Going to bang this post out quick because guess what? Life hasn’t stopped. In fact, life on the outside is totally the same. My dad and I were estranged, so I wouldn’t see him or talk to him anyway. On the very rare occasion that he did call, I would seize up in fear, breathe, pray, and (most recently) pick up the phone. But the day-to-day of my life is same old, same old.
I had several days last week where I soared through. This might be another post, but I started a Whole30 on Oct. 1 because I felt like I just couldn’t handle the bad feelings around my eating in addition to my father’s death. For the first time in my life, I consciously chose to attempt to control my food because everything else felt pretty out of control. If I could just have peace in this one area of pain…
And here’s my experience. I stayed high on my diet and the feeling of goodness for being able to stay on a food plan for little over a week before the “off” feeling began to creep in. A couple days ago daily tasks got hard again. I started to feel rageful whenever a family member reached out to talk about memorial planning or really say anything. I don’t want to have to think about any of them because that means I have to think about the suicide. I feel like I fare much better when I’m pretending that none of this happened or filing it away behind a cinder block wall in my brain. Denial, right?
The good news is that I must be exactly where I’m supposed to be. In the initial aftermath, everything felt super fucking real. Now the shock has worn off and it seems like this will be the slogging through.
Yesterday I struggled with the eating. Nothing “abstinent” tasted good. I spent a good amount of time fantasizing about all the things I might specifically eat in the future (just not today). I had an out-of-focus, off-in-the-distance thought of a drink. Didn’t I use to drink Manhattans? I wonder what wine tastes like now. I went to a meeting.
I’d like to check out and be somewhere other than here. Disney World would be nice. But life hasn’t stopped. I have lunches to pack. I mistakenly volunteered to manage the school’s yearbook. We screwed up our taxes and now there’s financial mess to wade through… I might need to get a job. I have ballet and hip-hop classes to watch. I have a memorial to plan.