A Letter to My Father, on His 56th Birthday

Today is my dad's birthday.

He turns 56.

I don't know the whole, smooth story of his life from start to finish; I guess because it was a jumbled and sideways journey from the beginning. But I know some things.

I know he was born on an Air Force base in Japan, and he was the third child, out of what would eventually become five children.

The first boy.

I know he had thick, curly, black hair as a baby, and that my Nana used to dress him up in little girl's dresses because she said his thick eyelashes and dimples made him pretty.

I know that he had dog tags from the time he was born that said who he belonged to, that he was Catholic, and his father's rank and his blood type.

I know his family moved back to New York not long after he turned two, and his brother Mark was born there. Mark couldn't say Michael, so he called him Pants. 

A nickname that stuck all the way up until Mark died when I was 14. 

I know that my dad had it hard growing up. They were wealthy, and then they were poor, and then they were wealthy again. His mom was always sick. He was abused. His dad was indifferent.

I know my dad left home when he was eleven years old, and never went back. He ran out the back door, hid in someone's carport behind their '65 Buick Skylark until he saw his mom drive by, on her way to my grandpa's service station to tell him their son had run away, and then he went to the elementary school and told the principal he wasn't going back home.

He lived in foster homes and on the streets and hitch-hiked around after that.

I know he met my brother's mom when he was only 20, and that he met my mother when he was 25, and that he always wanted a lot of kids.

I know he was always sick.

He was moody, sometimes indifferent and often hyper-critical and forever irresponsible.

When I was young he seemed like a rambler. A wheeler and a dealer and someone that would always be able to get by, even if only by the skin of his teeth.

He raised his kids in the backs of cars, in junk yards and occasionally in nice houses.

Nothing with him is permanent.

Nothing with him is stable.

Nothing with him is clear.

I know he probably did the best he could.

I know he's wounded.

After it's all said and done, I know he'll always be the first person I loved, the first person who broke my heart, the first person who taught me to survive. 

He taught me that you can love someone, but not trust them.

Love someone but not be able to get close to them.

Love someone, but never be able to have them in your life.

In his own damaged and imperfect way, I know my father loves me.

Worries, Fears and Broken Promises: The one where I go back on my word about not being depressing anymore

This is going to be an honest post. 

This is going to be one that returns to my recent habit of posting depressing shit, even though I told you I was making it up to you earlier today.

I'm going back on my word.

Partly because I feel like if I don't say this all in one form or another my head will explode, or my life will implode in on itself, and partly because this blog started out as a place where I could say anything.

And I try to keep it that way.

I'm stressed lately.

Maybe even becoming a little bit depressed.

It's sneaking in, quietly and carefully so as that at first I didn't even notice it.

But then it knocked a dish over and broke it and I'm painfully aware of it's presence now.

I'm beginning to worry about things I can't do anything about.

That's always a sign that I'm struggling inside.

I'm having anxiety attacks almost every day again.

That's a sign too.

I have very little interest in writing, if any at all to be honest with you. I had to almost force myself to write this post.

I don't feel like talking very much by the end of the day.

What I do feel like doing is sitting in my room as it grows dark in the evening and "forgetting" to turn the light on, until I'm staring at stupid shit on the internet in almost complete darkness.

I do feel like eating terrible foods.

I do feel like shopping. 

And I do feel like crying.

And I do feel like talking about cancer. All. the. freaking. time.

It's sickening.

But all of this heaviness in my chest is weighing down my mind.

Like I said, I'm starting to worry about stupid things.

I do my budget, and then re-do it and re-do it over and over to make sure my paycheck will last until the next one comes {even though I know it will} because out of nowhere, I'm worried about money.

I cringe every time my boss asks me to come to his office at work, or sounds grouchy on the phone because I've suddenly convinced myself {without any evidence or probably cause} that I'm about to get fired.

I'm worried about my poor little van because it has 130k miles on it and today at a stop light, the idle sounded rough and tired and I just knew it was going to die on me any second, and I really {like really} need that van to last me at least through the end of the year without requiring any major repairs, and all these awful fears and senseless worries just swirl around above me, until I'm having a crying panic attack in the stairwell at work, downing Rescue Remedy like it's water. 

