untitled

When my dad was little the flap of tissue under his tongue was overgrown so that until it was discovered and corrected his speech was "messed up."

During that time apparently his dad constantly told him that he was a "retard" and would get in screaming fights with my grandmother about how she "gave him a retarded child."

I only learned this a couple years ago when I happened to be presenting at a conference near where my paternal aunt lives. I was able to spend an afternoon with her, and this was the first time I'd had an opportunity to spend time with her one on one as an adult. In this afternoon I really got to see the breadth of my aunt's strength, generosity, openness, and love. And I also learned a lot about my family.

When my aunt told me that story I vaguely remembered my dad once telling me about the thing with his tongue. And then I remembered that he did once ask me if the tissue under my tongue was ok and let me know that if it got messed up we would know what the problem was because he'd already been through it and it could easily be fixed.

The home where I spent the first seven years of my life was unsafe. When my parents were married my dad was volatile and unpredictable. But my dad always, always told me that I was smart and could do anything I wanted to. He started teaching me to read before I could even form full sentences. He bought me paints and sketchbooks when I wanted to be an artist. He wanted to, but couldn't, buy me a laptop when I wanted to be a writer. He wanted so much for me to believe in Santa Claus when I didn't. He made sure that I did not have an overgrown flap of tissue under my tongue.

My dad did not want me to be trapped in a life where I was unhappy. He has spent his life building houses and he does not love it. But he sometimes took my brother and me to construction sites to see the wooden outline of houses he was building, houses with open skies like the one my mom and stepdad would later buy. He has spent his life building magic houses that he will never live in.

I haven't maintained consistent contact with my dad in awhile, and I told my partner yesterday that it's hard because I've blocked so much of it that I can't imagine my dad hitting my mom or throwing plates against the dining room wall. The few times that I have seen my dad over the past ten years or so he seems increasingly numb, withdrawn, and isolated. My partner has only met my dad once; a few years ago we met him for lunch at a Wendy's. My partner puts it best when he says that he cannot imagine my dad doing those things either, because he has only ever known my dad as a shell of a person.

I wish he could have known him.

this post is depressing

I have the next four hours blocked out to sit in a coffee shop to do my own work. To read and write on my dissertation, to drink coffee, and to not lesson plan or respond to student e-mails, etc. These four hours are a gift, but I am having trouble feeling that. Outside it is wet and gray and the atmosphere feels thick and heavy. I feel down, I feel weighed down.

My partner woke me up around one this morning, hugging me in tears, after waking up from a dream that he had lost me. Not just that he had lost me but that I had been murdered and the dream seemed to last for weeks, he tells me after awhile of holding each other in that early pre-dawn haze. We are both, I think, remembering to be amazed by each other's being here, by waking up to find that we are both still here.

We've talked about the reality of someday losing each other, not frequently, but we have thought and talked about it, usually with lots of tears. I know that depression changes for many of us our relationship to our own lives. I understood this better when coming out of my deepest period of depression. I think I was maybe more at peace with death then than now. Because I had spent so much time deciding the decision to continue living over and over, I could somehow see the possibility of death as a blessing. I no longer understand this truth as fully, and it is strange to remember crying so much about life and death for such different reasons.

I suppose that is a pretty obvious part of why I feel down today. The other part is that two unremarkable things happened this morning to remind me that outside our home, I feel fairly alone. I feel disconnected from the people in my life, in overt and in subtle ways. I have felt like this for awhile now, and I sometimes feel like I am not really here, like I died along time ago and am now just going through the motions, like a zombie. I know that this is probably another kind of depression, which v confirms. I just don't really know completely the way out of it. How to find my way back to my own body, to feel attached to, connected to, invested in, the life of this woman who is typing on a keyboard, tugging at her sleeves, pausing to lean on her fist, staring alternatively at the screen and out the window.

I feel the heaviness in my chest, and I smell the coffee coming out of my pores, so I know I must still be here. I cry when my partner and I talk about dying, so I know that I must still feel things. I don't remember if the heaviness was in my chest when I woke up this morning. I know the heaviness is not always here or it would not be remarkable. I know that I did not feel like this two days ago or the day before that but I remember feeling it around yesterday afternoon when I revisited the facebook page of someone who died in June.

This morning in the shower I ask my partner how I died, in his dream. And he says that someone shot me at  Bed, Beth, and Beyond. Like most real things, it is so strange and unusual and mundane and ordinary that I can see why it upset him so much.

you change all the lead / sleepin in my head / to gold

no longer do we wonder

mr o sent me this video this morning. overwhelmed with love and gratitude and belonging and faith and hope and love.

talked to one of my survivor friends again yesterday. we need the same things.

talked to mr o about survival again. he gets it. i ask him ridiculous questions. need to be assured of ridiculous things, over and over again. asked him, did i lie when i told all those people x, when i named it x? was x x? over and over. his patience is unfathomable.

whilst needing to edit my paper on survivor knowledge. figures.