Bottled up
I've wanted to write so many things about my 24th year blues, but I never really had much courage to psychoanalyze myself in public. For the past months, I've been doodling plain ole hand-written journal entries on receipts, note pads, office scratch papers and even bathroom tissue. They're too private for my own good. So I'll leave them as they are. For now, let me ramble on.
A lot of reworking in the brain and gut is needed when someone who is as organized as I am goes through a life-changing experience that could not at all be undone. All the while, I thought my father would be my north star until I myself turn old and gray. Losing him, honestly, left me feeling stuck in a spot in a desert, right beside a sinkhole. Often, it felt like a choice among running aimlessly in a horizon-less desert, sticking it out in that parcel of desert, or jumping into the sinkhole. Obviously, I chose to stick it out.
All my life, I've always felt like I had to take care of the world. Take care of my younger brother, my mom, my friends, my classmates, hell, even strangers. I don't know who wired my brain that way (of course, aside from God). But that fatal personality flaw has a caveat -- that I'd take care of the world, and my Dad will take care of me. As an infant and a child, I probably got signals from my Dad that lead me to think that he will always be and is my only protector. We were probably daughter and father in several past lives, I don't know. But really, my devastation over his very sudden demise seems to go beyond a sociological level. I don't just miss him because he's family. Rather, there seems to be a philosophical, spiritual attachment between the two of us. That's the best way I could explain how I feel now, and probably forever.
But, when you bump into me, don't worry. I'm still the same old cheery, bubbly Anna Mae. What has changed is that my spirit has been tinged with a little melancholy - something that every adult needs to have in them anyway.
A lot of reworking in the brain and gut is needed when someone who is as organized as I am goes through a life-changing experience that could not at all be undone. All the while, I thought my father would be my north star until I myself turn old and gray. Losing him, honestly, left me feeling stuck in a spot in a desert, right beside a sinkhole. Often, it felt like a choice among running aimlessly in a horizon-less desert, sticking it out in that parcel of desert, or jumping into the sinkhole. Obviously, I chose to stick it out.
All my life, I've always felt like I had to take care of the world. Take care of my younger brother, my mom, my friends, my classmates, hell, even strangers. I don't know who wired my brain that way (of course, aside from God). But that fatal personality flaw has a caveat -- that I'd take care of the world, and my Dad will take care of me. As an infant and a child, I probably got signals from my Dad that lead me to think that he will always be and is my only protector. We were probably daughter and father in several past lives, I don't know. But really, my devastation over his very sudden demise seems to go beyond a sociological level. I don't just miss him because he's family. Rather, there seems to be a philosophical, spiritual attachment between the two of us. That's the best way I could explain how I feel now, and probably forever.
But, when you bump into me, don't worry. I'm still the same old cheery, bubbly Anna Mae. What has changed is that my spirit has been tinged with a little melancholy - something that every adult needs to have in them anyway.