The story of this blog

Out of the mud, grows a lotus. 

This is literally true, of course. But more figuratively, this is mentioned and quoted in different ways in Buddhism. Thich Nhat Hanh was quoted as saying, "There is the mud, and there is the lotus that grows out of the mud. We need the mud in order to make the lotus. "

At the moment that we're in the mud, of course, we don't think about the lotus. We think about the cold, the mess, and the feeling of being stuck. From down in the mud, beneath even the water, and the algae, the mud doesn't feel good, and it's difficult to see the flower that isn't yet.

But, creativity and pain correlate. Beethoven lead a miserable life, and (not BUT but AND) produced some of the worlds most recognizably moving classical music. It is the foundation of so much music that came after it. Writers, artists (just look at Frida Kahlo), most anyone with a creative bent will acknowledge that even if they were not able to produce at the moment they were in the mud, they were inspired by the time they spent down there.

It's not really any different for me. I mightn't ever produce things that move or reach people as much as the artists I know best for being inspired by and then out-stripping their pain in order to create, but all of my biggest creative projects came from distress.

My 365 photo-a-day self portrait project came from the realization that grieving the loss of my father and my relationship in one fell-swoop had shut me off to living and knowing the new and beautiful place I was residing in, and because I tried to mourn both at once, I had done neither properly.

My best poems were about that processing.

And this blog . . . well, it came from recognizing the need to, as the wonderfully wise Pema Chodron says in her best book, "lean into the sharp points of life."

Recently, a friend asked me about this blog. Why I started it, what inspired me, how I held myself to such a high standard of honesty and where my topic ideas "come from." She said she felt she was creative and prolific when it came to fiction writing but was having, "a difficult time when it comes to writing about 'real life.' I know the question might be a bit simplistic, but am really curious, and value your opinion as a fellow writer."

Well, first of all, anyone referring to me as a "writer" flatters me more than I can say. I think of myself mostly as a hack who can't keep herself from begging for attention. So, being included in the "fellow writer" circle with someone who had the guts and talent to go the hard road of getting a degree in writing is a sure bet to make me blush.

I gave her advice that may or may not have been satisfying, but also told her the story of this blog, at least partially.

This blog was in my head for months before it was ever on this site. And . . . even when it was one this site, I wrote three or four posts before I announced it on Facebook . .  . thus allowing everyone to see it, and then show it to everyone else. If I think very carefully, this blog started with a piece I wrote for a friend's book about a year before I ever wrote the first post.

This friend is an incredibly talented chef, and when her family began getting various diagnosis where diet changes could make a big difference, she made the command decision to do a full cleanse. As a family that was already Orthodox Jewish, and thus, keeping Kosher, dietary limitations weren't news in her house, but she then added on top of that: wheat free, gluten free, and dairy free. And yet, she magically makes some of the most amazing meals and baked goods I've ever had the pleasure to eat. In a series of long and long-distance conversations, she shared with me that she wanted to write a book. Not just a cookbook with recipes, but essays, research, and discussion on the benefits of eating and cooking your own food, how to do a cleanse and determine food sensitivities, and how to plan meals and events with this lifestyle of mindful eating. I had been experiencing a complete mental road block on the poems I was writing (see above) and found myself one night sitting at my neighborhood pub, drinking a beer, and just gushing out hand-written paragraphs about how eating and health aren't or shouldn't be disconnected from our other life choices. It was edited as an intro to her book.

But it got me thinking about how food worked for me, or didn't. It stayed on my mind and I found myself watching myself from the outside.

Then, another friend inspired me. One of my mommy friends started a blog writing about her family, the intentional and mindful child-rearing decisions she was making, health, and finding balance in her life as a mom and still being a person outside of that. I can't link to it because she ultimately decided to end the blog and give that time back to her family, but the simple, clear, straightforward way she spoke to these topics was compelling enough that I read it eagerly despite being a non-mom. It also taught me that real life doesn't have to be spectacular or exceptional to be interesting.

I carried these ideas and inspirations with me for several more months though, before doing anything with them.  I tentatively started a list of possible topics, but couldn't quite make the leap to writing anything online that others saw. What I found though, was that I started to notice myself from the outside with regard to those topics. One of the first ones on the list was "Perfect is damaging." What's ironic about this is not just where this topic arose from, but that it has yet to be written! The act of putting that topic idea on a list caused me to notice things about it, and it spawned other topics. As I started to observe myself, and how I made day-to-day decisions around those topics, how I thought about them, how I would reason them out if I was discussing them with a close friend, other things started to drift up against those ideas. Quotes. Things my friends said or did. Something I saw or heard in a movie. Some of these things, in turn, got re-purposed into other topics when the ideas got too big to be under one umbrella. Before I knew it, I had a list of 15 or so ideas and some skeleton structure for where I would go with them.

