The Story of Where I Am.....Part 1

Sometimes I hear a sound, or see something that sparks a memory from the past.  This morning I ended up getting out of bed a little early because my dad was here. He and his girlfriend spent the night so he could be at the hospital today.  Anyway, they headed to the docs and I thought about going back to bed but instead sat on the couch and flipped channels and then turned that off.  Thought a bit, got bored, turned the tv back on and got hit with a good dose of reality, and turned it back off.  Ten seconds of a show and I end up crying into my pillow, funny how that works huh? The best part about it was that it was over something that happened three years ago, or not so much an event, but a person.  At that moment I realized that what I've been thinking for the past few weeks about being comfortably numb, was entirely wrong.  Not that it was ever that comfortable anyway.

I guess I could relate the last month…in brief of course, I'm not a novelist.  My mom called me one day, which funny how I always remember dates, but I don't remember that one or any of them for that matter in the last month.  Anywho, if you know me and my mom, we don't talk that much so it was kind of a surprise to hear her on the phone going, I'm in ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Missoula, lets do lunch.  Great, lunch with my mom right? So I went to the Ho Hut and met her and the boyfriend for lunch.  Here's the kicker, after awkward small talk, since I hold grudges and can't forgive, she decides it's a good time to tell me she's got a lump on her thyroid and that they don't know what it is, and she's going in for surgery.  So I'm thinking great, a possible future ailment for me, seeing as how I got just about every gene in me from her.  I wasn't sure how to respond to it, I had a sick feeling in my stomach, but that was kinda second nature for the moment seeing as how I'd had one all week. Overall I didn't really have a reaction and we ended lunch shortly thereafter and I went home wondering what the hell was going on in my life.  Now looking back I realize that where I thought I maintained a stoic persona about it, I reached out to several people, and being the fabulous people they are, they held me up.  So exit mom, and enter dad…He'd been having pain in his legs since around the first of the year and didn't know why. Going to the stupidest doctor in the country didn't help either.  Me being the wonderfully naïve person that I am, didn't really go see him or anyone in Anaconda for that matter much at all for the first part of the year and kind of blew off that he was telling me he was in pain.  Finally I made a little trip with a friend to go see him, and even then, I still didn't realize anything was truly wrong.  Looking back I feel insanely guilty for being so selfish.  I know the reason I was there, as do a few others and I know I pretend not to regret too many things, I regret about 90% of my life.  So back to April and all, I get a call from my Aunt Mary who asks me if I know what's going on with my dad, and I gave her the story that I knew about it all involving the teeth and stuff.  She proceeded to take me and throw me on the floor and kick my head metaphorically of course.  I had no idea what was actually going on in my dads life.  So we proceeded to rally the troops, which was funny cuz I have the most functional dysfunctional family in the world, and got the ball rolling to get something figured out.  So blah blah blah, medical tests, blah blah blah, still nothing.  Finally my aunt calls me and says we'll be over in the morning to go to the ER at St Pats, and that I had to be there.  This is of course during finals week (did I mention that bad stuff always happens during finals week?) so I spent the weekend in a hospital room with my dad.  And I do have to admit that my dad was in pretty good spirits during the entire situation.  Then the night comes that we're sitting there talking about what was going on, and the nice nurse Laree came in to adjust his IV.  Yakkity yak with the nurse, she slips into the conversation so nonchalantly that my dad has cancer.  Yeah the big C word, drop smiles, I almost fell off the window ledge, and my dads face literally broke my heart.  In 25 years, I have never really seen my dad sick, seeing him laying in a hospital bed was already bad enough, hearing the word cancer crushed me.  Enter me though, I maintained face, asked the nurse a few questions and managed to get out of the room without showing any emotions.  I am of course supposed to be the level headed one in the family, little do they know.  So I get to make phone calls and break news.  Leaving the hospital I went to the one person I wanted to talk to, got my faults slammed into my face, and went home.  Today my dad is at his chemo session.

So now enter me, and I'll be the one trying to show humility, practice a little apathy, throwing in some empathy, and overall, just trying to maintain sanity.  That's a lot of y's.  I still don't know where I am, what I'm doing or how I'm going to handle the situations.  I guess baby steps are the way to go but I still manage to trip and  with those. The main things in my emotional repertoire right now are in this order: Dad, Mom, School, Work, Me, and finally my relationships with a few people.  I'm not sure if those are prioritized wrong, but I do know that is the order I think of them in. 

Dad: I worry, I really do about him, then I get angry with him, then I get over it, and then I get angry again, then I admire him, then I wonder where the hell we went wrong, then I think I should tell him some things about me, then I end up lying again, or still depending on how you want to look at it. 

Mom: Yet again, I worry, and then I get really really angry, then I get homesick, then I think about the way it used to be, and how much I relied on her, then I think about how it is today and I get mad at myself and I want to change it, then I call her, and I get mad again, at myself, because I can't breakdown the walls in my head.

Summing up Mom and Dad: I love them, I really wish I could show them that, but I can't, I don't know how anymore.

School: For the first time in my life I failed something, I suppose that's a pretty good track record seeing as how I'm 25, and I am speaking academically here.  Although as arrogant as it sounds I can't think of anything I have outwardly failed at.  In my mind, that list could compose a novel.  But yeah, I failed, saved face in my two important classes, but still FAILED.  I'm gonna go ahead and drill that into myself.  I'm not sure where I'm going to go from here, whether I'll do summer school or not, etc etc.

Work: Yet again, I feel so guilty for leaving the Depot the way I did, but at the same time I am so glad I did.  I have never had a job where I hated the company until that one, and sad to say  I let it show in my actions.  I never applied myself to the place, I never really put any foot forward, granted I wasn't as worthless as some of the people there (ie, Douchbag Dan, and Dickhead Taylor), but I still never did anything to make myself or anyone else proud.  I know that I have a good work ethic, and I know that I am intelligent, and I know that I could have succeeded there, but I didn't want to.  I'm sure I'm being criticized for some things, and to an extent I suppose I deserve it.  Oh well, it's over, I can't change the past, so I'll look forward to my future at my new job.  Which by the way I am super excited about, and it blows the Depot completely out of the water. 

Me: I suppose I should have prioritized myself as number one, but I couldn't do it, I don't give myself that much thought, except when I'm angry with myself.  I don't know how to put it, I could say I let myself down, but that wouldn't be entirely accurate, I could say that I failed myself completely, but once again, not accurate.  Mainly I wish I could just be me, have people accept me for it, and exist.  But here lies the selfish part, I can't be me, I can't stop lying about some things, I justify it by thinking that I would end up hurting someone I love, but in return just end up killing myself a little bit with each word.  Fun stuff eh?

Relationships: First and foremost, I am going to say thank you to a couple of people, Sarah Lueck, Chrissy Marchion, Mikey Beasley, Mandy Guhlke, Nicky, Jeff, Kari, Jaimie, Shane: you all rock my world, and I am so glad you guys have stuck beside me, or at least stayed in the general vicinity…I wish every day, that I could spend more time with all of my friends, and then I feel guilty because some of them give me more support than I deserve. 

.......to be continued