I am writing about this prompt again because it was asked in the Getting Started file to explore this prompt a few times before the course actually starts. I am currently trying to finish reading It's Ok That You're Not Ok before the 13th and I have been thinking about a few things.
Like how I am not going to write about things past a certain depth. Like, yes, I listed that my father is a point of grief for me, and I realized that while reading Chapter 8 on the portion on the difference between not wanting to be alive and the desire to commit suicide not being the same thing--and it brought me back to my father, and how after his brother, Bill, died, he began drinking even more and he ended up drinking himself to death basically. There was a moment where he was in the hospital with a heart attack for maybe the third time, which was the last time before he died, and I think it was after he had go into rehab and scrubbed out, I recall thinking to my maybe 9 year old self that I wasn't sure why I wasn't enough for him to stick around. It was a deep profoundly sad thing for anyone, let alone a 9 year old, to be thinking (and my kids are just a year younger than that, which is also something to consider), and I hadn't thought of this moment in a long long time.
When he did die almost two years later, I got to talk to him on the phone the night before he died. We were supposed to go see him in the hospital, which was bending the rules for me to be let in because those children under 12 were not normally allowed in, but for some reason, we didn't go. So instead we talked on the phone.
My father was always my writing and reading cheerleader. He took me to the library every Saturday. We would spend hours there. He would go over to the adult side and I would go over to the children's side. I would enjoy story time, and spend hours browsing books and playing with the speak n spell and the other 1980s math technology they had there. He would often sneak in alcohol and drink while he was on the adult side; occasionally I would find him snoozing in the sun, sitting in a nubby orange chair in the sunlight let in by one of the bubble windows in the library.
He encouraged me to write, and I would perform my writing for him and read him my stories. And he always encouraged me to write more and be more creative.
I read him a story on the phone like I would have in person, and we chatted about who recalls what, but then it was time for me to go to bed, and Mom wanted to talk to Dad. He said that he loved me and I said that I loved him too and called down the stairs for Mom to pick up the phone to talk to him.
Sometime that night, he slipped into a coma and he died the next day.
I got to tell him I loved him before he died. I realized how special that was later on in life, because so many people didn't get to do that.
Even later on in life, I realized that he had a problem. He was an alcoholic when he was alive, and now I have come to realize that his grief for his brother's death consumed him. He went beyond not caring if he lived or died. He just did what he had to do to die.
But I don't feel like I want to go into this pain, or deeply into other pain. It's going to hurt and i worry about staring into the abyss and what will be staring back.
At the end of chapter 7, there was a discussion of observing your moods, and what triggers the 'imaginary unwinnable battles [that] are not a kindness'. These unwinnable battles come from anxiety, which I definitely suffer from.
And the anxiety is putting up a block.
What if it gets worse?
What if it feels worse?
What if my emotions and my reactions to them negatively affect Orson more than they already do?
What if my emotions and my negative reactions to them destroy my marriage? My relationships?
I know I need to be brave and charge the anxiety with the following questions back:
What if this makes it better?
What if this makes me feel better?
What if by processing my emotions and my reactions to them, I can save my son and my relationships and my marriage?
These are the questions I need to focus on but it is just hard. So hard.
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