Have you ever had a moment where you just needed to cry? Not wanted to, not forced to because of circumstances but needed to because things were broken. Perhaps you were broken and tears were the only way to start healing. I’ve talked about this before with people I’m teaching. When you’ve been logical or preoccupied or just holding it together because you didn’t have the support you needed to properly fall apart then sometimes you don’t ge the opportunity to cry until much much later. I remember feeling that way after my father died. I cried that night but after that there was little time or opportunity to do so. I had to figure out how to pay bills, arrange his funeral, let his craptacular family know, take care of his ex-wife and most importantly my younger brother. Life sucked and as much as it sucked there was no space for me to really sit down and cry. I didn’t do that until much later when my furniture didn’t show up as planned after I moved. Then I sobbed like a big stupid baby. But over the years I have had moments where I felt like I was back in the exact same place.
The most recent of which came well before what should be my annual funk time. Dad’s death, burial, birthday and Father’s Day all come within a one month period. It’s touch and go every year whether it will suck to high hell or if it will just be another day without him. I don’t know that this year stood a fighting chance because after I got back from Amsterdam I shut down. I had a good time and was probably high as a kite at least a few times before I boarded the plane home. I slept and cried a bit there but as I had to process a lot of information from that eight day excursion emotionally I checked out. I don’t think I realized how badly I had checked out until the last few days. Music is always my salve. It allows me to find peace again. To sync back into the rest of the universe. To smile, to scream and yes to cry. And I haven’t done that with music in a long time. I enjoyed things that didn’t require my input or that allowed me to sink further into oblivion but the sheer joy and fleeting pain of music hasn’t been my companion as I sort some things out.
Truth of the matter is I broke into a few nebulous pieces after I got back. I’m not sure what I was envisioning for the trip emotionally but I let greatly disappointed in myself for thinking it would work out that way. Neither of my partners did anything remotely damaging but I fell asleep feeling like girls do when they realize their knight in shining armor got lost and shot the horse for food. I may have needed to take a few days solo but I went right back to work after the trip so there was no time to full debrief on my own. Side note I know better than that really. I need to have days to decompress after big trips and I never give myself time to that at all. Being away from the States is so thrilling and being back in the grind just saps part of the joy of the trip out of you entirely. Okay moving on. I did a stupid thing and it just brought into focus a lot of different things about myself and what I want ultimately.
I want to be silly and have fun and talk about serious things when they matter and support the people I care about and be around people who seem to share similar values. I want to try new things, go new places, and periodically crawl into an oversized bed with someone special and watch dumb movies or tennis or argue about why Star Wars and Star Trek shouldn’t remotely be seen as equal because really if you don’t have Jean Luc Picard you kind of suck. I also realized that I still don’t want to get married and the more I have to deal with mom the more the thought of being more than the designated aunt freaks me the fuck out. I’m not even sure if I want stepmom duties anymore. Shit kids are tiresome. Funny but tiresome. Anyhoo, as I have let music back in I feel more like myself. I’m not sure what that means for my life at the moment cause being on autopilot prevents fights cause I just don’t engage. Or maybe being all of me again will prevent then cause I’ll be able to use my big girl voice again. We’ll see.
God, I am so sorry. I definitely understand the feel. My dad's Birthday was April 30th, then there's Father's Day, and the anniversary of his death on July 10, this Monday. It's a 2.5 months of sad for me.
I hope time heals you.
Hope you get a break soon too. It's been long enough since dad passed that I shouldn't be surprised but it shocks me that some years are worst than others.