Difference: 1 year

December 27, 2004:

...crap. I just realized I never called my dad on Christmas day. He must feel like I'm slipping further and further away from him. I don't know how to relate to him much anymore. I see the relationship [my girlfriend] has with her dad, and for the first time in a long time, I'm envious. My dad is a loving and caring man, but he's rigid in his religion. And even though he doesn't say much in the way of how he believes I've "chosen" to live my life, I can see it in the way that he looks at me...like he's losing me...like the older he gets and the closer he gets to dying, the closer he gets to the last time he'll ever see me because I didn't live my life "good enough" to get to his afterlife. And it makes me sad that he thinks this way.

December 27, 2005:

My dad's so tired lately. Can't get up for even short periods of time without becoming out of breath quickly. Has to rest between getting dressed and putting his shoes on and walking out the door to the car when I take him anywhere. Sometimes he still talks about recovering and being able to work, but I think he's fighting a losing battle with himself. I think the part of him that hopes he'll recover is slowly fading away. The part of him that knew he was going to recover has already died. And the part that's taking over is the part with the cancer. The part that tells him his life is over and he better just sit back and relax, wait to die.

I'm sad. I’m mad. I'm frustrated. I have this aching in my soul to just be normal again. To just find normal and stick with it for a while. To stop finding these places in my life that are so uncomfortable and painful. I don't care how much I’m going to learn from this whole experience; I just want it to be over. I don't want to learn anymore, I just want my dad to be well again. I wish I could believe that God will come and save him from this pain, take away this cancer and let him live 50 more years. But I can't. I don't. I won't.

Researching a memoir isn't like researching a novel or any other random article. I'm not reading about someone else, I'm reading about me. What's odd about that is that sometimes I feel like I'm reading about someone else. Both of these spaces feel so so far away from me now. Sure, it's 4 and 5 years ago (could it be? no....), and while I can vaguely recollect feeling those things, the fact that life is so different now makes it feel like I'm reading from someone else's journals.

Makes me think about how much things change in a year, how much people change, and how much I've changed. One year to the next it's hard to see, but only if we don't look.

Remember to Breathe

As I continue to go through my journals of yesteryear in writing 7 Days, I come across entries that remind me of growth. I read these entries and don't remember that I felt that fucked up. But the words are there, spilling the thoughts, the streams, the echoes of what must have been going through my head at the time I wrote them. 

This is one such entry:

june 29, 2005

i have moments of untrust. even with myself. especially with myself. trying to find things about myself that i like again. not just things in my life, but about myself, my being, my whole. i'm like my mom. sometimes that's good, sometimes it's bad. good when i'm funny and intuitive, bad when i'm paranoid and judgmental. balance, balance i keep telling myself. i'm more good than all the bad i've picked up along the way. more good than bad, i am. it's not even about that though. what is it, what is it? this self evaluation is killing me. the 30 the debt the love the work the life the relationship the mom. yoga. can it really be the answer? part of it maybe. take better care of yourself, dian. why must i keep reminding myself? more music. more baseball. more tennis. more yoga. more breathing. stop holding your breath, dian. nothing bad is going to happen. i will protect you. you can breathe you can breathe. no really you can breathe. back to good will hunting. i know it's not my fault. some things are though. not my mom. not steven. not grandpa. not tricia. not mike. not being gay. being in debt though. that's my fault. buying that stupid car i never really wanted anyway. that's my fault. get over blaming yourself, it's no good. can you change it? then do it and quit crying about it. just fucking do something about it if you can. and if you can't then shut the fuck up about it already. don't be so hard on yourself. don't yell at yourself. don't say anything to yourself that you wouldn't say to vickie. to jenifer. that you wouldn't want them to say to you. be kind. share yourself. remember to breathe. look into that yoga thing. that's what you should spend your money on before therapy. help yourself. grow yourself. try it on your own. if you need guidance it's ok, just try it on your own. be kind, be kind. trust yourself, your intuition. you've never been wrong when you listen to yourself. and the battle wages on inside my mind. toy soldiers. i hate that song. will i ever be able to end the war? happy thoughts. find your happy place. find a happy place even if it isn't yours. eat breakfast. stretch. love yourself. listen to more music. go to the bowl. take someone. enjoy their company. take care of your cats. life is good. hard but good. why me? why do i have to deal with all of this? because the strong ones are the only ones who can get through this crap. i am one of the strong ones. accept that. struggle struggle why must everything be a struggle? right now. just right now it's a struggle. don't generalize everything. ha. everything. be real. where are you? what makes you? what breaks you? separate. divide and conquer. know what your battle is before fighting it. breathe. why is it so hard to remember to breathe?

