hauntedblograffiti

For an academic study, I was offered twelve weeks of therapy paid for by the researchers. I gotta say, twelve weeks isn’t nearly enough to dig into everything that’s wrong with me, but it was an insightful time digging into my younger years and how they’ve impacted my life today; I struggle to form genuine connections to people and have a deep-rooted fear of intimacy because of the abandonment I experienced while a teenager, and I never had time to really process through all of that because I was stuck in survival mode for so much of that time. There was so much validation of what I’d been through and reassurance that I was doing what I had to get by and that it wasn’t bad, because it was all I was capable of.

And so we worked on my grief. She shared a video with me fairly early on; it’s only a few minutes long and more in relation to children, but it really gave an image to how the grief I’ve been carrying with me all these years has felt:

If only I could afford to keep doing therapy :’)

A good while ago I got a copy of Bearing the Unbearable by Joanne Cacciatore. I forgot I even had it, honestly, but as I was digging through my ebook folders I stumbled upon it and realized that it would probably be as good a time as ever to start tackling it. I’m not that far in (around the 35 page mark? Hard to tell with this ebook reader I’m using), but so much space in here is given to talk about how we are not given enough time to grieve.

“…when we are pushed by our culture, this cult of pleasure, to heal on a fixed timescale or to somehow “choose happiness” over grief, when we are socially constrained and unable to give expression to our emotions, we feel unsafe, misunderstood, and isolated. And when this happens we may, to the detriment of humanity, retract from the world as we begin to, quite rightly, feel frightened and mistrusting of the way our honest grief will be met.”

I’ve had to face another type of grief in losing my father two months ago. In a way, it still doesn’t feel real; I never got to see his body, which is still languishing in a mortuary nearly two-hundred miles away, waiting for me alone to gather the funds to finally afford to cremate him as he wished. (It’s funny how I remember that; he told it to me so, so long ago, how he wanted that so he could fit where mom is buried back in St. Louis.) It isn’t the same as the grief I still carry from losing my mother; that one holds Sadness, with Regret and Longing mixed in. The grief I hold for my father has Regret, mixed with equal parts Sadness and Anger. A lot of people feel anger when going through this, you know, but I think I’m mostly angry because he didn’t take care of himself. He could’ve lived longer. He could’ve seen the birth of his two other grandchildren.

I had to wrap the birthday presents he got for my niece. He brought them on his last visit, just a few days before he died. Do you know how that feels? I look at my niece sometimes and think, you will forget him. You will not remember how happy you were when he visited. But I will remember.

I saved his last voicemail to me. “Hey. Call me back. Love you, bye.” It’s seven seconds long. I backed it up on five separate cloud storage spaces. I wish I had called him more often. He often told me it was lonely down there. He would have turned 58 in October.

It has been 18 years and 9 months since I lost my mother. It has been 2 months since I have lost my father. I now carry two balls of grief inside of me.

you’ll be all right in time.

I’ve listened to Keaton Henson’s Romantic Works through its entirety about 8 times today. Maybe not doing that good, but could be worse, I suppose, or that’s what I tell myself each time I spend a long moment on the back porch to soak up the outdoors for a bit. I dunno, there’s something therapeutic about just sitting out there and hearing the chickens and ducks being noisy lil bastards, or the sound of the insects buzzing during the day (it’s also very nice in the quiet of the later part of the night, when the neighborhood is asleep and I go out with one of the dogs one last time—sometimes he lays next to me and I just pet him on the head; it’s nice).

Another birthday has come and gone, which I’m about as indifferent to as any person can be. I think part of the reason I’ve always gotten anxious around the date is because most of my life I’ve felt the day was a burden to those around me—growing up poor meant a struggle on my mom’s part to make it a meaningful day to me, so I always tempered my expectations from a young age because I understood the financial strain any gifting would cause. Nowadays I consider it a good day if I get a single ‘happy birthday’ because that’s just how things are around me. At the very least I try to treat myself to one cheap thing I want on the day, if nothing else (a little reminder that I do in fact deserve a treat once in a while, and what better way than to celebrate making it this far?).

My sister stomped up to me earlier and shoved her phone in my face with an angry “I hate our family.” One of our cousins posted a bunch of pics on socmed of an absolutely massive family gathering (230 people, apparently ‘closest family and friends’!) celebrating our grandparents’ anniversary. Which is. Well, sister, I dunno what to tell you, but there’s a reason mom never really spoke with her family, you know? From a young age I’ve been keenly aware how much that side of the family has a distaste for us, and the last time I saw my grandmother really cemented how much especially I don’t register in her mind (you see, my sister looks like our mother, but I look like my father while also being Fat, and we just Can’t Have That). I don’t really think about that side of the family much, which honestly leaves me with no side of the family to think of, but it’s better than giving those assholes free rent in my mind (and yet another reason that I a. don’t check socials that much and b. have not friended most of the fam; y’all dead to me just like I’m probably dead to you).

Anyway. I need someone to stop me from ordering more notebooks. I am going to die buried under a pile of them at this rate. Stationery my beloved… stop calling to me.

it’s mid-june and life is going. which is to say, a lot has happened so far this year, even though it doesn’t really feel like it.

in march (arguably the worst month of the year for me) i ended up throwing out my back helping to move in a chicken coop, then i caught covid while suffering that which left me out of commission for a solid two weeks. it. was. awful. i just got over a double ear infection this last week too, which sucked, and i would like to give special thanks to my bffs acetaminophen and ibuprofen.

guess who’s got twin niblings incoming towards the end of the year :’) i’m terrified, mostly because i’ll be the one taking care of them (alone!) through the majority of the day.

hopefully i remember to UPDATE THIS THING once in a while. to be honest, i’m more a fan of writing in an actual journal than doing the whole blog thing.