We'll have fun

I love this picture of my grandparents during their honeymoon. They look so young, carefree and beautiful.

Now that they are dead the family is trying to find a new way, to regroup, to celebrate christmas differently, to be happy.

I miss them.

The twisted road

I was finding it hard to write here. My computer got hauled off to undergo repairs. I'm trying to find a way to get my father in a retirement home, against his will pretty much, which does not make you feel like daughter of the year. I would look at my last entries: death, depression. It would make me say that as soon as I had something funny to write, I would do it. But I realize I have to make a habit of it. Because the strange turn of events making 2010/2011 a bad, bad time for my family has just continued impressing me with its motivational anger.

My mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer. DISCLAIMER: It's breast cancer, the most easily taken care of cancer, she's in good hands, it seems that she is OK, it's going to be chemo and an operation and all that, but the doctors have so far been optimistic and kind.

I'm so scared of not being up to the challenge. I sometimes resent the fact my father is always at the hospital or sick. I look at him and think that I want to be alone, not talk to him and have to watch him so diminished. Now my mother is going to be weakened and exhausted and I'm afraid of resenting it in the same way.

Also I feel so guilty all the time. Guilty that I'm trying to put my father in a retirement home because it is hard to care for him, but also because I have so much work and a part of me can just forget. Yes, both my grandparents died in the last six months, my father is still in the hospital and my mother has cancer, but in the end, I think I could get into the mindspace that this is normal. After all, I'm used to being worried.

The worst part of all is thinking about my sister. J and I are incredibly close. We have our own lives, but when things go bad we immediately start working together.
J is in America, miles away, and has to "enjoy" her last college semester while scouting for jobs, knowing that everyone is sick at home...And yet I want to rely on her. I want her support too.

This to say that I have given up on writing when things go well at the moment. This place is a shelter for me, and I need to accept that life can go twisted and dark, and that it doesn't make my blog "boring".

So we all go down the twisted road. I hope I'm a good traveller.

Family trouble

I've just come back from a lovely lazy day spent with my friend Am, her husband Vic and their cute baby Syméon. They are my age and PhD students, yet they make this parenting thing work. They've been married for some time now, and their parents have been married for a really long time as well. It made me think about my own family and my relationship to families.

Obviously I have a lot to say on this topic, as would anyone. We are molded by our childhoods and most people can be separated in two groups: those who are very close to their parents and those who break ties almost completely. It's hard to stay in the middle.

I'm in a tricky situation.When I tried to kill myself, I hurt my family for ever. They did not read this as my own struggle, my own battle: it was a reflection on their performance as parents or sibling. I understand this completely. If I did not have depression I would read the same mute accusations in my behaviour than they did.

So now I feel I have this huge debt towards them. Although I know that I won't ever try again, I can't take away the worry and the guilt they feel. All the love I can show won't erase their pain.

That's the way life goes, doesn't it? We try to be perfect in our relationships, we try to be in the right, to be the person who's behaving well. And then we're the bad guy. And there may well be no way to make that change.
What has been difficult for me is to accept that I have hurt my family and made them go through hell, but that I need to move on from that. I can't change what I did, but I don't have to obsess about it.

And spending the day with a baby reminded me how free I am. I'm single and childless: the world is my oyster! All the ties I have are my own choice: I choose to love and respect my family and treat them in the best way possible, but I want it to be a choice, not the consequence of something I did three years ago. So while I hope one day they forgive and forget, in the meantime I'll discover the world and become a happy person. In the end, that's what they also want for me.

Irony

My current situation reminds me a lot of what the lovely Britni was saying on her blog a few weeks ago. I give advice I find difficult to follow to my sister, who is also going through a rough time with her ex-girlfriend. The ex is with another girl, yet keeps texting and calling J to tell her how much she means to her, etc. I tell J to cut her off, stop answering her calls.

Wish I found it easy myself.

My ex is not a piece of crap like my poor sister's former girl. He is a lovely man in so many ways, which is probably why I'm still hurting so much almost a month afterwards. But once I get to move out of this town, I will not talk to him. I need to move on, forget his horrid new girlfriend, and be a happy single girl. All this will happen. I know it will. When I follow my own advice.