Three weeks after that entry I had a nervous breakdown:

july 18, 2005

…bad breakfast. after driving around for 30 minutes trying to find a place that was open. driving around after our hard-to-find bad breakfast and terrible waitress. trying to find a quiet place to be leisurely while waiting for the dealership to call back saying her car was ready. already feeling angsty, ready for a fight. palms clammy, heart pounding, mind racing, looking for something to grab onto, something to lash out at. slowly turning around a corner to a side street, contemplating whether or not this was the right place. slowly, a look to the right. an impatient SUV behind me honking and speeding around me. me speeding up trying to not let him pass and screaming out the window: "FUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOUUUUU!!" [______] looked at me. astonished. scared. calmly, quietly she reached for the wheel and said "baby, pull over." i did. without turning the car off, head in my hands, sobbing. tears streaming down my face, unable to control themselves. audible sobbing. first time in over a year allowing myself to cry like this. first time in almost 10 years allowing myself to be this way in plain view of a civilian. it's been like a military operation, this crying business. i sat and sobbed for what seemed like an eternity…

I had just learned that my father's liver was giving him some problems. His skin was jaundiced and he was lethargic from morning to night. He spent two weeks in the hospital, and still the doctors had no answers. My grandfather fell while vacationing in Florida and landed himself in the hospital. He waited 9 days to call and tell anyone what happened. His body was finally giving out from a 30-year battle with Scleroderma. When he returned home I was expected to take care of him. In the house my grandmother died in. The house I found my grandmother dead in. I was working 60-hour weeks at my job and volunteering 20-hour weeks to Outfest. My relationship was falling apart and I wanted to be blind to it. This outburst, this breakdown made tunnel vision impossible. 

Sometimes listening to your gut—your self—is harder than it sounds. I've not since had a similar episode. I could tell you it's because I've worked hard at being more balanced and more in tune with myself. I just don't know if that's true. If I ever figure out what I'm doing/have done right about this, I'll let you know. 

Excerpt: Away From It All

From 7 Days: 

Journal Entry: December 28, 2005 

Phone therapy session with [Dana] this morning. I can't even remember what we talked about. Dad. Hospice. [Edward]. Don't even think [Edward] knows my father's terminal. So now I have to tell him. I don't even know if I should. Not really my place. Guess if I can sign DNR forms and decide when to pull the plug, I can't tell [Edward] why my father won't be paying rent anymore. DNR. Is this for real? Consent forms signed. Power of Attorney. Hospice intake. Something about a nurse coming daily to wash him. Didn't look too thrilled about that. Is it wrong that I want him to die? It's not for me, it's for him. And still, it's for me. I don't know how much longer I can take this. I don't know how much longer I can see him like this. In this defeat, in this constant state of weakness, of not being able to tie his own shoe without getting short of breath. I just don't think I'm cut out for all this pain. Again. And God, I know it's not about me, I know, I know. But still. That's my argument. Make it stop, God, for both of us. I just can't take it anymore.

Shortly after this therapy session and journal entry, [Reese] and I went for a walk in the woods behind her parents' house. Out the back door, we walked past the swimming pool and up the rolling hill that [Reese] had grown up playing on. Past the garden on the left, we walked towards the top of the hill on the right, where a small trail began. The path led in several directions: up this hill, down that one, around another. It was wide enough for a horse and buggy in some places, and narrowed down to just enough space for a small child to squeeze either through or under the brush and branches. Downpours during the week prior left most of the trees waterlogged and damaged, and in some areas the branches drooped so low they bent and were broken beyond repair.