And still I didn't do anything.

It really wasn't until August of last year that I had the will to write and post. And at first I let just a few, select, people in on those posts. (One of my friends who had seen my 365 creative efforts on Flickr, another friend who had a secret blog, and a third friend I discovered had a blog on this site.) The right questions to ask was EXACTLY what my young writer friend asked - what motivated me to do it? What pushes me to be this publicly honest? She remarked that she knew her question was "simplistic." The answer is simple, but in the discipline of doing this, nothing could be less simple.

I was finally moved to do this because I was hurting inside, and the jagged pieces were no longer ignorable. I was faced with a choice of numbing myself and furthering the feeling of being broken and having jagged, broken edges poking me from the inside, wounding me further, or leaning into the pain and letting it teach me and guide me to new places. I chose the latter, but it meant acknowledging the mud I was in.

That mud included far too many dysfunctional relationships. I was not merely dissatisfied at work, I felt . . . misled and neglected to the point where neglect becomes passive abuse. I was noticing addiction everywhere in my loved ones. And I was in a romantic relationship defined by lies and denial. It hurt, but more than that, it made me sick because my engine runs on integrity and honesty and the chance to learn and contribute to making things better. I had sugar in the gas tank, which is a sadly hilarious metaphor since sugar was part of what I turned to in my brief stint of trying to deaden the ache.

It didn't work of course. And so, I did a bunch of things. I started going to a 12-step meeting for the loved ones of addicts, I got myself a therapist, I looked long and hard at a proverbial mirror and tried to come to terms with my beliefs and my needs, and I created some systems of accountability and honestly with myself, including this blog. I told my "fellow writer" friend that, "I started this blog at a time when I was facing a lot of dishonesty. Dishonesty at work, dishonesty in what is now my previous relationship. I was seeking more open doors." I truly felt like it was the element in my life that was lacking, like not getting enough sun or water. So, I decided I needed to BE the change I wanted to see. I had no idea how far I was going to have to reach down to do that, and so the other piece of this story is that when I find myself hedging around something now, I imagine my (incredibly loving, generous, extremely tiny and fierce) grandmother saying, "Now, Christie. Is that the whole truth?"

The short story is, we can be moved by the art, the ideas, the things happening around us, the people who teach us and show us new things, and I am. But I had to be in the mud to make a go of this kind of writing. As much as it feels like a bruise on my soul to be writing this post five months after losing my job with no new career in hand, I was far more wounded and far less functional and healthy on August 27th, 2011 (9 months ago, with a job!) when I first sat down to write something here. I know I am a better version of me now, I know the things that aren't ideal will change and change again. I know more about who I am, and who I can be, and what lengths I will go to to make that positive and meaningful, and I see myself in a much kinder light. I know everything is impermanent and I'm learning how to breathe through that. I know that I bruise easily, but that as thin as my skin sometimes is, the rest of me is tough and keeps going.

The long story is the tale of a blog that started with an idea about accountability, eating mindfully, exercise and health, and became a blog about the work of looking at myself, health in much broader terms, and the occasional post about zombies.

You know how people who lose 200 pounds always say, "I'll never go back to that. This feels too good." There is more behind that story. There is also the fact that there are days where it has to also be true that it doesn't feel good. Where putting the time in at the gym is the last thing they want to do. Where all they want is ice cream. But they know how working past those hard moments makes them better able to enjoy everything else, gives them more opportunities to feel good. Because when we dampen down pain, we aren't able to selectively anesthetize just pain. We shut out out good things also. That's me. It doesn't always feel good to feel all of my feelings. It's harder than going to the gym (which, let's be honest, I still don't always like doing). But it is better than being dishonest with myself, knowing that that leads directly to accepting dishonesty and dysfunction from others. And it makes me better equipped to feel and see and accept good things in my life. Sometimes leaning into the sharp points of life is like using sandpaper to uncover the natural beauty in the wood grain and shape us into something even better.

So, in that vein, I've decided to bring back another venue of creativity, structure, accountability, learning, outlet, and feedback into my life.

