Hard Stops...

I have been up since 1:30 am.  I mean, I went to bed at like 7, after sleeping on the couch for 2 hours.  Yes, I am still spent.  Tired in a way that I do not think I have experienced before.  Kinda like first trimester tired,  I mean there is a good reason, but it isn’t really completely palpable yet.

I know it is grief.  I know yesterday, I sat down, just for a second and that was the end of my day.  I had lots of things that I needed to do:  laundry, fold laundry, put away laundry.  No one tells you that putting away laundry will become a skill you lose over time.  I have NEVER not put away my laundry but now find it so distasteful that I put it off for so long that it is becoming hard to distinguish what is clean and what is not.

I am sure I have never been this person before.  I always did what I was supposed to, what was expected.  I cleaned the things, I showed up where I was supposed to, I did the stuff, worked hard and now I feel tired in a way that I cannot quite explain.  I am not not just tired, I am weary.  Life is taking from me in a way that I haven’t experienced before and for the first time since getting sober, I find myself faltering in ways that scare me.

It feels like my tight grip on life and living is slipping.  The things that have been historically important, are not so much anymore.  I do not really care about the things that I used to: social life, work, accumulating.  And then there are things that matter so much more to me now:  family, friends, recovery, writing.  I can feel the resifting, the restructuring of my life.  And it honestly terrifies me.   Who shall I become if I am not who I have always been?

And even that is a lie, a fiction.  I have not always been the same person.  I have been many different people, that have done the same things...but now those same things hold little value to me.  Hold the luster and appeal they once did.  I have so little time for bullshit.  And find myself buoyed by things that are simple, authentic and peace producing.

It isn’t that I haven’t hit walls before.  I have hit many.  I just do not think I have hit any quite like this one.  I feel like I am in free fall but I know it is just grief.  Everything is being reordered and reassigned importance and value.  This is just what happens when there is a sudden void in the fabric of your life.  This isn’t happening just to me, but to all who lose someone vital and important to their existence.

I know I will get through this.  I know I will prevail and move forward.  I just do not know in what way and manner.  I do not know what life without my dad looks like, I mean how could I?

I am dreading tomorrow.  I know that it is all divine timing, but it feels too soon in some ways and too final.  I know that the memorial service is not final, instead a gate in which all must pass through.  But as someone who avoids strong emotions and frothy emotional appeals, delivering my father’s eulogy tomorrow seems impossible to me today.  How can I do this? How can I stand up there and say what I want to say?  And at the very same time, how can I cannot?

It is now 3:49 am.  And I am doubting all of my choices.  All of them.  I have revised and reviewed my remarks.  I have read them aloud and timed them to make sure I am not going on and on. I have reviewed his slideshow and attempted to perfect it and finally landed on “it is what it is.”

I have a bottom lip that is aching with fever blisters from the stress of the past month.  And that makes me tired and vain. I have kittens purring and now fighting on my lap which is both endearing and making it very hard to write.

Meditation is 2 hours away and I have a long day ahead of me but sleep is something that evades me.  Too much on my mind.  And I have the insurance adjuster coming to see the roof and tree thing today at 11.  Along with a couple of doctor’s appointments.  And I want to do none of it.  In fact, I can’t even tell you what I do feel like doing.  I have nothing right now.  I can’t even say that I want sleep because that feels like wasted time as well.

I think we all reach this place in life, many times.  Where we are being compelled forward, through hard things and there is this moment, this acute moment where our resolve to mitigate and pass through falters.  And it falters in a way and manner that we are not sure how and what might happen next.  We doubt, to the very core of our being, our wherewithal to persevere.

My past indicates that I will rise to the challenge of the day, of my current life, and do the next indicated thing.  But fear reports that perhaps, I shall not.  Perhaps I shall fling myself off an emotional cliff to my own demise.  It feels precarious.  But I have been here before, perched on the edge of my own emotional wellbeing.  Unsure if I have what it takes to move past the current ordeal.  But I have always walked myself back from the cliff’s edge, or found a way to survive the fall.  And I know, this time shall not be any different.  How I do anything, is how I do everything.

The laundry will be done, and folded and put away.  I shall deliver my dad’s eulogy and be honored to do so.  I will greet the guests and thank them for their love and support.  I shall attempt to do all of this with grace and dignity and an eye towards self care and understanding.

I haven’t ever lost my father before.  I am in uncharted waters, but I have skills to navigate what comes, it is just the application of those skills that is new.  I need not fret about being caught short handed, I have the skills, the challenge comes in its new application and my failing interest in some key areas of my own life.

I have completed the inventory.  I know what I value and what I do not.  I know what I want and what I am willing to release.  Now, if I can just muster the courage to move in that direction, I will be ok.  I will grow through this hard stop.  Just not yet, not today, this is a process that takes more time...and patience and compassion are not just nice sounding platitudes, they are but essential.

Again, still...