There were wet fall leaves in the trees—brown and orange and yellow, even some purple (although [Reese] swears I was just seeing things that day). Green bushes, dense and full of plump red berries, lined our paths most of the way. Squirrels, lizards, and the likes, hidden in the bushes scampered away from our footsteps as we passed, while birds above flew from this tree to that, seeming to enjoy the crisp afternoon air and the fact that it wasn’t raining. (Why do I assume animals experience our emotions?)

[Reese] and I didn’t talk much. I kept my head down and hardly said a word. Thoughts of my session with [Dana] earlier in the morning, along with my father sitting at home waiting for his new hospice care nurse, swirled in my head and led me down roads of “What If” that I didn’t care to venture down.

What if I can't handle this? What if I need [Dana] and she doesn’t get my message? What if there’s another storm and I can’t get out of here? What if I can’t get home for weeks? What if my father has fallen? What if he dies and I’m not with him? What if I never see him alive again? What if he doesn’t know I love him?

I heard [Reese] talking at least twice, and even though I wanted to respond, I found neither the words nor the will to speak. I pretended not to hear her, and fell behind—far enough that I couldn’t hear her speak, but close enough that she wouldn’t slow down for me. I knew the trees, the bushes, the dirt, the entirety of the nature that surrounded us was her home. I would not allow myself to disturb her home with my depression.

It's still strange to go back to that day and know it was real; it seemed so surreal at the time. I was hundreds of miles north of my ailing father, and feared I was trying to escape the inevitable. What I found was the strength I would need to get through my father's immanent death. 

Less Than A Week

I keep thinking about Prop 8. And everything it stands for. And everyone it lets down. It's impossible to me that there are people who still believe in the idea that one type, one kind, one way of thinking, of life is right. And yet, the fact that the Proposition even exists is proof of that. 

A friend of mine has been working on a beautiful love story almost since I've known her. And this love story allows her and her business partner to show us (the choir and all others), one more reason Prop 8 is out of line. The documentary is not yet complete, but you can go to www.OrinBernardoMovie.com to see what it's all about.

As much as I believe we should all be able to be ourselves, to love whomever we choose (which, contrary to popular deluded belief, will not lead to underage children, multiple partners, or goats), and to have the right to marry that person, this is not a matter of simply being who we are, it's a matter of the right to be who we are. The God-given right, if you will. Or more appropriately, the civil liberty. 

Remember that line in the declaration of independence? ...all men are created equal... (I'm sure they meant women, too, right?) Did they mean just white men? Did they mean just Republican men? Just conservative men? Just straight men? If you're looking for translation to "all men", it means ALL men (and since the 1920's, women). All of us. The white ones, the black ones, the mixed ones, the pure bred ones, the women ones, the rich ones, the poor ones, the Independent ones, the Libertarian ones, the Christian ones, the Jewish ones, the Buddhist ones, the smart ones, the handicap ones, the illiterate ones, the graduated ones, the gay ones, the straight ones, the blind ones, the deaf ones, the autistic ones, the patriotic ones, the politically savvy ones, the native ones, the transplant ones, the short ones, the really, really short ones, the overweight ones, the alcoholic ones, the drug addict ones, the hard working blue collar ones, the corporate America ones, the honest ones, the loyal ones, the ones who love pets, the ones who want kids but can't have them, the ones with high school diplomas, the ones who go to work every day and do jobs others don't want to, the left handed ones, the little league playing ones, the hockey playing ones, the football playing ones, the baseball playing ones, the tax paying ones, the melting pot ones...you know...the American ones. 

We're all people. And we all deserve the same rights. The same civil rights. This is not question of morality, it's a question of equality. I'm no Martin Luther King, but I have dreams of my own. That one day I will not be judged by the person I love, but by the content of my character. I'm not suggesting that the brutality against blacks through the '60's (and still to this day, in some places) is the same, but there are certainly parallels. Parallels of inequality (Prop 8), of oppression (Prop 8), of segregation (gay schools are a nice idea...), of hate crimes; these all lead to the truth that the LGBT community is not treated the same as those outside that group. Isn't that discrimination?

