One of the greatest gifts Michele gave me was the understanding that anger was okay. Growing up I had the idea that anger was something to be feared and avoided. As a young adult I was fearful of losing my temper, in a sense I thought that I would be hurt if I lost my temper, and worse, that the people around me would be hurt.
Michele showed me the err of my thinking. She literally provoked me in order to get me to lose my temper. She didn’t wilt or go away in the aftermath, she wasn’t hurt, and she didn’t stop loving me. In the months that have passed since her death I am sorry to say that I have been avoiding some of my anger. Oh sure, I blow up and lose my temper but I haven’t gotten under it to the root cause and expressed that anger.
This afternoon the walls I’ve erected around my anger came tumbling down. I wrote a powerful (in terms of release) posting and came to the realization that I was angry at Michele. Finally expressing that anger in a real, concrete way was incredibly cathartic. I know that having discovered the root of my anger is only the first step; a powerful first step to be sure, but only a beginning. Breaking through and allowing myself to express to her (as much as is possible) was a good start. Now I need to carry on and express all my emotions. Michele wouldn’t have it any other way.
One of the greatest gifts Michele gave me was the understanding that anger was okay. Growing up I had the idea that anger was something to be feared and avoided. As a young adult I was fearful of losing my temper, in a sense I thought that I would be hurt if I lost my temper, and worse, that the people around me would be hurt.
Michele showed me the err of my thinking. She literally provoked me in order to get me to lose my temper. She didn’t wilt or go away in the aftermath, she wasn’t hurt, and she didn’t stop loving me. In the months that have passed since her death I am sorry to say that I have been avoiding some of my anger. Oh sure, I blow up and lose my temper but I haven’t gotten under it to the root cause and expressed that anger.
This afternoon the walls I’ve erected around my anger came tumbling down. I wrote a powerful (in terms of release) posting and came to the realization that I was angry at Michele. Finally expressing that anger in a real, concrete way was incredibly cathartic. I know that having discovered the root of my anger is only the first step; a powerful first step to be sure, but only a beginning. Breaking through and allowing myself to express to her (as much as is possible) was a good start. Now I need to carry on and express all my emotions. Michele wouldn’t have it any other way.
Dead Run is the third installment of the mother-daughter writing team known P. J. Tracy, and it is an excellent page turner. The characters first introduced in Monkeewrench and further developed in Live Bait are back an in deeper trouble than ever.
Rating: Don’t start it the night before you need to be up early.
Michele I am so pissed off at you it isn’t even funny. You stole my future, you stole my dreams of a life together with you, you stole everything that I had to live for. And you left me holding the bag. I’m out here in the cold, alone, lonesome, miserable, with no reason to continue. I simply exist now.
Fuck you for taking away everything. Fuck you for not having the courage to fight through your demons. I stood by you every single day of our relationship. I walked through fire for you again and again and again. Better than anyone else I know what you faced down and what you overcame to get this far. And better than anyone else I know the demons that still haunted you and plagued your life. In the end I respected your wishes and didn’t force a medical solution on you. Your fear of doctors and of cancer were more than you could bear, so I understand the exit you chose for yourself. That doesn’t change the misery it has left me with however.
Every day now I lose my temper and rage uncontrollable. Every day now I hurt in side to where it feels like I’ve been kicked by a mule. Every day now I have to grit my teeth and find a way to get through the next minute or hour. Just so I can repeat the process and do it again. My mother is dying. Her white blood cell count is so low that she can’t withstand the treatments necessary to prolong her life. The doctor told her two months. That was a month ago. My father is talking about funeral plans. You abandoned me to face all of this by myself. I am so mad at you for this. I haven’t let all my anger at you out because I was protecting you. You called it when ever you said I was protecting someone at my own expense. Well, I’ve been protecting you from me at my own expense and it is eating me alive.
Sure I’ve been going to group, three times a month. They are pathetic. Mopey and whimpering and wondering what the fuck the death of their loved one means. Group isn’t giving me the outlet I need. I need to sit across from you with your feet in my lap and rage and talk and cry and explain and come to understand what all of this means. Only I can’t do that can I? You’re not here any more. You left me. I know you’ll understand when I say, I hate you.
