I Was Afraid This Would Happen
Jun. 12th, 2023 07:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
howdidufindmehereI was definitely worried when I started up this journal that I would suddenly find myself overwhelmed with all the stuff I do and then abandon the journal. So - I don't consider myself having abandoned it since I have been thinking about it a lot in all kinds of odd moments when I was not in a position to type up an entry. Life has been full for a lot of reasons of late. I'm about to enumerate then, but I am putting it all behind a cut because:
A. This is probably gonna be long
and
B. Trigger warning/Content warning: Discussion of loss of family member to suicide
This is what I really miss from the old days of Live Journal. A safe space to talk about stuff I don't feel so safe discussing in a lot of other places. Sooooo......
The semester ended over a month ago, and I was so very glad and sad at the same time. Teaching at this new university has made a huge difference in my attitude towards teaching, and specifically has renewed my love of teaching. After 18 years at the last place, my nerves were frayed from backstabbing politics and students who were not really prepared for college. My last two years there saw an increase in really bad classroom behavior, and I felt completely unsupported by the university administration. Leaving was the best thing I ever did. Its so amazingly refreshing to be surrounded by students who really want to be in my classes and who want to do the work.
Having said that, the commute to the university is a drag, and it's nice to have a summer long break to relax and not be on the road so much. AND having said that...
I've been on the road somewhat doing a lot of vending of my art, books, and tarot decks at a variety of events, and that is a different kind of long haul. I'm enjoying being fully my authentic self however, and enjoying having stuff to sell that people like.
I believe I had just posted about my hip getting busted in my earlier posts. Thankfully, it seemed to get much better on its own, but I resolved my studio space dilemma and found a new place. I was in the full throes of moving into it when I learned that my step brother had suddenly died.
A and I did not grow up together. Our parents met each other much later in life. We actually didn't even know one another that well. My Dad was really lonely after my mom died, and he married A's mother R about two years after my mother had passed. He and I were both the youngest of three. He was a wee bit of an enigma to me: I got the impression that he was both a free spirit AND a bit of a rake. I know he broke quite a few young women's hearts, and apparently had gotten a young woman pregnant who made him sign away his parental rights. Years later, the daughter of that union contacted him because she wanted to know her father. Their reunion led to his reunion with her mother, they fell in love and got married. It was an amazing story and one that I thought was a very happy ending.
Before A's reunion with the woman who became his wife, my father had passed away. Andy's mom R was something of a bully, and a born again Christian who was pushy with her opinions, and wanted to control the relationship my siblings and I had with our father. We didn't like her. At my Dad's funeral the pastor talked for three hours about how we would never see our father in the afterlife unless we joined their particular brand of Christianity. In a word, it sucked. In spite of all that, however, R was also a nurse and loved my Dad and she took very good care of him in his last days, and bore the brunt of a lot of things so that we didn't have to. Basically, she was complicated, as was our relationship with her.
On one of my father's many visits to the hospital before he passed, R told me and my sister and my nephew that she did not believe in bipolar disorder. I felt at the time that not believing in bipolar disorder was akin to not believing in oxygen, or oceans, or other things that do most certainly exist. We have had a few family members on our side of the family who definitely suffered from various forms of mental illness, but then we were always taught to be polite so we all just nodded and listened.
I have no idea what she believes in now. My father had made my sister swear that she would not lose touch with R after he passed. but of course it was not an easy thing for us to do. I decided that I would at least be kind and remember her at holidays and her birthday because of what she had done for our father. I hadn't talked to her since shortly after the pandemic had begun when I got the news that A had died.
My sister now lives in Florida, so she obviously wasn't going to make it up to the funeral, but my brother F and I decided to attend. His daughter (who suffers from bipolar disorder) decided to come with me. The first person we saw was the wife of A's brother who grabbed me and hugged me really hard and said she was so glad we had come. I had assumed that A had died in a car accident. I'm not sure why, but that was the conclusion I had arrived at. D burst into tears when I tried to confirm that and told me what had happened. I felt so remarkably awful and sad. We all walked into the church (Catholic) together.
There was a long receiving line for the family. The first person I saw was R, and I felt nothing but compassion in the moment. I don't care who you are, burying a child has got to be the worst kind of pain imaginable. We hugged,. and she said, "Well, shit happens...." which is actually the kind of thing my Dad would have said. I wondered if she'd softened any of her beliefs, but who knows. We all hugged and I saw A's other two siblings.
A's sister delivered the eulogy, and it was really beautiful. She did not shy away from talking about his depression, which I thought was a very good and healthy thing, and she encouraged people to please talk about it and remove the stigma so people could get more help. there were so many people in that church - and they were only in a Catholic Church because one of A's childhood friends was a priest there. They needed to have it there because they had run out of space in the funeral home next door. I was impressed at the number of people who obviously deeply loved A, and I was angry at the brain weasels that made him think otherwise.
I think it has actually taken me this long to process all of my thoughts about this. Many other things have been going on in my life as well, but I think I just needed to really process this right now. I will of course write more later about the other stuff, but for now I will leave you all with this:
Time goes by faster as you get older - my mom had warned me about that one, and she was right. Stuff is going to happen that you won't see coming, and there's often no way to be ready for it. Be kind to yourself. Don't beat yourself up over what you could have, would have or should have done, because it's not constructive. What is constructive is to keep moving ahead, as much as you can. Try to be a bit kinder to both yourself and to others every day. If you really like doing something and you want to do it well, keep doing it and get better at it. And surround yourself with people who tell you they love you as often as possible.
