1. I should have mentioned in the last entry that I haven't given my ex any evidence that I miss her, either. There hasn't been any communication between us at all, on either side. Somehow I don't think it's bothering her much, but I can't say that's anything other than a guess and I could very well be wrong. It's not like I've been reaching out and getting rebuffed. So that's a confession - I tend to get caught up in my own feelings of loss and not consider how I might be contributing to someone else's.
2. It's her birthday today and I'm not calling, sending a card, or emailing, not even bland "best wishes for a happy birthday", and I feel uneasy about it. I've been unanimously advised not to, so I'm heeding what I take to be wise advice, not wanting to seem like I'm trying to find an in. But it seems cold and petty.
3. Which leads me to a really guilty confession; the petty thought has occurred to me that she may in fact have learned about the death of my father and deliberately decided not to express any sympathy at all. I don't want to think that's true, and I feel petty and ungenerous for having had the thought.
And I feel guilty for thinking it in the first place, for even having thoughts about her reactions to something so huge as my father's death - even though half a dozen friends have assured me that it's only natural that I'd miss sympathy from someone I've been so close to. It seems like another way in which the two losses are linked, other than the obvious facts that I've suffered a lot of loss in a short time span and that I don't handle it well.
4. What does it mean that my father's death triggered all this renewed sense of loss about my ex? Why is that? It seems more deeply linked than what all my friends and family have said: "well, it's just natural that one loss would bring up feelings about another loss." That's a sort of magnetic theory of emotions - one emotional reaction pulls another one towards it, and so on. This feels different, like there's a substantive link inside me somehow. Something else to remind myself not to obsess about.
5. The date with UIW got cancelled because of my father's death and I don't think I'm going to reschedule - it just doesn't seem like a good or productive thing to do, for a lot of reasons. While I was away, I reconnected with an old friend who I'd had some mild romantic-sexual liason with in the past. She suggested that she might visit sometime soon and stay with me; that wouldn't be bad, because it would be light, not fraught with expectation (at least not on my side and I can't imagine on hers - she's kind of a free spirit). We'll see. If nothing else, the company and the flirtation would be a welcome diversion.
6. I'm working again, which is good.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Confessions
1. I worry that my father was secretly ashamed of me because of my depression. I know he didn't understand the disease, but he tried to support me the best he could. I hope I didn't disappoint him. This is, I'm sure, pretty typical grieving stuff, but the pangs are acute - hoping that I wasn't the cause of pain to him, but also the less attractive hope that he thought well of me, that he approved of me, that he was proud of me in some way. The unattractive need of a child.
2. It seems clear to me that my ex doesn't miss me, doesn't mourn or miss the relationship. I don't have any evidence of this, but it just seems that way. There hasn't been any contact or communication between us at all for two months and it still hurts, and I still miss her. It got ugly, so ugly, in a way I would not have thought possible, that communication had to cease.
The missing her...it's not like that every day. I don't sit around obsessing about the relationship - it's more a matter of these sudden moments that crop up. Some days it's a keening sense of loss, when there's something that would be so natural to share with her, or something that we used to do together...and then this thought immediately shoots through my head, unbidden: she probably isn't having any feelings about you.
I had my first day at work at my new job today. When I came home, I was alone. I had a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator, one I'd bought with her over a year ago (we drank a fair amount of champagne - it was a special thing we shared). So I opened it, alone, and poured a single glass. And it just felt wrong. That was one of the times when the loss-thought went shooting through my head. She probably doesn't miss you. And that just hurts. It hurts to feel like you could suddenly become so utterly unimportant to someone so important to you.
3. Which brings me back to my dad...who I'll never again be able to be important to, who I'll never be able to say "I love you" to, with whom I won't have any more chances to clarify what I really meant. He's just...gone. The totality, the irrevocability of it...my descent into cliche marks the universality of the loss - it's not like my loss is unique among all the other losses, it's just special to me. Every death can be an individual apocalypse for those left behind, or just a sad occasion. So I suppose my confession is that I wonder whether I'm just genetically/physiologically predisposed to these apocalypses. And if I am, does that somehow invalidate or delegitimate them? "Reason not the need," goes the line from King Lear, and I read it as meaning that different people have different needs and that there is no measuring stick against which the appropriateness or seemliness of one's need can or ought to be compared.
4. So my apocalypses: if they're genetic/physiologic in origin (as research into depression is continuing to show), can we still say "reason not the need" if the modern translation/implication of that phrase would be "medicate not the need"? But then, I'm medicated, quite thoroughly. I feel remarkably stable, considering what I've gone through and what's just happened with my dad's death. The meds are working. But the holes in the fabric of my days still exist and these sharp thorns still poke through relatively unimpeded.
I miss him. I miss her. Totally different kinds of loss. I keep taking my meds.
2. It seems clear to me that my ex doesn't miss me, doesn't mourn or miss the relationship. I don't have any evidence of this, but it just seems that way. There hasn't been any contact or communication between us at all for two months and it still hurts, and I still miss her. It got ugly, so ugly, in a way I would not have thought possible, that communication had to cease.