Welcome all to the first day of my second 365 (well, ummm, second in terms of it being version 2.1 since I did start a second 365 in 2010 and then . . . failed to finish it.) with a photo collage acknowledging that this is not just my birthday but the fourth anniversary of my residence in Boulder. I hope you enjoy it because I got up at 5am to make this happen!

ADD and focus

Everyone in my family has "special needs." (I know that term has a specific meaning, but hate it. Because . . . don't we all? I have friends who are allergic to dairy and I attend to this when I cook for them. And friends who are introverts and won't enjoy a large group. Friends who are afraid of heights or elevators. Cello, we all have things, yeah?) Although my father had the kind of singular focus that all engineers do (in my experience), he also had some pretty apparent hyperactivity. And for those who think hyperactivity is the same as kids being boisterous and that people "outgrow" this, well, umm, no. You'd need only to meet my brother who is still the most ADHD person I know, now in his 30's, to see the incredible effort it is for him to sit in one seat for more then 10-15 minutes. While strong leanings towards math, science and mechanically complex knowledge as well as allergies and diabetes are traced on my mother's side of the family, strong leanings towards creativity, art and writing, nurturing and teaching, OCD, and ADD/ADHD cascade through my father's side of the family. (Both sides have poor vision and asthma, so, there was just no way out there.)

Growing up in house full of talented, smart (if not always conventionally so) people the expectations were high. (And no, this doesn't impact me at all now; I have no idea what you could be talking about! ) We were all expected to work hard, do our homework, get good grades (really good grades), as well as participating in other activities with dedication and some success. Swim lessons were not an option, and taking a musical instrument was strongly promoted. We all played soccer, for various lengths of time, and we all had at least one sport each year all through high school (My brothers typically had three or four, while I switched to music, writing, and what can only be described as the busiest high school drama program EVER). This on top of speech therapy and other kinds of assistance for me for years, and some early intervention for my brothers as well.

My mom's attitude was always, "Oh, that's harder for you. Hmmm. Too bad, you still have to do it." She wasn't unwilling to help, to try and strategize ways to make life more functional, or to be an advocate for us at school. But she was unwilling to let us make excuses. Spelling was surprisingly hard for me, considering my large and growing vocabulary in elementary school and my high school reading comprehension by grade 4. This was probably because of the delay in my hearing (my ears were blocked until I was about 5 or 6), which in turn probably caused my speech difficulties in addition to some weakness in phonemic awareness . . . which we now know through reading readiness research is linked to spelling. My mom fought for a speech therapy IEP for me, but she also wasn't going to let me off the hook. Whatever lists of words I was practicing for speech, she adamantly inserted into our conversations at home. And I was drilled on spelling words every night.

Much the same was true for my brothers who were identified early as struggling with focus and concentration. She wasn't unwilling to adjust the daily schedule to include laps around the house to burn off energy before homework or dinner . . . or both. There was never any blame or lack of understanding. My brothers weren't berated for their struggles and I was never made to feel badly about my spelling or mushy speech, but I was expected to work on it and consistently get better. My brothers weren't excused from acting like human beings, but there was often plans on how to best make things work for them so they could function. There is a subtle but important difference there that I've come to appreciate as an educator who heard over and over, "Well he has _____ and that means he can't ______." Ahhhhhhhhhh!!

In my house it never meant "s/he can't" but instead: it might take longer, you might have to work harder at it, or we might have to do that a different way to make it feasible.

So, I have of course carried this view into the world. Differences in what is easy or hard for me about a task aside, I should just do it and find the way that makes it work. (Case in point: who thinks it's a good idea for an asthmatic with two bad knees to run? ME!) I look down on no one who medicates their ADD kids, but know that it's not necessary for all ADD kids. I also think that whatever intervention or therapy is used or not used, environment and expectation management at home bears huge relation to successful management of learning differences and challenges.

All of this has been on my mind for the last month as I have, alarmingly, noticed the marked increase in my own ADD tendencies. I was never diagnosed as a kid - I certainly rarely exhibit any hyperactivity, and I would add that this is why so few girls are diagnosed with ADD. But two therapists in my adult life have remarked on it. I CAN focus, but I don't always PREFER to focus on one thing at a time. Our current societal norms of texting, while I check my FB status and send an email, while drinking coffee and making a grocery list of course, do nothing to disuade this. The interestingly unanswerable question is: am I genetically wired to multi-task to the point of dissipating my focus or ability to concentrate on one thing? Or is it learned behavior from being surrounded by a family who rarely did one thing at a time, and never did it without fidgeting? Or both?

