Whenever I have a moment free to think all of this dad-related panic washes over me and then I can’t do anything and my asthma gets bad and every small thing seems absolutely devastating and I cry about not having pasta sauce or whatever and I feel really stupid. I’m trying not to attack myself/feel stupid and weirdly this is a way of doing it because it sort of forces me not to be ashamed about my grief, forces me to share it in ways I can’t otherwise and forces me to acknowledge the days when I do need help.

And writing through all of it makes more sense to me than anything, too. Writing can be really really helpful. Sometimes the prospect of writing in my diary is exhausting, not liberating, but here it’s better, a bit, sometimes.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Funeral Blues by W.H. Auden

As I mentioned many many months ago, I wonder whether all literature is about the loss of fathers. In that vein, I see that loss everywhere and I’ve become very critical of depictions of that literal loss because sometimes it seems so obvious. When that sadness is stated, not shown, I find myself doing something I really hate to do: wondering about the author and the author’s experience with the loss of a parent. It goes back to that “understanding” thing. As much as I do not think anyone can understand it, there are people who come a little closer than others and for me, as a reader, that is mainly communicated and marked out in fiction. There is something cheap and very false about those books in which the loss itself feels false, a collection of clichés or insistence on the authority in describing grief. It’s supposed to comfort but only repulses. Recently I’ve been very afraid about my writing (fiction), that it will either continue to be too obsessed with particular tentpoles in my life or that it will become clichéd and obvious and will lead people to wonder whether I really lost someone in my life or whether I’m using a convenient plot point.

An odd thing to think about, but what I’ve been thinking about nonetheless. Fathers died in the last three books I read. I seem to have a skill in selecting those.

stubborn determination to declare myself at the end of a process I haven’t yet begun to understand backfired after all:

here I am in no-man’s land.

The other day I made a video about moving through physical spaces and feeling the duality of what that space is like now and how it permanently exists on some level as a sort of sacred space, with little intersection between the two. What I’m also coming to realise from the last 14 hours or so at the hotel here in Anaheim is that memory works through experiential space as well as physical space. In a number of ways, walking through this hotel and seeing the hints of the fun that is to come reminds me of the experience of walking through the Hyatt last year, trying not to vomit, trying not to make eye contact, sticking to the shadows. That feeling has, to a large extent, resurfaced. Sadness is so dominating at times, seemingly refusing the possibility of creating new experiences and intruding at the least appropriate stages. Additionally, it’s slightly frustrating to be aware of how long the roadaway from all of this grief remains. Above all, it’s very isolating and to be surrounded by some of your best friends and feel horribly alone in this makes me feel tremendously ungrateful.

Basically, I’m sad, even though I’m going to Disneyland today. Not a sentence I ever thought I’d say.

An unexpected hurdle threw itself in my path earlier this week — as inanimate sports accessories often do — in the form of a guilt spike. Now that university is behind me, I can finally be truly open to the idea that my dad’s death was, in some ways, a relief — the awareness of that is what overwhelmed me, but after a few days of silent stressing out and snarky comments, I’ve come to terms with my relief. I have never had to come to terms with relief before, having thought it overwhelmingly positive and without burden, etymologically “a raising, that which is lifted” when you consult ye olde french. My relief is scary though, because it again admits the imperfection of my relationship with my dad, frankly the shittiness and the way it was itself a constant anxiety for me, not to mention a battle as we never saw eye to eye. Not having that tension in my life is nice, as well as being free of some of the other things I always found very difficult about my dad. Doesn’t mean I love him less or miss him less, but I think it’s important to say that awful thing: there are aspects of losing him that are almost positive. I have to say it so that I don’t carry it around guiltily, so that it doesn’t become a secret. There is nothing simple about this situation, nothing simple at all, for the most natural of situations.

Was terribly sad this evening, not really sure where it came from but I did have to take a picture of the death certificate to send to my sister for paperwork she must fill in and really I suppose everything’s been so intense that it’s a wonder I’ve been so happy and active until now.

Tonight though, I’ve felt heavy: solid and heavy and sad rather than the other sad I sometimes feel (a combination of numbness and the sensation of blocked ears that need to be popped by chewing gum). I tried to fix it by giving myself a break, talking to friends, watching bits of films and then eventually by eating shitty food but now I just feel ghastly in every way and I’m so tired and so frustrated and feeling very much like someone who tries to climb up a slide but keeps slipping back down.

It’s very difficult to explain but I suppose part of my struggle is that there’s an implication grief of a parent is very simple in the sense that it’s something new and it hurts on another level from anything else. In part this is true but that’s not what scares me. When it’s exceptional it’s actually comforting. It’s when this sadness feels like the sadness I’m used to that I get scared and feel horrendously powerless.

My dad was always a fan of telling us there was a snake in the garden or a rabbit or something. Even when I was off at university he’d call me on the 1st April to tell me, “you’ll never guess what we saw in the garden this morning”. When it came to my dad and jokes I’d always play along for a bit and then give him a hard time for how bad his jokes were. But the truth is I really liked making him try to make me laugh. It was a battle of wills between two of the most stubborn people Earth has ever seen.

A sidenote: it’s really lovely to be in a place where I can think back and enjoy memories of my dad without them rendering me entirely unable to function. I’m lucky to have had those nineteen years and I will cherish them and I will remember all of the bad jokes. Above all, on the 1st April I will always keep my eyes peeled for snakes.

It’s odd to have sadness feel like sadness again, not exhaustion, not debilitation, not harm. Just aching sadness, luxurious in an unexpected way but certainly neither indulgent nor comfortable.

As though I have a secret store of energy that it can’t hurt but it will use up all of the other things.

Must be all that raw food ;)