I feel heavy.

I feel tired.

I feel scared.

I feel worried.

I feel like I'm standing on the edge of some terrible impending doom and I am powerless to stop it.

I feel very, very mortal.

And worst of all, I feel guilty.

I've been fighting with my father. Who has cancer. I mean really, what kind of hateful, awful person fights with someone who has cancer? What kind of terrible daughter gets angry at their dad who just found out he's sick, for ANYTHING? And what kind of miserable excuse for a daughter misses her dad's oncology appointment because she figured he was too angry with her to want her there? Only to get a text after it's over from him that says

"Wanna know what my oncologist said? He said where's your daughter."

Knife, meet heart.

I keep thinking "I should call someone...plan a girls night...it'd be good to get out" and then in the same 10 minutes I think "No...crowds would bother me right now...and it's never cool to be the girl at the bar who keeps talking about cancer" and that's all that flows {and I mean FLOWS} out of my mouth when I get face to face with anyone these days.

I think "Maybe a vacation would make me feel better. A weekend trip somewhere" and then I think "And as soon as you get back from spending all that money, the van will die, you won't have cash to fix it, you won't be able to get to work, you'll lose your job and end up living in a minivan that doesn't even run"

Welcome to my hell.

I'm not sure what to do.

I want to be shaken....snapped out of this weird kind of nightmare filled coma somehow. 

I want something to be excited about, and less to worry about...or at least some sign that the things I'm worried about would be manageable if they did happen...or enough self control to stop worrying about them.

Really, I'd take any of those things.

I just want something to feel excited about.

Letters to my father

I came to the library in Scottsdale today on my lunch break, instead of going out to eat with my co-workers.

The same library where you used to take me when I was 12. I loved it then because it was huge, and beautiful. With the big sparkling gray castle in the kids section, complete with a tower and turret for private reading, and the grounds around it were so so green and luscious it was like a small oasis in the middle of the desert we actually live in. Big, gushing fountains and thick shady trees cooling down the silky soft grass...it was my 12 year old paradise.

I like it here now because it's air conditioned, and quiet, and when I bring the kids I have an excuse to ask them to whisper. We're in a library after all. And there are used books we can buy for 50 cents, and the castle is still there. And when it's really hot and nobody is looking, I let the kids run through the fountains. Just like you did for me when I was little.

I like coming here alone now too, because the bathrooms are big and there are so many stalls. Bathroom stalls are a good place for grieving. You can close the door and stay as long as you like. No one rushes you in the bathroom, especially when there are 20 other stalls for them to choose from.

I'm just not sure what it is that I'm grieving. 

You aren't dead yet.

I guess that's what I'm grieving that right there: the yet in that sentence.

Before this there was never a yet on the end of sentences about you dying. 

Up until all of this, I think I believed somewhere in the back of my mind or maybe the bottom of my heart, that you would live forever. 

Not in the unrealistic "death doesn't exist" way, {I've believed death was real ever since my cat Bob died when I was 5 and you made me look at his body and touch his tail so I would understand what death meant} but more in the sense that I never reconciled the idea of losing you someday. 

Of watching you die.

So now I hide in bathrooms among stainless steel and white tile, and try to practice saying it out loud without my voice breaking.

I try make myself say the word cancer without tears filling my eyes.

I try to accept that you are in fact mortal, without the very breath leaving my chest.

So far I haven't made much progress.

The Friday Diary: A Week of Worry and Healing

It's Friday. 

Finally.

I don't have a whole bunch of pictures of what we ate or the things we did, because we ate things like pizza and left over spaghetti in between getting home from work/daycare and going to the hospital to visit my dad.

Oh, yeah, we also ate hospital food.

It wasn't awesome, nor was it picture worthy.

But, the good news is my dad's surgery went as well as could be expected. As of right now, they're calling the surgery curative, and chemotherapy is not being recommended at this time.

That's exactly how the doctor put it.

It was some of the best news I've gotten in my life.

For those of you who sent emails, text messages and left comments or private messages, encouraging and comforting and checking in, thank you.