Whatever the case, it has always been true that even when it looks like I am doing one thing, it only looks that way - with a couple of important exceptions. By this I mean, I can do a very good impression of total focus, but when I'm taking a test, I'm also managing a panic attack, and when I'm on an important phone call, I'm probably also folding laundry or making a to-do list. When I'm running, I'm doing interview prep.

But there were always exceptions. It has always true that I could sit quietly and read or write. This was importantly true in my family of loud, chaotic, bouncing-off-the-walls-climbing-the-bookshelves (Literally - when my brother was less than 3 he was found sitting atop high things frequently having scaled his way to get there) people. If I needed to not be part of that, I could throw my legs over the side of an arm chair and read . . . for hours. I could escape to my room and write, and write, and write. Now, well, it's been months since I could read for more than 30 minutes at a time, which rings the alarm bell for me since that's the measure my brother used to pace himself in getting through college - study or read in 30 minute blocks and then go do something and start again. And I was doing fine on writing (maybe because I had so, so many feelings in so, so many directions as I go through all of this?) but the last month it's been harder and harder for me to gather myself together to sit in one place and collect my thoughts on one topic. I find myself, even when I don't mean to, avoiding it. Or sitting down to write, and then as I get up to pour coffee, drifting off through a series of actions I don't even realize are taking me farther and farther from the keyboard - coffee, mug, mugs are in dishwasher, dishwasher needs to be unloaded, unload, did I fold laundry?, check dryer, drink coffee and plan interview outfit, wash coffee cup and then all other dishes in sink . . .  and before I know it I'm multi-tasking four other things and a half an hour has gone by.

I have been struggling with focus since November when things got very hard and emotional on the job. I had a brief reprieve of peace and quiet in my brain when it looked like two or three job options were shaping up in February, but now . . . It's been four months and ADD is rearing it's head so much that I realized last night that I'm basically not watching TV because the thought of sitting in one place to watch something for 30-60 minutes sounds massively unappealingly uncomfortable to me unless I'm already exhausted, in which case I've found myself falling asleep to the three things I've tried to watch in the last couple of weeks. I mean, come on, unemployment is when you're supposed to sit around and watch TV!

Filling my days through only my own initiative was something I had to do every day for close to four years working as a remote, solo office here. But, of course, I was guided by deadlines, things that needed to get done for my instructors or supervisors, and the tasks involved in the work I was doing. Now, I have to generate not just the initiative and motivation, but the tasks themselves and the structure to do them in. It's been really tiring, if I'm being honest, and it has meant that I go to bed almost every night exhausted, ready to turn my brain off from this constant process. Not to mention, of course, staving off panic, anxiety, disappointment, and at times, depression.

Being tired and emotionally worn is definitely not helping with the ability to concentrate, but it also can't be entirely blamed since I've been tired and emotionally worn in the past and, you know, written 100 page thesis papers. More, I think, I feel ungrounded. And I need my feet to be a little more planted to sit quietly and read or write - it's hard to lean into only one thing when you're running in six directions, I think.

Here are some other strategies I'm thinking of:

• My mom made my brothers run around the house. Not as in "go out and play" but as in, "I think you should do eight laps tonight - I'll count and wave when you run by the window!" I probably need to run or walk every day, even when it's my "day off" from working out. Burn off some of the anxiety or whatever it is coursing through my veins these days.
• Conversely, my family never had much of the just sitting quietly and being going on. And this is something that I struggle with. I was so much better at it when I was walking as one of my two primary forms of transportation (see above), and had weekly practice from my attendance at Quaker meetings. But, when I do it I feel better. I feel like I know who and where I am. I feel . . . resolved and strong. So, I've decided to try the same thing I used to advocate to parents who asked me why Kumon work for their child started from such an easy point. I told them that the idea of doing something every day is actually hard - how many things could they say they do EVERY DAY without fail, after all (It's a short list for most adults. Something I became keenly aware of when I did a 365 days photo project in 2009-2010). I asked them to think about, if they wanted to do pushups every day - should they start with 50 pushups tomorrow having done none for the last several weeks? No, then they'd be too sore the day after to do any and the psychological process of building a new daily habit would have been disrupted. Start easy, build up to 50. Seems logical.
  
