pourquoi pas?

nap on the couch with a cat

It’s my dad’s birthday on Tuesday. He’s dead so I can’t call him up and wish him a good one. Someone asked me how old he would have been and I remembered that he won’t be a new age. I had to go back to work - close that drawer and not think about it - or I would have bawled like a sobbing baby.

It’s incredible how exhausting grieving can be. It can be smooth sailing for a few weeks and then boom! Knocked out of the loop of normalcy.

My therapist asked if I thought people have an unrealistic view of me - that I’m more together than I really am. I’d say yes. We were a diplomatic, military family. Shoes polished, backs straight, smiles on. Until I hit high school and slouched my way through the Grateful Dead, the Dead Kennedys, and Dead Can Dance. Still, I was a sweet girl with my grandma.

But giving this unrealistic projection ends up depriving me of the guidance I need for career development - my boss doesn’t need to coach me because I appear to have it together. At least I can be exactly whoever I am that day with my sober friends. They’re familiar with the crazy of an alcoholic brain - one day serene, the next a spaz, the next exhausted. I feel safe with them to be flighty, tired, silent, afraid, needy, crazy, sad.

I had a moment today where I walked by the liquor store and thought.. not, “man, I want a drink” but “man, I wish I was a person who drank.” It would be much easier to unwind the knots in my back, take the edge off, feel that trickle of numbness from head to toe. But instead, I text the hell out of my friends, go to a meeting, swing on the mantra “let go and let (higher power)”, and eat delicious Chinese food and 72% cacao chocolate. And, I face the fact that my dad is dead and think about sending flowers to the church where he’s buried. And… blow off work and nap on the couch with my cat.