Reality

Today marks 2 weeks since my dad passed. Sometimes I think the word “died” and it makes it that much worse, so I tell people my dad has passed. He has passed from this world to the next, to what ever we have to look forward too once our earthly bodies can no longer hold us down.

It was a hard day for me. A very hard day. I had to work open to close, around all these people that are going about their day and I am still shattered. I am a picture that has fallen off a while while the home owners are away on vacation, so there is no one to sweep up the pieces. I just lay on the floor broken into a million pieces.

I have thoughts that I shouldn’t have. Thoughts about not wanting to be here anymore. But I have so much to do now. My dad gave me a story to write and I have to write it. And it has given me more and more ideas to write. I am a writer and writers do best when they have pain to draw from.

I also fear something happening to my mom and my brother. Anytime I can not see them I fear something has happened. Is there a word for a fear of anyone leaving the house? Agoraphobia is the fear of going outside the house…I feel that developing a little too. But it’s more of a fear of anyone I love leaving my sights.

I looked it up, a fear of loved ones dying is called Thanatophobia. I guess there is a phobia for everything. Before my dad died I had a fear of something going wrong, like if I didn’t love my family enough one of them would be taken away. It’s almost like my heart knew it was about to get hit. Or maybe it’s just my anxiety. I may worry myself to death one day.

I keep thinking how eventually someone is going to die. Someone close to me. And then I think that maybe I don’t want to fall in love or have kids, because that is only more people to grow close to that could die. And maybe my whole life I have been protecting myself from all of this. Maybe that is why I didn’t have too many close friends and I didn’t get to close to a lot of family. Maybe this whole time I have just kept people at a distance so it wouldn’t hurt when someone died. I just thought I had more time with my immediate family. I thought I had more time with my dad.

Isn’t that the problem with everyone though? We all think we have more time, when in reality we are ticking time bombs, waiting to explode and destroy someone’s norm.

Does it make it better when you are close to more people? Does it help if you have more close friends to huddle around you when you lose something so precious? Maybe I only made it worse on myself by not being closer to people. Maybe the more pieces of your heart you give away, the less it hurts when someone dies and takes that piece with them. OR maybe not matter what you do, when a parent dies it just hurts more than anything you have ever experienced in your life.

I wonder sometimes if this all happened for some greater being to show me how minuscule my other problems were, how lame my anxiety issues were. Because it all just seems so stupid now.

We are all ticking time bombs, waiting to explode and destroy someone’s norm.