  So, for my meditation practice I'm following this suggestion of starting small - at first, 2 minutes a day. 
• Caffeine has helped me eat less and let's just be honest, I make some killer good coffee . . . but it is probably not helping me focus. I may not need to go all the way back to my 2 cups a month standard, but probably would do well to do less than coffee every day. And let me just own up - I love me some Diet Dr. Pepper but it has no redeeming value other than it being yummy. So, there's another source of caffeine I should let go of.
• Getting enough sleep is crucial - I will work to keep that out of all of this. It's been great to sleep 7-9 hours a night instead of calling 5-7 hours of broken a sleep a win, as I was in 2011.
• I probably need to make myself sit and read daily if I want to relocate that capacity.
• Similarly, I probably need to write some every day. Cover letters don't count, but this blog, my creative writing, and my journal do.
• I probably need to acknowledge that part of happy for me is having creative pursuits. In 2008 - 2009 a creative writing group, in 2009-2010 it was photography, every day, without fail, for 365. In 2010- 2011 it was all about performing and singing. Right now I'm putting so much towards staying afloat that I can't afford (literally) to sing, and I'm missing it. Writing is cheaper, but also complicated since it uses the same part of my skills that are being tapped to try and sell my wares to potential employers (write cover letter, adjust res, apply, lather, rinse, repeat.) I'm thinking the first thing on the list is to do some tutorials for the new (free!) photo tool someone awesome directed me to recently. It's also spring in Colorado, which, you know, is just the worst time to get out the fancy cam. (sarcasm)
• I also probably need to acknowledge that the times in the last 10 years when I was most grounded and focused, I was also pretty unhappy. Despite the stress of really-really NEEDING to find a job now, I'm pretty happy. I don't think this means that I can only be grounded when I'm grimly determined to beat tasks that are unsatisfying into submission, or that being content equals being all over the place. But it does probably mean that there's some renovation going on and that finding out what happy AND grounded looks like will likely be a process for awhile.
  
  

Now, one other thing. Diet. Both of my brothers (and I will proudly mention that they came to this conclusion after investigation that was instigated by a conversation with me) have determined they are "glutarded." I had seen the enormous health benefits of reducing or eliminating gluten when my Jewish family was able to resolve not just skin, celiac, and allergy concerns by taking it out of their kitchen, but were also seeing major improvement in their two children who had sensory based learning differences and/or hyperactivity. I mentioned it to my brothers, and though the notion was initially rejected, they both have become avid gluten-free eaters and have felt better for it. I have been "gluten-reduced" for 4 years now, and have always done full gluten cleanses at least twice a year to try and re-set my system. I may never trip the scales on the incredibly expensive test that medically diagnoses gluten allergy, but I know this: when I limit myself to one serving of gluten a day my energy level and concentration level go up, my skin issues and allergies are decreased. Not eliminated - it's not magic. But I'm less reactive.

It is harder to eat gluten free on a budget - fact. I do better than many because Boulder is pretty much the gluten-free (GF) capitol of the world, but replacing normal every-day items with GF ones is often expensive. I do my best to just take bread out of the equation most days, and have found a good source of oatmeal and rice cakes, that are not certified GF, but hav no wheat products or "natural flavorings" (the bane of anyone trying to track down hidden sources of gluten) in them. But when it comes to things like pizza, waffles, beer, bagels, and my person mainstay - low calorie snack bars (think nutri-grain or cliff bar type items) a person can easily spent $6 - $8 on the GF equivalent of something that for everyone else costs $2.99. So, I admit it - although I'm basically not a bread eater anymore and there is plenty of rice at my house, I need to meter my other carbs a little better. Or, you know, get a job and start being able to put the 8 GF items I enjoy back on my grocery list.

And, now, for the first time in the illustrious history of this blog (ha!) I will make an inside joke for my bestest friend everst's benefit. Rob, I need some FOCUS.

Pain

I'm in a little pain today. My knees have been hurting, and that has had some implications for my workouts, but mostly, I've accepted that this is what my knees do. Allowing pain to determine what I can do would mean to give up doing a lot of things I like. So, I go do them and keep a steady supply of ice packs in my freezer. I also have blisters on the soles of my feet, but this is not too awful either.

Today I'm in pain because it's my dad's birthday.

I'm not sure why this bothers me more than other meaningful days. I could get really sad on the anniversary of his death, and often, I do get a little introspective but not usually anything approaching full sadness.  It's possible that because I've attached some other things to that date, that August 9th and 10th mean different things to me now. I intentionally chose to start and end my Flickr 365 days photo project on these dates and so I think about my dad. I think about the hospice nurse coming to the house twice that night - once shortly before midnight, and then again, just a couple hours later. But I also think about managing to finish taking a self portrait every day for 365 unbroken days despite personal issues, a crazy work schedule, not one but two knee injuries, and a knee surgery RIGHT before finishing. I emptied that day out, and refilled it with triumph and closure and accomplishment. I could be bothered over Thanksgiving and Christmas, because I don't have the option to spend those holidays with my father anymore.