Really, thank you.

I might not have written back to all of you. 

I might not have sounded as grateful as I was.

But every single "how are you doing?" or "how is your dad?" or "Thinking of you' message meant the world to me.

And in case you were wondering, I did end up taking the day off. 

And Wednesday too.

I waited in the waiting room, I fed my father ice chips, and I watched T.V. with the kids and ate chocolate covered pretzels. We healed. We coped. We were thankful for good news. 

And we napped. A lot.

Napping is good.

So, that was our week.

And now it's Friday, and I just have to get through one more day before I can have an All-Pajamas-All-The-Time weekend with the kids while Bill is in California with his kids.

It's gonna be awesome.

Happy Friday.

I hope you all have a quiet, predominantly pajamas only attired weekend, with the people you love. The people you would take the day off work to wait for in the hospital if they were having surgery.

I've Been Fine

I'm not writing this for anyone else. 

I'm not writing this for attention, or for blog views, or for sympathy or comments or any other reason that people write things like this.

I'm writing this for me.

I'm writing this because it's 1:38 in the morning and I can't sleep.

Every time I close my eyes I have vivid and terrible nightmares of people dying during surgery, people dropping weight from Chemo treatments until they weigh less than most models do, people losing their hair and eventually fading away. People passing through the seven stages of grief until the once bold and strong, are nothing more than blathering fools who marvel at blades of grass and seize young people in the park, urging them to carpe every diem they have.

I'm writing this because I haven't said it out loud in a way that makes it seem real since I found out, exactly 1 month ago yesterday.

My dad has colon cancer.

He's having surgery today to remove the tumor and find out what stage the cancer is at.

I can't sleep.

And let me make this clear, I was FINE. 

I have been FINE.

I have been completely ok. 

I mean, yes, I was upset when I found out, yes, my hands shook while I made dinner that whole first night that I knew. 

Yes, I cried when I told the two or three people who I've told so far, and YES I drank an entire bottle of {really good} Italian white wine until I couldn't feel my own legs.

But since then, I've for the most part been pretty fucking OK.

And now the surgery is tomorrow, and I didn't take the day off from work because I thought I'd be fine, like I have been, but I'm not.

I am not fine.

And even though he'll be in surgery all day long, and I won't even get to see him until after the time that I'd be off work anyway, I still want to be there. 

I want to be sitting in the hospital waiting room when he rolls out of surgery.

It's the night before, and it's almost 2 a.m. and I didn't take the day off from work, and I am not fine.

I can't sleep.

I can't think of anything but surgery and mortality rates and blood.

I should've taken the fucking day off.

Father's Day is a Long Day

It's been a long day.

Sometimes that sentence holds more meaning for me than I ever thought it would, when I heard adults throw it around at us kids, using as an excuse to not play Barbies when my mother got home from work, or to feed us Pizza Hut instead of cooking for the second night in a row.

I know now what a person might really mean when they say it's been a long day.

Sometimes they mean that they're exhausted.

That they are tired from the inside out.

Sometimes they mean that today was a day they weren't sure they were ever going to get through when they were in the middle of it, and now that they're in the home stretch they just want to kiss it goodbye as soon as possible.

Sometimes they mean that they hate themselves for how tired they feel.

They feel guilty for wanting today to be over so quickly, because today was supposed to be a special day for someone that they're supposed to love.

And it's not that they don't love the person they're supposed to, it's just that maybe they're supposed to have loved them better, especially on a day like today, but they just couldn't find the energy to do it, and now they wish they had.

Sometimes it means that love wears us out, and responsibility and obligation make us weary, and in the noise of all of that it's easier than we'd like to lose sight of what we know is true:

Today was a gift.

We're lucky to have people we love around us at all.

Some day we'll be all out of Father's Days to celebrate with our dads, and we'll wish that we had done these ones better.

Now that I'm home, in my air conditioned house with the lights off and some candles lit and the smell of home made black bean nachos swirling in the kitchen, I wonder why today was so hard.

I don't really know why this day is always such a struggle for us, my father and I.

I don't really know why it never works out the way I swear every year that it will this time.