And I love you.
And I miss you.
And I am broken inside.
And I am so mad at you.
And I miss you.
And I can’t make sense of this any more.
And I love you.
V for Vendetta is a very good movie, especially when you juxtapose its theme of control, propaganda, and truth in the news against current events. The best line in the movie goes something like, “We don’t make up the news - that’s the government’s job.”
Rating: V Stars
16 Blocks is surprisingly good, for an action film. Mos Def carries the show with a stream of dialog that starts as annoying but morphs into endearing.
Rating: Worth a viewing in the theater and a reviewing when it comes out on DVD
Grief slinks along in the shadows, waiting for you to drop your guard before grabing you, dragging you back into the darkness you were trying to leave. Grief hates the light, and hates you for being able to survive in the light. Grief is a demon that only knows darkness, despair, pain, and suffering. This demon exists between you and the world of light you lived in before, and the only way back to that world is by crossing through grief’s territory.
Because our world of light is filled with shadows and dark places, grief can sneak up on you unexpectedly and suddenly. In a moment you come crashing down from the heights of normalcy into the muck and mire where grief lives. Wrestling with grief doesn’t work, you both get covered in the slimy emotions of guilt and despair, and grief likes it. Instead you must embrace grief, accepting it with understanding and concern. For only through love of yourself can you wash yourself clean of the slimy tentacles darkness uses to drag you under.
You must accept that life goes on, and that you are caught up in the current of life, unable to remain in the spot where you last existed before grief plunged you away from the light. Instead you must ride the torrent down into darkness, husbanding your strength so that when the cold undertoad lets go you can rise back towards the light of normal life. You must be wary of the false roads towards light that grief uses to trick you into even deeper pits of darkness. Anger at nothing only begets more anger. Anger expressed appropriately, that constructively moves you towards understanding and acceptance is good; unfocused rage is evil.
Grief lives with me now, dogging my every step, chasing away memories of a time without despair, and ridiculing thoughts of being happy again, It would be so easy to allow the voice of grief to override my own true voice, to allow grief the demon to consume me forever. Tenacity alone prevents me from letting go and falling forever into emptiness. I will not go quietly into the endless night of grief, instead I will pass though a nighttime of grief, believing in the dawn of happy life that awaits me.
In setting up the ThinkPad one of the first pieces of software I installed was Adobe’s PDF reader, now called, simply, Adobe Reader. With the proliferation of PDF files on the web and at work, having the reader installed is essential. I have a gripe, however, it displays ads in the toolbar area by default.
Thanks to this posting I learned how to turn the ads off forever.
No more ads.
Today was one of those mornings where I was startled awake by the cat at 3:30 am. Her cold wet nose, followed by a raspy tongued lick was sufficient to bring me to full wakefulness. My mistake was in opening my eyes; once she saw that no amount of lying still and play possum worked. She-who-must-be-played-with would not be put off.
As long as I was up I decided to run a full virus scan of the ThinkPad. I’ve been downloading a fair amount of software recently and I wanted to make sure I hadn’t infected myself. All I can say is, it is a good thing that the pause feature works, as the scan was still going strong at 5:30 when I was ready to leave for work. In all, it took 263 minutes (4 hours and 23 minutes) to scan 3,150,983 files and folders on my hard drive.
The best part? She-who-must-be-played-with went back to sleep in the warm spot I left in the bed after I got up. Apparently I never was in charge of my life.
Lately I’ve been starting to think about things I want to do, projects with my websites, cleaning out the storage lockers, or cleaning this apartment. Thinking about things to do is as far as I get before indifference and apathy take over. Being indifferent is actually a good thing in this case, as it means I don’t have the spark to get down on myself about not following through.
Thinking about things I want to do is a bit of an improvement. Until recently I was just operating on autopilot. Don’t expect a new look-and-feel for zanshin.net any time soon, but I have been looking at the last partial redesign and thinking I should apply it here. I am also feeling the urge to dust off the long neglected Partition Software site, perhaps even converting it to a two-column format with development related blog entries on one side and static Partition Software information on the other side.
But first I think I’ll go to bed and get some sleep. Being up at 3:30 this morning has made me bone tired on top of not really having any ambition. Never a good combination.