Times Change
I haven’t posted in a long time. A great deal has changed since last I posted, but to put it into proper perspective I have to go back to the time before I started this livejournal.
Four years ago my life was my own. I lived in a small apartment and saw my family rarely if at all. Mind you I was getting along with most of them better, but didn’t require much contact. I had a traumatic childhood and was working on dealing with different issues that had arisen from it. I was making progress, but it was hampered by my family’s “Let’s pretend there isn’t a problem rather than dealing with it” attitude. I was pretty happy despite the fact that I was unemployed and my closest friend had moved back to Colorado. I had a few very good friends that kept me from getting depressed when times were bad and shared the good times. I was very much enjoying writing a chain story here with one of them. I also had a good prospect on a job.
My mother died in a car accident on July 18th 2006. I guess technically both of my parents perished in that accident, but we didn’t know that at the time. My father was quite disturbed at my mother’s passing and so I handled all of the arrangements. I also moved in with him and took care of his finances and tried to get him to live again. It wasn’t something I was looking forward to, but something that needed to be done. He stayed with me six months out of the year and went to Arizona to stay with my sister the rest. I lived in a house which I now own, but it has never and will never be my home.
Despite doing everything I could to try to get my father to return to the world of the living I failed. He refused to do anything that he might enjoy. He became a bitter needy old man who sucked the joy out of anyone he was near. The months when he was in Arizona were difficult and the ones when he was up here were miserable. It became more and more obvious that my father was just waiting to die. You may not know me well, but I’ll tell you that I was in that position once and I abhor seeing anyone make that choice. Yet I watched my father do it for three years. If he could have found a way to commit suicide without everyone knowing he would have, in fact he tried a couple of times.
After a little luck allowed me to keep his second attempt from succeeding he decided he would like to live with my sister full time. Mind you he also decided that he was going to die in Arizona to spare me any of the difficulty I handled for him when mother died. My sister a control freak, drama queen, and desperate for any kind of parental validation jumped at he chance to have him with her full time. I warned her about my concerns about my father’s mental and emotional health, but she didn’t listen. When they left I knew I wouldn’t be seeing him again. He died last week.
Now I have to decide how I wish to take my life back. I am sorry that my father is dead, but to be fair the man I have lived with for the last three years bears little resemblance to my father. He was bitter, mad at life, and he wanted to die. So much of that mirrors my past self that it is quite disturbing. I am hoping to rekindle my love of writing and to show some of that here, but it may not be that easy. I need to find the spark of my gift and I wonder if in ignoring it for the last few years perhaps the last of the coals have gone cool. I guess we will find out, or not together.
S-