Personally, I'm not ready to get married. It doesn't mean that I don't want to, or that I won't. It doesn't mean that I want others who are ready to lose the right. I don't want ANY of us to lose the right on November 4th. It's just civil, equal rights.

Forgiveness

I found some notes from conversation I had with a friend a while back:

forgiveness

baggage

anger

toxic

In short, forgiveness becomes a tool with which we expunge baggage of toxic anger. 

Here's my experience:

The anger I held on to for years kept me captive in my sixteen-year old body where bad things happened. Every day that I woke up angry was a day that I woke up reliving my mother’s death. The anger was a toxin that kept me in a state of non-growth. It’s not that anger is bad, that we shouldn’t feel anger. It’s that the anger needs to pass. Emotions are to humans what oil is to engines. We need emotion to run properly. And we need to process that emotion, like we process and change our oil. If we leave the angry oil in our system it flows through our veins and taints everything we touch: every relationship, friendship, acquaintance, job, stranger, animal we come into contact with.

When I hold on to the negative energy of toxic anger, it becomes a part of who I am because I don’t have room to replace it with forgiveness, with understanding, with love. And without love, I cannot exist. It’s what I'm made of; it's what we are made of. And what we’re made for. 

To hear me tell the story of my mother’s death when I was sixteen was to hear a biased daughter whose mother was "murdered" tell her story. When I was sixteen, Steven meant to kill my mother. He planned it and he carried it out and he was evil for having done so. He was the only one to blame. And this was how I lived.

When I was twenty-two, Steven may not have set out to kill my mother. There was a struggle, he was involved, and my mother was dead as a result. Sure, my mom might have pulled the gun on him, but I knew in my heart that my mother would never pull a gun unless herself or her family was in danger. I had begun to settle and see that my oil might need changing.

At twenty-seven I had yet another story to tell. I could acknowledge that there was gun powder on both of their hands. There’s no way to tell what really happened. It’s true my mother was protective of both Michael and I, and that she said on more that one occasion that she would lay down and die for me. But my mother was also a manipulative woman. I honestly don’t know what happened in that room, aside from the fact that there were four shots fired and two of them hit my mother. And those two shots killed her. As for Steven’s part in it, there was gun powder on his hands. But that doesn’t mean he took aim and shot my mother in cold blood. It just means that he was there and that the gun was in close proximity to his hands when the shots were fired. There is no blame, this is just all I know. New oils, new filters were on the shelves in front of me.

At thirty-three, my story is that my mom was killed when I was sixteen. End of story. That old, angry, toxic oil is being recycled and put to good use.

When my father was in the hospital during his last days, I went to lunch with his best friend and her husband. Jon asked me why I used the word killed rather than murdered when I talked about my mother's death. There was a struggle and who knows what happened. I wasn’t there. Murder is a strong word. Murder implies deliberate. Murder, when not prefaced with 2nd or 3rd degree, implies first degree. Implies intent. Implies cold blood. Implies planned and executed. I may not know (may never know) the details of the night my mother was killed, but I do know that it was not murder.

Seeing it this way helped me let go of the anger. Helped me forgive Steven. The forgiveness helped me move on. The forgiveness freed me from my sixteen-year-old angry self. The forgiveness allowed me to live in a world where I do not carry seventeen years of toxic, angry baggage, and to live in a world where I am simply thirty-three and my mother died seventeen years ago.

Forgiveness wasn't just seeing it as death versus murder, but that I was seeing reality versus what happened in my dreams and nightmares in the days, the months, the years after her death. Forgiveness was also seeing that my mother's death was beyond my control. That the anger stirring in my soul was no longer productive, but blind. Blind emotion, in any form, is irresponsible and can be destructive. In order to see the world in reality, I had to let go. I had to stop feeling angry and resentful about something I had no control over. I had to forgive. Had my mother's death actually been murder, I might have needed a different route to forgiveness. But I would've needed a route to forgiveness, just the same. I am not here to judge (or be judged by) anyone for anything. I am here to love. 

