part 44

I had gotten used to the flashbacks. Having them was like non-stop peek-a-boo with a big bowl of horror, but I had become so familiar with the process, I was very rarely startled or shocked anymore. It makes me sad and glad to think of how well I had gotten at managing my own mind and its potential to run me over at any given time. Glad because it was manageable, sad because of what there was to manage in the first place.

Now that my dad is dead, and I am feeling sooooo much safer, the flash backs have really decreased in frequency and intensity. Instead, I am now just remembering things. Instead of “HEY! LOOK OVER HERE! A MIND PICTURE OF SOMETHING HORRIFIC!” I am getting full-on memories.

Entire scenes and voices and noises and smells and feelings. Horrible, horrible things. But now instead of plucking a little note in my brain for me to obsess over, the whole song is simply there.

Instead of getting hit with a drop of rain out of nowhere, I’m swimming in a lake full of rain drops.

It is really quite an odd sensation.

I’ve been consciously and subconsciously fighting my awareness of these events and feelings all of my life. I was terrified when I first started remembering them, and I stayed terrified for years. But terrified and I got well acquainted, and even though I really don’t like the little bastard, I could accept that he was there in my life.

The terror is missing now. It is weird that I would write that the terror is “missing” as though it were something for which I feel a loss at no longer having. I guess I do feel that way, but the thing that I lost was so heavy around my heart and my brain and my body, and so painful, that losing it was liberating and thrilling instead of devastating.

I don’t miss my dad. Before he died, I would try to imagine what it would feel like if he was dead. Now he is dead and it has occurred to me to try imagining what it would feel like if he was alive again. I think I could imagine that pretty well, but imagining my imagining that is so close to absolute madness and sheer terror that I don’t even want to approach it.

And I don’t have to.

There it is again – the feeling of loss transforming into relief.

Once on TV, I saw a weather man demonstrate how cold it was by taking a cup of water and tossing the water out of the cup toward the camera. The water froze so immediately in the cold air, it was like a magic trick, like there had been little slivers of ice in that cup the whole time. The camera did not get wet. (It made me think for a moment that I might want to be somewhere cold enough to see that happen in real life, but then I remembered that I don’t think I would ever like to be anywhere that cold ever.)

Anyway, that is what the loss feels like. It is the water in the cup, and I am anticipating being soaked, but it doesn’t happen because it has almost immediately become relief in the form of tiny pieces of ice. It feels much more like a very few grains of sand brushing my face and my body in a soft breeze.

Like when I’m at the beach, at the end of the day when the sun is beginning to set and the heat first breaks, but before I start gathering my towel and book and chair and stuff to go back inside. The soft breeze begins to hit me, and it has picked up just enough sand to hit me along with it that I am physically aware of the sand and the breeze – but only just enough for me to be aware that it is there and to know that it is real.

I put my hands on my hips and look at the sun going down, and then out at the ceaseless water, and close my eyes and breathe in a huge breath and let it out and open my eyes again. It is a moment of perfection, where all of my senses are soothed simultaneously. I can inhale and allow the greatness of life’s beauty in for just a few seconds, to appreciate it is there and to gain strength from it, and then I can exhale and go about my business again before the past and future have a chance to run me over.

Wow. I am full of analogies today.

It has just occurred to me that I interpret my own feelings through these analogies. I thought maybe I used them so other people might get a hint of what I am feeling, but I use them for myself all the time. They take the big feelings and assign them to something I can see in my mind. I guess being able to identify the feelings with a concrete image (oxymoron?) makes it easier to process.

“Process” is a good word. I feel like I have genuinely “processed” “trauma.” It’s like one of my first therapists described, that processing trauma takes an experience that is completely intrusive and overwhelming and terrifying, and turns it into just something really shitty that happened in the past.

I feel really good about where I am right now. I am sad about where I was in the past. I don’t know where I will be in the future. Somehow the serenity of the present and the grief of the past and the anxiety of the future have all balanced each other out and it just feels peaceful.

The only intrusive thoughts I have had over the past couple of days are ones concerning whether or not Lindsey Lohan will become a convicted jewel thief. The only reason they feel intrusive is because I would prefer to just not give a shit.

My current internal struggle is over whether or not I give a shit about Lindsey Lohan. I mean, I do, but I don’t want to – that could be an entire blog subject all on its own.

But the point is, that is where my worrying and my anxiety are pointed right now. At Hollywood gossip. At something so incredibly inconsequential to me that worrying and being anxious feel nothing more than silly. Silly is nice.