left me out of anything, either.
It was just good. But, you know, there were bad things. Prominent bad things. They argued. He was sick. Very obviously sick. I don't think there was a day when I wasn't acutely aware at some point that my Dad was in pain. It put a sort of sad shadow over everything. And for months we spent one day a week at the hospital for his migraines, because they were so awful. And there were monthly or bi-monthly doctor appointments in other cities. There were bad days when he hurt too much to spend time with me. (He was basically my playmate, so his absence was a noticeable thing and it made me sad to know that he hurt.) There were really bad times when he got bad news that I didn't understand. And there were the really, really big things, when he would fall and have a concussion or break a rib. Stuff like that.
One really bad thing that I try not to remember floated to the surface a few days ago.
One year, I was probably four or five years old, I accidentally hurt my Dad. Now, I knew that he was in pain and there were things that I couldn't do. I wasn't supposed to touch his left arm or hug him too hard or anything like that. And most of the time I was okay. But I was only a little girl, and I couldn't always be perfect. So one day we were playing Candy Land. And this must have been when the game was still kind of new, because I remember being so enchanted with it and having so much fun. But I knew at the end that he had let me win. I knew it, because I wasn't completely unobservant as a kid. And I just thought, how great it was that he loved me so much that he would let me win this game, because it is my favorite game! And I jumped up and hugged him. It was just pure enthusiasm and I got carried away. I flung my arms around his neck and squeezed. I had probably hugged Mom this way or seen other kids hug their parents like that. But it was something that I couldn't do to my Dad, and this is why.
He just collapsed. He fell backward and I suppose he passed out. He wouldn't wake up for a while. And so I sat there and didn't know what to do at first. I remember thinking that a washcloth might wake him up, so I got a washcloth wet with some warm water and put it on his forehead. I tried to talk to him. He was very slurred and groggy, and I think he tried to tell me not to call Mom. But I knew that it wasn't quite right, because he still couldn't move or get up. So instead I took myself to the phone and called 911.
I was just a little girl. Four or five years old. But ever since I was old enough to start learning my phone number, my parents had to teach me how to call 911 and report an emergency, too. So I called. I think I must have been very calm. I know that I didn't remember the number for Mom at work. But after a little while these paramedics came to the apartment and started taking care of things. They had a record of our family in the hospital and so they sent several paramedics. A few of them took me outside and helped me put my shoes on and asked me what had happened. I had to tell them that I hugged my Daddy too hard and it hurt him. And I just didn't know what kind of damage I had done. I was very worried that I had made him more sick or something.
I think that he was probably okay. I don't really remember it very well. I was told that they recorded the phone call and later used it for training in emergency response classes, to show how carefully to handle children and what a good job I had done or something. I'm not sure how true that is. But I can never forget that day, even though everything was okay in the end. It was the first time that I was really on my own and responsible for what happened to my Dad. The first time that I was at a hospital by myself, waiting for my mother. It was a real test of my ability to handle a crisis!
And to this day, I deal with hospital problems and medical emergencies much better than any other problem that I have ever faced. Which is honestly kind of insane, when you think about it. But that's the sort of thing that I've been remembering. Good with bad. And it really, really has been making me wonder about myself and my personality. How much of who I am is because of these events? Would I be on medication if I hadn't lived like that? Would I have had more friends or more fun if I had been in a more stable home environment? I'll never really know. But I do know that it would be interesting to write a book about that, because dealing with those things is hard for any kid and I remember how hard it was to relate to other children. It's not something everyone can understand easily.
Oh, gee. Enough for now.
Replies