The difficulty in forgiving, for me, was in the idea that it meant saying, “It’s okay, [whatever you did to me].” Forgive, defined by the Oxford Dictionary of Current English means to: “stop feeling angry or resentful towards someone for an offence or mistake; no longer feel angry about or wish to punish an offence or mistake.”

I always thought that to forgive someone, it meant that I had to tell them that it’s okay: “What you did to me doesn’t matter. And it’s okay that you did it to me. And I forgive you.”

Somehow we have to get to a place where we understand the difference between forgiveness and saying “it’s okay”. “It’s okay,” means that…well, you need to define what that means for you. For me, it means no big deal, whatever happened is in the past and it’s not going to cross my mind beyond this moment. “I forgive you,” means I’m going to process what just happened. I'm going to learn from it. And then I'm going to let go of it, regardless of the intentions of and/or response from the party I'm forgiving. 

It means: what [you] did, intentional or not, affected me in such a way that I will think about it beyond this moment. And that [your] actions caused emotion in me. And those emotions have brought me to a place where I am ready to let go of [your] action(s). And I am ready to acknowledge what happened and move forward, taking with me a learning experience. 

And it means that I have created more space for love and peace in my life by doing so.

Power

I keep listening to the sounds of my day. They keep passing me by like they're not here, like I’m not here. And then all of a sudden it's yesterday and you're here and I can't find you but I know you're there. I can smell you. Taste you. Feel you. And yet you elude me still. And here I am back in today where you're not here. No smell. No touch. No taste. Nothing. Your pain lingers in my soul. Bits of your past seep into my every day and stay there, sneak out for air, for fuel and creep back just as I notice they're gone. 

The pain you bring is real, is tangible, cuts into my spirit more than my flesh, bleeds from my soul more than my veins. 

I see your name, I hear your voice. I hear your voice, I see your face. I see your face, I feel your touch. I feel your touch, I die inside. And all at once I’m left with nothing. The nothing you give me, again and again.

~From some time in 2004. I might have titled it "You Can't Hurt Me Anymore". I don't recall what or who I was writing about, specifically, but when I reread it this morning, it took me back through all of those emotions. I am in constant awe of the power of words and their effects on our emotions, even out of context, even years removed. 

Excerpt: Watching Him Go

From 7 Days:

The hardest thing about my father's death wasn't getting up every day. It wasn't going to work, it wasn't eating, it wasn't holding myself together.

The hardest thing about my father's death was watching it happen. Knowing there was nothing I could do. Seeing him lie in his hospital bed, praying for it to either be over or to be healed, and hoping God made a decision quickly.

Since my childhood home, I’ve not lived in one place for more than three years. And at some point it became no longer appropriate to ask friends to help me move in exchange for pizza and beer. I've reached the point where moving time requires hiring movers. But the days when movers were not necessary and it was easy to find a few friends to help with the heavy stuff, it was also easy to find my father helping with the heavy stuff.

My father was one of the strongest men I’d known in real life. He wasn't a body builder. He didn't lift weights. He wasn't bulky with giant pecks or bulging biceps. But he was strong. I remember seeing my father could carry a solid oak door from his truck on the street to the front of a house like it was a tin can on his shoulder. Day in and day out he carried Skilsaws and grinders and sanders and paint cans and tool belts and 2x4's and 4x4's and miter saws and table saws and toolboxes full of nails and screwdrivers and screws and wrenches and hammers.

These are things that, done once or twice or even for a week at a time, seem like not a big deal. My father did this every day, save some Sundays along the way. For thirty years.

And then his body started to give out. His knees went first. If knee surgery didn't take weeks to recover from, he might have had it. But he didn't. He just waited to feel good enough to start working again and went back about his business. His back got tight. His joints became the antithesis of free swaying. And still, my father went on with his days, knowing that these were just the signs of growing older.

I could handle the graying hair, the weakened knees, the fact that he could no longer pick up solid oak doors and haul them around like tin cans. All that seemed to happen gradually. But seeing him lie in his hospital bed, unable to get up without pushing the button that raised his head for him was all too abrupt.

My father went from aging like a 55-year-old to aging like an 87-year-old in the span of two months.