I do know all the little ways in which this day tests me and hurts me and infuriates me and exhausts me, but I also know I love my father too much to write it all out for the world to see.

To make our weaknesses and dysfunctions live in infamy forever.

I just wish that for once it would go better.

I wish for once that it wouldn't hurt as badly as it always does.

I wish I knew I had plenty more Father's Days left to figure it all out.

But I don't know how many I have left.

How many he has left.

I guess in the end, the good news is, no matter how damaged or flawed he is, no matter how scarred and imperfect he left me, I know my father loves me.

What It Was Like

Somebody asked me today what it was like growing up with someone who was bi-polar.

To my own astonishment, I stood there with my mouth flapping silently like a half drunk seal, completely unable to put anything into words.

What was it like?

It was like living on the edge of a canyon, where the bottom is full of wolves, and sneaking out at night to listen to them howling just so many feet below you, their hollow instinctual keening rising up like a tidal wave above the rock walls, so deep and sharp that you can feel it in your belly.

And there's nothing you can do about the sound, or the location of your house, or the fact that wolves need to howl and you can't sleep through the sound, so you just sit, night after night on the rim of that canyon and listen.

And watch.

And sometimes you howl too just because maybe they'll stop if they think they're not alone.

It's like living in a world where pain and beauty and loss exist all at the same time, and all of  the time. It's the sound of Mozart in the morning, and not being able to paint to anything but Berlioz or Bob Dylan.

It's song lyrics painted on the wall, and waking up to pasta for breakfast and candy bars hidden between the pages of your school books.

It's not having friends over for months at a time, and learning how to drive when you're 14.

It's motorcycles, and charcoal drawings and smoking on the back patio at 4 a.m.

It's knowing what the morning smells like when you didn't sleep last night, and explaining to people why your dad is always sleeping on the couch at 4 p.m.

And the weird part is, you hate all of it, and you can't live without any of it.

And when you finally grow up and move away you find yourself doing odd things.

Like making messes in the kitchen so you can pretend they're someone else's when you clean them up, or playing Berlioz even though you always hated that music, or leaving the T.V. on in the other room while you sleep, because you realize you've never slept in a silent house.

You miss the way 80 miles an hour feels on the back of a Harley when you should be at school, and what a good burrito tastes like when your dad brings you one home unexpectedly in the middle of the night.

You realize that growing up with someone like that is like carrying a bouquet of broken glass and roses, like loving someone who's imprisoned in another country, like a song you can't stop humming.

It's beautiful and it's painful, and it's a color that there isn't a name for.

It's what a child who's been deaf since he was born calls his mother.

It's your own word for love.

Family

Families are crazy.

We all know that.

Why do I get the feeling sometimes that my family is exceptionally crazy?

Like I am somehow related to a group of people who are more dysfunctional and fucked up than the average bunch of shitty family members that most people were blessed with?

Family has been on my mind a lot lately.

Mainly because it's now officially "the holiday season" and that means one thing: my dad is going to go batshit crazy, make everyone mad, and do a bunch of Scarlet O'Hara impressions until I get drunk and throw food at him, then he starts crying and handing out cans of vegetables to all the children, saying "Eat up little darlings!"

OK, maybe that's not exactly how holidays with him go, but it's pretty damn close. 

Does anyone remember Father's Day? 

I remember Father's Day.

I don't know what exactly holidays do to my father, that make him so certifiably insane, every Goddamn time, but it is truly remarkable how his insanity seems to increase, exponentially with each day of the year that is supposed to be a happy memory of family love and togetherness.

Take Thanksgiving, for example.

Every year, for a long time, my sister Erica hosted Thanksgiving. She was the mature, responsible one in the family, with a husband and a full set of silverware and all that. So every year, we would all head over there, and she would make an awesome meal, and I would avoid my dad by staying in the kitchen with Erica, and we could usually get through the whole day without fighting. But, since our family had a huge falling out over the last three years, primarily between me, my dad and my sisters, with my two sisters on one side of the divide, and me on the other, and my dad somewhere in the middle trying to stir up both sides, we no longer go to Erica's for any holidays. 