The missing her...it's not like that every day. I don't sit around obsessing about the relationship - it's more a matter of these sudden moments that crop up. Some days it's a keening sense of loss, when there's something that would be so natural to share with her, or something that we used to do together...and then this thought immediately shoots through my head, unbidden: she probably isn't having any feelings about you.
I had my first day at work at my new job today. When I came home, I was alone. I had a bottle of champagne in the refrigerator, one I'd bought with her over a year ago (we drank a fair amount of champagne - it was a special thing we shared). So I opened it, alone, and poured a single glass. And it just felt wrong. That was one of the times when the loss-thought went shooting through my head. She probably doesn't miss you. And that just hurts. It hurts to feel like you could suddenly become so utterly unimportant to someone so important to you.
3. Which brings me back to my dad...who I'll never again be able to be important to, who I'll never be able to say "I love you" to, with whom I won't have any more chances to clarify what I really meant. He's just...gone. The totality, the irrevocability of it...my descent into cliche marks the universality of the loss - it's not like my loss is unique among all the other losses, it's just special to me. Every death can be an individual apocalypse for those left behind, or just a sad occasion. So I suppose my confession is that I wonder whether I'm just genetically/physiologically predisposed to these apocalypses. And if I am, does that somehow invalidate or delegitimate them? "Reason not the need," goes the line from King Lear, and I read it as meaning that different people have different needs and that there is no measuring stick against which the appropriateness or seemliness of one's need can or ought to be compared.
4. So my apocalypses: if they're genetic/physiologic in origin (as research into depression is continuing to show), can we still say "reason not the need" if the modern translation/implication of that phrase would be "medicate not the need"? But then, I'm medicated, quite thoroughly. I feel remarkably stable, considering what I've gone through and what's just happened with my dad's death. The meds are working. But the holes in the fabric of my days still exist and these sharp thorns still poke through relatively unimpeded.
I miss him. I miss her. Totally different kinds of loss. I keep taking my meds.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Is it even worth trying?
Trying to pull all of this together: the resurgence of the loss, the shock of the grief, the shame at the loss in the face of the grief, the sheer overwhelmingness of it all. The hundred little things that run through your head that you'll never get to say, that you never got around to saying. Such a cliche - not the gut-wrench of movies, but more of an ache that waxes and wanes.
To have lost a job, my lover and my father in the space of seven months just seems ridiculous, like something out of a fever dream. I can't quite believe it's actually happening, has happened, to me.
There is a connection, at least one, here; the humming, quivering constant in my life: the disease. The self-doubt, the emptiness of the loss, the self-accusatory quality of the grief, the shame at my own reactions, the inability to simply feel without judging myself, the cascade of emotion that overwhelms me in the middle of the day: all gifts of the disease. Well, some of them are normal, I'm sure, but the particular valence they have, the luminescence they have for me right now, are a little gift. I'm fighting it, much better than I'd have thought possible even a few months ago, but really, this seems cosmically cruel and comical. I mean, on a soap opera, OK, but really...enough.
But maybe that's just the typical self-absorption of the disease... Fun, isn't it?
What would you say, Dad? Just do my best. Alright. I miss you.
To have lost a job, my lover and my father in the space of seven months just seems ridiculous, like something out of a fever dream. I can't quite believe it's actually happening, has happened, to me.
There is a connection, at least one, here; the humming, quivering constant in my life: the disease. The self-doubt, the emptiness of the loss, the self-accusatory quality of the grief, the shame at my own reactions, the inability to simply feel without judging myself, the cascade of emotion that overwhelms me in the middle of the day: all gifts of the disease. Well, some of them are normal, I'm sure, but the particular valence they have, the luminescence they have for me right now, are a little gift. I'm fighting it, much better than I'd have thought possible even a few months ago, but really, this seems cosmically cruel and comical. I mean, on a soap opera, OK, but really...enough.
But maybe that's just the typical self-absorption of the disease... Fun, isn't it?
What would you say, Dad? Just do my best. Alright. I miss you.
Friday, June 08, 2007
This all seems very small right now
My father died a few days ago after a short illness.
Suddenly, all of this seems unbelievably self-involved and unimportant.
But I'm also overwhelmed by a sense of loss over my ex. This is probably normal - grief bringing up other, unresolved, grief. But I fear that I'll be so alone when I leave my family in a few days, missing her will be as fresh as it was months ago.
I have to write a eulogy now; I already wrote the obituary. Everybody knows I'm the writer of the family. If they only knew the confessional self-obsessed crap I mostly write about. I feel ashamed.
Suddenly, all of this seems unbelievably self-involved and unimportant.
But I'm also overwhelmed by a sense of loss over my ex. This is probably normal - grief bringing up other, unresolved, grief. But I fear that I'll be so alone when I leave my family in a few days, missing her will be as fresh as it was months ago.
I have to write a eulogy now; I already wrote the obituary. Everybody knows I'm the writer of the family. If they only knew the confessional self-obsessed crap I mostly write about. I feel ashamed.
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