PhotoDude.com

Sat. Mar 25, 2006

In Port, But Not Yet Anchored

I feel an odd obligation to post something today. Mostly because I know the next articles I’m going to publish here will [1] be a series of three, which I’d like to complete before any one of them is published, [2] each of them is going to be very difficult for me to write, and [3] I very much need to write them (for myself, not you). So it’s going to take me a while, to do it the way it needs to be done.

Unlike a lot of bloggers, I’ve rarely been one to place the intensely personal out here in the open. I’m usually more external, observational, or referential. So this feels a bit peculiar for me, as it may for you. But it’s like I told Susan when I’ve picked up the camera at a couple of odd moments in the past week to grab a picture of something that struck me … “I can’t help it, it’s what I do, it’s all I know to do right now, and that’s all I know to tell you.”

Due to the extremely extenuating circumstances of these extremely emotional events, I’ve had to compress things in ways I shouldn’t. Because it’s seemed like there’s been little choice. I mean, a dead primary computer and a dead truck took weeks to make it anywhere near the top of my priority list of Things That Reid Must Do.

In order to be there for Fuji in her last days, I had to leave my parents when my Dad had first gotten sick. In order to be there for my Mom and Dad during his last weeks, I had to tightly pack up my grief over Fuji’s death, and put it aside for later. And now my Mom is facing the loss of the love of her life, to whom she was married for 56 years. Knowing how I feel about Susan after knowing her for one decade, I can’t begin to wrap my head around the feelings from 5.6 decades. Being “there” for her has vastly superseded me being “here” for me.

So now I’ve got this industrial sized barrel of grief and mourning, the kind of thing you’re supposed to dump out and deal with when it’s fresh. Yet much of mine is now week(s) old, stale, and rancid. The only thing I know to do now is to scoop it out, chunk by chunk, in words. In writing. Which has always been the way I work out my feelings and thoughts on most any topic, even when I think I already know what they are. It forces me to choose each word precisely, and make each phrase ring true.

It forces me to understand myself, as odd as that may sound.

And though I am mostly OK given the circumstances, in some ways, I’m surely a confused guy these days. That manifested itself physically late Thursday night. Three weeks to the day after I had to have Fuji put to sleep. One day after my Dad’s funeral. Hours after completing a 300 mile trip (one I normally make it in 4.5-5 hours, but which took 7.5 hours Thursday due to obscene traffic … that’s an average speed of 40mph), I had a full fledged anxiety attack. I mean, a textbook “everything-violently-coming-out-both-ends think-I’m-havin’-a-heart-attack and-gonna-die” anxiety attack.

In short, after a month of dealing and/or not dealing with trauma, I hit the wall. Hard. It scared me mightily, and wiped me out for 24 hours. But today, I feel “rebooted,” in a way. Not exactly “better.” But maybe better able to point myself in that direction.

However, it’s going to be another long trip. And this site is likely to reflect that for a while, both in content, and the infrequency of it.

A lot of good friends have sent some very kind emails over the past weeks, which are indeed very appreciated (if you didn’t get a reply yet, you will, eventually). But comments remain off here, both because I don’t have time to monitor them, and because at times I haven’t been sure if I can bear to read them. Until I deal with this for myself.