A. This is probably gonna be long
and
B. Trigger warning/Content warning: Discussion of loss of family member to suicide
This is what I really miss from the old days of Live Journal. A safe space to talk about stuff I don't feel so safe discussing in a lot of other places. Sooooo......
The semester ended over a month ago, and I was so very glad and sad at the same time. Teaching at this new university has made a huge difference in my attitude towards teaching, and specifically has renewed my love of teaching. After 18 years at the last place, my nerves were frayed from backstabbing politics and students who were not really prepared for college. My last two years there saw an increase in really bad classroom behavior, and I felt completely unsupported by the university administration. Leaving was the best thing I ever did. Its so amazingly refreshing to be surrounded by students who really want to be in my classes and who want to do the work.
Having said that, the commute to the university is a drag, and it's nice to have a summer long break to relax and not be on the road so much. AND having said that...
I've been on the road somewhat doing a lot of vending of my art, books, and tarot decks at a variety of events, and that is a different kind of long haul. I'm enjoying being fully my authentic self however, and enjoying having stuff to sell that people like.
I believe I had just posted about my hip getting busted in my earlier posts. Thankfully, it seemed to get much better on its own, but I resolved my studio space dilemma and found a new place. I was in the full throes of moving into it when I learned that my step brother had suddenly died.
A and I did not grow up together. Our parents met each other much later in life. We actually didn't even know one another that well. My Dad was really lonely after my mom died, and he married A's mother R about two years after my mother had passed. He and I were both the youngest of three. He was a wee bit of an enigma to me: I got the impression that he was both a free spirit AND a bit of a rake. I know he broke quite a few young women's hearts, and apparently had gotten a young woman pregnant who made him sign away his parental rights. Years later, the daughter of that union contacted him because she wanted to know her father. Their reunion led to his reunion with her mother, they fell in love and got married. It was an amazing story and one that I thought was a very happy ending.
Before A's reunion with the woman who became his wife, my father had passed away. Andy's mom R was something of a bully, and a born again Christian who was pushy with her opinions, and wanted to control the relationship my siblings and I had with our father. We didn't like her. At my Dad's funeral the pastor talked for three hours about how we would never see our father in the afterlife unless we joined their particular brand of Christianity. In a word, it sucked. In spite of all that, however, R was also a nurse and loved my Dad and she took very good care of him in his last days, and bore the brunt of a lot of things so that we didn't have to. Basically, she was complicated, as was our relationship with her.
On one of my father's many visits to the hospital before he passed, R told me and my sister and my nephew that she did not believe in bipolar disorder. I felt at the time that not believing in bipolar disorder was akin to not believing in oxygen, or oceans, or other things that do most certainly exist. We have had a few family members on our side of the family who definitely suffered from various forms of mental illness, but then we were always taught to be polite so we all just nodded and listened.
I have no idea what she believes in now. My father had made my sister swear that she would not lose touch with R after he passed. but of course it was not an easy thing for us to do. I decided that I would at least be kind and remember her at holidays and her birthday because of what she had done for our father. I hadn't talked to her since shortly after the pandemic had begun when I got the news that A had died.
My sister now lives in Florida, so she obviously wasn't going to make it up to the funeral, but my brother F and I decided to attend. His daughter (who suffers from bipolar disorder) decided to come with me. The first person we saw was the wife of A's brother who grabbed me and hugged me really hard and said she was so glad we had come. I had assumed that A had died in a car accident. I'm not sure why, but that was the conclusion I had arrived at. D burst into tears when I tried to confirm that and told me what had happened. I felt so remarkably awful and sad. We all walked into the church (Catholic) together.
There was a long receiving line for the family. The first person I saw was R, and I felt nothing but compassion in the moment. I don't care who you are, burying a child has got to be the worst kind of pain imaginable. We hugged,. and she said, "Well, shit happens...." which is actually the kind of thing my Dad would have said. I wondered if she'd softened any of her beliefs, but who knows. We all hugged and I saw A's other two siblings.
A's sister delivered the eulogy, and it was really beautiful. She did not shy away from talking about his depression, which I thought was a very good and healthy thing, and she encouraged people to please talk about it and remove the stigma so people could get more help. there were so many people in that church - and they were only in a Catholic Church because one of A's childhood friends was a priest there. They needed to have it there because they had run out of space in the funeral home next door. I was impressed at the number of people who obviously deeply loved A, and I was angry at the brain weasels that made him think otherwise.
I think it has actually taken me this long to process all of my thoughts about this. Many other things have been going on in my life as well, but I think I just needed to really process this right now. I will of course write more later about the other stuff, but for now I will leave you all with this:
Time goes by faster as you get older - my mom had warned me about that one, and she was right. Stuff is going to happen that you won't see coming, and there's often no way to be ready for it. Be kind to yourself. Don't beat yourself up over what you could have, would have or should have done, because it's not constructive. What is constructive is to keep moving ahead, as much as you can. Try to be a bit kinder to both yourself and to others every day. If you really like doing something and you want to do it well, keep doing it and get better at it. And surround yourself with people who tell you they love you as often as possible.