So there was a year where I went to a friend's house for Thanksgiving. Stress free and wonderful. And last year, where I felt bad for my dad not having any where to go, so I ended up cooking. 

No big deal.

This year, it is the first year that my dad is not staying with some friend, or in between housing arrangements, and he actually seemed to have his shit together enough to possibly pull off hosting a holiday, so he volunteered to do it.

I knew in the beginning that this was probably too much for him to take on, but I didn't want to shoot down his dreams, so I encouraged him to try it. I figured at the worst, we'd have some mediocre food, and I'd get bombed on cheap wine while my dad passed out plastic spoons for everyone to cut their turkey with.

I was wrong.

My dad has clearly cracked under the pressure of hosting a holiday, and after a huge, white trash, front yard screaming match over a text message I didn't understand properly, he has locked himself in his house, and cancelled Thanksgiving all together.

So, this year I have every intention of staying home with some rum and coke, a stack of movies, and a delicious pot roast and mashed potatoes. 

I will be thankful with my kids, and do my own thing, and not have to please anyone.

Plus I get to stay in my pajamas, and I don't have to share my french onion dip with anybody.

Winning.

Happy F*cking Father's Day!

Well, Fathers Day in the house of Sarah is coming to an end. I spent the entire day today with my dad, and...well, it went exactly like I thought it would. Holidays and birthdays with my dad are complicated, and to put it simply, I never look forward to them. I in fact didn't have a birthday that he didn't ruin until my 22 birthday. And he tried to ruin that one too. Every year on my birthday, either he would be depressed and not get out of bed, be manic and wanting to fight, or calmly and quietly tell me what a terrible disappointment I was, and how my birthday used to be something worth celebrating, but he just didn't feel that way anymore. Thanks pops. Love you too.

To be fair, he does shit like that on his birthday too. So at least nobody gets to happily celebrate the day they were born.

Holidays with him are always stressful and complicated and something I usually save my one Xanax refill for, mainly because he is NEVER HAPPY. By never I mean never ever ever in the history of ever, and by happy I mean easy to get a long with, cordial, polite, cooperative or even in a half decent mood.

The day starts out the same for his birthday and father's day:

Me: Happy birthday/father's day Dad!

Dad: *grumbles* thanks

Me: What do you wanna do today?

Dad: *LONG AWKWARD SILENCE WHERE HE LOOKS AWAY A LOT OF SEEMS MAD*

Me: We can do anything you want. Wanna go out to eat? Go see a movie?

Dad: *grumbles* Idunno. *long silence*

Me: Ok......*looks away and tries to make small talk to no avail*

And it goes on like this forever. Sometimes hours. Oh I so wish I was exaggerating when I say hours. No, I mean it. Hours. Once he finally decides what he wants to do/agrees to do something I suggest, and we set a time for me to pick him up, I can guarantee without a doubt he will absolutely positively with 100% certainty, be just getting out of the shower when I get to his house to pick him up. Not dressed. Not anywhere near ready to go. And the remainder of his getting ready process will take until. the. end. of. fucking. time. It once took him an hour and a half to get out the door when all he still needed to do was put his shoes on. You know how I say getting the kids out the door feels like herding turtles? Ya, I think they learned that shit from him.

Once we're on the road, and the day is underway, it becomes a long, seemingly endless day of pretending to have fun, faking being in a good mood, and hiding my frustration as he sits there quiet and pissed off looking, only smiling and conversing with the children, while acting like I'm not there. And God forbid I discipline the kids for something he doesn't agree with, or the house isn't as clean as he'd like (this coming from him, a bipolar hoarder) for all hell will break loose and he will spend the rest of the day telling me what a failure I am. Thanks again pops.

Assuming we can avoid that, and the day goes without a fight (which is so rare, I can probably count on one hand how many times it's happened) I spend the day catering to him, getting the food and the drinks he likes and enduring whatever he wants to spend ALL DAY doing, like today when we spent almost $100 on food, and 4 hours swimming and BBQing with the kids, and at the end of it, when I drop him off at home, he stonewalls me.

