It's about to get real up in here... The other night we spent with our amazing friends, celebrating Jonny's birthday. It felt so good to be surrounded by the people I love and feel myself with. We just hung out with each other, ate some amazing food, and had some drinks. I was drinking my new favorite, whiskey gingers. By the time we left, I was beginning to realize I drank a bit too much. I don't drink all that often, and its very rare when I drink enough to feel like it was too much... The past month, there has been some tension in our marriage... mostly due to outside responsibilities and underlying emotions about my dad. On the way home, something was mentioned about my dad, and I basically lost it. I cried so hard, screamed, hit the door, freaked out. I think I've been bottling it all up so tightly that it just poured out with the whiskey. As much as it sucked, I think it really needed to happen. A release I wasn't allowing myself to have.
For those of you who don't know, I lost my daddy to suicide in July of last year. It has been such a strange healing process. So many different emotions than I had when I lost my mom to cancer four years before that. With her death, I was aware it was coming, I had time to say goodbye, time to love on her with everything I had, time to prepare the best way I could for what was ahead. I did not get any of this when my dad left this earth. Not a touch of goodbye. Nothing. Just gone. For the most part, I feel such a compassion for my dad, that I have not been angry with him for his decision. I feel so much love for him, like I always did. But I would be lying if I said I never feel angry. Sometimes it hurts so bad that I did not get to tell him goodbye, and I feel the anger well up in me. And sometimes I think I let it out in petty arguments with James, which I hate. When my mom died, I felt like I had to be so strong for my dad, and for my brother. Now that my dad is gone, I don't know who I am trying to be so strong for. I guess myself, so I don't just fall apart and become something I hate. Im not sure really.
I'm beginning to realize that having someone leave that I loved so dearly, not tell me goodbye, has made me lose a bit of self worth. And so many of my other internal battles (like having children) have been affected even deeper by this. There have been a few other times in my life when friends, people whom I thought loved me, just turned and walked away, without a goodbye... and though that hurt deeply, this is so much more raw. But, I know I shouldn't let it get to me, b/c my dad was never good at goodbyes. Every family function we ever had, he left without telling anyone goodbye, not even his wife or kids. It's just the way he was. And I have read countless times that people who take their own life, often don't say goodbye or leave notes. But even statistics and deep rooted routines he had don't seem to take away that pain. A part of me even feels guilty for feeling pain about it. I don't want my daddy to know how much it hurts me, I still don't want him to feel bad, even though he is gone. I just want him to feel love and acceptance.
As silly as it sounds, seeing rainbows in my whiskey that night was no coincidence. All of my family that has passed leaves something behind in times of need. My grandfather leaves marbles and feathers, my mom leaves mountain laurel seeds, and my dad leaves rainbows. It was only fitting that I kept seeing rainbows on the drink that let out all this emotion built up inside me. It was so deep and buried I didn't even know it existed, or at least not like that. This is all part of the bones I must gather, to understand myself a little deeper, and understand where I come from.