You'd think Father's Day would be the problem but, instead, it's this day, every year, that lurks and looms and makes March very problematic for me. I have taken to writing this day on my calendar, as if I'd forget. This is one of the vestiges of my relationship with my dad. I also kept his phone number in my phone (which is just silly, because his phone number was the phone number I grew up with and is imprinted on my DNA at this point. Keeping it in my phone isn't about remembering the number, of course, since I wouldn't need to use the phone number anyways. It's because taking him out of my phone feels wrong). I can't seem to listen to Dire Straits without laughing and then feeling melancholy. And, I write this date in each year, "Dad's Birthday" in the same way that my calendar is marked for "Rob's birthday" as a reminder to send a card or do whatever I do because I think birthdays are the best (mine, yours, everyone's - love birthdays).

There isn't anywhere to send a card. I can't pick up the phone and call my dad (using the number I've known since I knew there were phone numbers in the world) to say happy birthday. I can't make a plan to celebrate his birthday with him. I can't call my brother and see if he wants to join forces for a lunch, a present, anything. Why is it on my calendar? Because not putting it there makes the day feel even worse to me.

On March 26th, it doesn't matter if I'm working, or if it's the weekend. It doesn't matter if I'm alone, or with people. It doesn't matter if I drive up into the mountains or lie flat on my back on the couch and stare at the open canvass of my ceiling. It doesn't matter if I eat chicken and brussel sprouts or if I try to numb out with some really bad carbs. All I can think of is how, somehow, I was the only person who knew on his last birthday that it was his last birthday.

It was actually a great day, but with my moving cross-country two months later, and him going so severely down hill two months after that, it was the last time I got to do a family celebration of any kind with him. And the fact that it was for him made him that much more excited and pleased. We had a great day, but in a place that was nowhere near the back of my mind, I knew with deep certainty and some not insignificant sense of peace, that there wouldn't be another birthday with him, and that that almost surely meant we had already had our last Thanksgiving, Christmas, . . . I drank a shot with him and my brother and thought, "I hope this day is good enough to count for everything we won't have."

I think that there are days that I tell myself that death is part of life, and that I can live with that. And there are days that I tell not only myself, but others too, that if he hadn't died, we might not have gotten to the place we got to in our relationship . . . that it took to the end for my dad to be really honest, open, and to tell me what he loved about me in a way I believed it. And there are days where I am very relieved that he's not struggling, in pain, or fighting the demons he dealt with long before the cancer.

But I don't ever have those days on March 26th. On this day I am struck that I'm supposed to somehow be ok with 25 years of what can only be described as troubled and dysfunctional love with my dad followed by 2 weeks of him sharing under what can only be described as enormous pressure. On this day I can't help but think how sad it is that he never met his grandchildren, and that he'll never meet my future-and-hypothetical kids. On this day it's a little heartbreaking that he'll never see any of us get married. On this day I remember drinking that shot with him, but I also remember calling my Jewish family the morning after he died to make sure that when they were drinking wine that night on Shabat that they would change the prayer they had been saying for him and not waste it.

I was lucky today to spend the day with a smart, sensitive, interesting 10 year old and all-around cool kid. My friend thinks I gave her 6 hours of not struggling with what to do with him on spring break, but in reality she gave me 6 hours of talking about karma (with a 10 year old!! See, he is REALLY cool), helping him practice photography, getting some sunshine, and comparing thoughts on the pros and cons of being an oldest sibling. But . . . I have to then be at home and face the fact of this day.

Pain is there to keep us safe. And I know, in that way, pain is healthy. But on this day, pain doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I knew Knew KNEW that he was dying (maybe before he did), and I didn't just tell myself I was ok with it, I really was. But on this day, nothing feels exactly right because 4 years ago shots and salads and lazy conversation did have some unexpected rightness.

So, there it is. I have been writing all week, and unable to finish anything because this date has been clouding up a lot of things for me. A friend who also lost her father asked me a couple of months ago, "How long is it normal to grieve?" I said something ostensibly wise about how grief has no set timeline. I said that we all go through life with a collection of people we think we can count on, and when one goes missing, we can't expect that hole to not be a wound, and one that throbs. I told her however she felt her grief and sadness was "normal." And all of that is more easily said than done.

This is it for me. This 24 hours.