That's right. A BBQ in his honor for father's day. An entire day with his daughter (the only kid he has who still speaks to him) and grandkids (the only two out of the 8 he has that he actually gets to see) and we did everything he wanted to do, and at the end, no thank you, no "I had a good time" no "I love you" not even so much as a "Bye" or a mumble or anything. He kisses his grandkids, gets out of the car, and without looking at me, waving or acknowledging me at all, he goes inside.

Love you too Dad!

So, yet another holiday where the only family who still tries to have a relationship with him, spends the day doting on him and loving him, and at the end the person who put it all together and made it all happen AND didn't stab him with a fork in the process, gets stiffed. Not so much as a fucking goodbye.

And I ask myself: Why do I even fucking bother?

Happy Fucking Fathers Day!

Thank You Daddy

Father's Day is Sunday, and while seeing as how I have completely procrastinated and not planned anything so far for my dad, I am completely filled with anxiety over what to get him, where to take him and what to do.

Bigger than the stress of gift giving and entertaining my father for an entire day, I am more perplexed over something bigger....an issue that stems from the complicated relationship my father and I have had since I was little.....

What do I say to him?

Things between me and my dad have never been....easy. We've always had a complicated relationship to say the least. He's bipolar, as most of you know, and he didn't receive treatment, medication or counseling of any kind until I was 12. By that time, he'd been a father for 22 years to my brother and sisters. He'd made a lot of mistakes, both with my siblings and with me. He was angry most of the time, irresponsible and self centered pretty much all the time, and from the time I was 9 years old I felt more like his parent than his child. He could be vicious when he was mad (which was often) and emotional abuse became a near constant in our house.

Over the years, things were up and down. He got better for about a year when I was 12, and got sick again when I was 13. This is the year he moved me and him into the shop at his junkyard, where we lived for 9 months with no shower, no heat, no oven or stove until my sister came home from college and moved me into her apartment with her. There are, needless to say, a lot of things I still struggle to forgive my father for. I am not bitter, or angry, but despite his best efforts (and believe it or not, he did try his best) he left me with some serious issues that still come back to bite me after all this time.

And still, we fight like cats and dogs. He stresses me out when he's around for more than a few hours. I know that sounds heartless, but I have been taking care of him since I was 11, and as much as he's grown and changed, he is still very hard to deal with. He's mentally ill and that will never change. We don't get along the best, and we don't see eye to eye, and we can't spend much time together without fighting, and the list goes on and on. But still. It's Father's Day. But still. He's some of the only family I have left that I can trust even a little bit. I should say something.

So, on this Father's Day, the 23rd Father's Day we've spent together, I want to say this to my dad:

Thank you Daddy, for never giving up on me. When my mother didn't want me, you always did. When you were too sick to get out of bed, you still never sent me away. When I got pregnant at 15, you told me we were in this together.

Thank you Daddy, for always trying your best. Even when you were so sick you couldn't think, even when we had nothing, even when you wanted so badly to give up and cash it all in, you didn't. You knew I needed you, and you tried your best to be there.

Thank you Daddy, for teaching me everything you knew. I can change a tire, I can jump a battery, I can check my oil and my brake fluid and my tire pressure and my tranny fluid too. I can stretch a canvas and gesso it smooth. I can do a lot of things, because you taught me how.

Thank you Daddy for giving me words. I would've never wrote a poem, or a song, or a story if you hadn't put a pen in my hand and showed me the power of words on a page. Without the gift of writing, there is a lot in my past that I honestly don't think I would have survived.

Thank you Daddy for making me strong. Maybe you fucked up a lot, and maybe you did everything "wrong" but you made me one tough mother fucker and I appreciate that more than you know.

Thank you Daddy for showing me that people can change. For making me more accepting, more open hearted and understanding. For showing me that the mentally ill aren't incapable or untrustworthy, and that they need love just as much as anyone else. You showed me how to love from the very bottom of my heart, Without question, and without holding back. I couldn't do the job I do if you hadn't given me that gift.

I love you daddy, and even though I might have told you otherwise during all those temper tantrums I threw growing up, I really wouldn't trade you for any other father in the world.

Happy Father's Day, Daddy.

xoxo

Sarebear