Scribblings from the Black Hole

I think the hardest part is wanting to feel normal and never actually getting there.

I envy myself on the days when I don't feel anything. Because, obviously, when I don't feel anything, it means that I don't feel depressed. Or sad. Or angry. Or holding on to something negative that I can't quite identify but which throws me off of feeling like a normal person. Not feeling anything feels good to me. When I'm sitting down and don't have to sigh to try and release all the tension built up inside of me that came from somewhere... and I'm not always sure where... that's really nice.

I'm depressed. I'm imbalanced. I know it. I'm working on it.

I went to my first round of therapy last Friday. For those of you who have arrived at my blog late, here are a couple things you should know:

1. I am severely depressed and have been since my parent's divorce. However, I am normally able to cover it up with schoolwork, since I am a perfectionist. This winter break, 5 weeks of doing nothing, determined that I need to go to therapy again (yes, this is my second time since the divorce) and finally work through my feelings about that man that's supposedly my father and my depression.

2. I know my therapist. He was my Drugs in Our Society instructor and I'm convinced that the only reason why I was in that major (Health Education) for a semester (before settling with journalism) and why I took that class was so God could have me meet him. He is a very kind man and the fact that I know him makes talking to him 100 times easier, although he doesn't necessarily think so.

So, my therapist and I sat down Friday to begin things. I spent the first half-an-hour talking about my week and when he said, "I wouldn't give a teacher that much power," it began. After much discussing, we settled on a couple of things to work on.
1. My perfectionist nature — why I kick my butt to get straight A's when I know I don't need to.
2. My depression — the fact that it didn't begin due to my parent's divorce
3. My crying — I do it whenever I have an overabundance of any emotion

None of these I can work on alone. I should probably work on my anger as well, but I'm sure that, with time, working through the depression will lessen the anger.

What's really not helping me this week is the unnecessary drama that I've been going through. One of my goals was to stay away from all the dramatic stuff this semester at the newspaper... but it seems to have followed me out of it. It really makes me sad to be in any kind of rift with any of my friends, especially since I'm new here and still don't have that many friend.

But I'll keep working through it, the stress, the drama, the depression.

There's got to be a light out of this hole somewhere.

Here We Go Again

I have to start therapy a week from this Friday and I have no idea if I'm prepared for it or not.

I don't know what to say about my dad or even where to begin. He haunts my dreams sometimes, always yelling about something, and I wake just wishing that he was gone. I hate wishing someone to just be gone from my life but it's true. What hurts so much is to be starting this again, to be telling the same stories all over again, to be reliving some of the same memories all over again. With my friends and my family... they know what he did. They know what he did to hurt me and my family. They know all the reasons why I despise the man with every last bone in my body. They know all the horrible things that he's done and said to make me wish he was on another planet. They know why I talk about how I don't really have a dad.

But I do have a dad and I have to talk about him next Friday. I have to talk about his verbal abusive attitude and his hate for everything in the world, and how he would treat everyone in my family horribly and say how wonderful his daughter, Megan, was. I have to talk about how everyone else outside my family couldn't believe me when I told them that living with him was like walking on egg-shells because "your father is such a good man and he seems to love you so much." I have to talk about what he's doing now, the lying and the toying he's doing with the lawyers.

And somehow... I have to find a solution. I have to come to terms with myself. I have to figure out a way not to hate myself so damn much... I have to figure out how to look in the mirror and see someone I'm proud of looking back, not someone who I absolutely loathe. I have to come to terms with the fact that I can't change my last name until I get married someday. I have to figure out how to be happy again.

But I just dont know where to begin.

Conflicted Holiday

Christmas is a conflicted time of year for me.

Now that I live away from home, Christmas is no longer a holiday that I begin and end with my family. It is a holiday that I join in on, a holiday that is left to childhood memories and feelings of the past. I really feel like that, until I am married and have my own family to celebrate the holidays with, Christmas has become simply a time to "remember when" and just spend time with the family I have.

Two memories dominate my mind when December decides to show her chilly face in my life. First, there's the memory that makes me look forward to Christmas. The memory of growing up in Tehachapi. The memory that reminds me of how Christmas feels. This one consists of decorations on the house, the snow covering our 2 1/2 acres of land shimmering in the moonlight, my sister and I pulling our sleds up a hill only to ride back down it again, calling after our dog who had decided to hide in the snow from us, making cat huts (instead of snowmen) out of snow for my cats (who loved them, by the way, and would hide in them as soon as we put an old towel inside that they could lie down on), hot chocolate, a roaring fire, a giant Christmas tree with presents stacked underneath it, listening to the sound of laughter as I watched my family open presents, the smell of the pancakes my mom would make every Christmas morning...

The Christmas of my childhood.

Then, there's that memory that always ruins my Christmas, that memory that makes me despise this time of year more than anything else. You probably guessed it. It's the memory of my father and the legacy that he left behind when he decided to thrash his way out of his family's life. Now, most people might be mad at me for not just saying "screw him!" and throwing this memory out, but, when it's been so deeply ingrained in my mind, it's hard to remember Christmas without remembering him. Without remembering how much he hated the holiday. Without remembering how he moaned and groaned about getting the Christmas tree every year because "it wasn't Christian" and "it's too much trouble" and "that's not what Christmas was all about." Without remembering how, on Christmas day after my sister and I had opened up all of our presents, he would ask us to give him half of the presents that we had recieved to give to the homeless shelter. Without remembering him getting mad at us when we asked him why he didn't just ask us to do that before we opened the presents, before we had seen what they had given us. Without remembering closed blinds and hiding in bedrooms and going out to see a movie with my mom and sister just so we could get the hell away from him sitting at home, being an absolute terror.

I once gave my father a Grinch tie as a Christmas gift and a joke. Now, years later, I wonder if I was predicting the future.

So, as I end finals this week and head from my university to my mom's house for Christmas, I open my book of memories and try to flip backwards through all the bad memories to my childhood in Tehachapi, when all I thought about was stockings and snow and servings of bacon, fresh from the skillet.

What memories do you carry with you at this time of year?

Questions and Blogs

How do you explain to a 5-year-old what you don't even hardly understand yourself?

Luckily, to my aunt and myself, my two eldest cousins don't remember my father at all. Zach doesn't remember that dad focused in on him whenever we came to family events. Mary doesn't remember... well, anything, because when dad was around, she was 2 or 3. So, because of this, the kids never have really asked any questions about where Uncle Dan is, since Aunt Ree and Kel and myself come to visit all the time.

So I didn't really expect it when Mary asked me today about why my dad isn't around. My aunt and I had been talking about how the kids are lucky that they dont remember dad and that, if they do, the only memories they have of him are good ones because he loved little kids (because he could relate to them?) but couldn't handle young adults (because we weren't full adults or something... I don't know why) when the conversation went like this:
Mary: So, then your dad turned bad?
Me: Well, he's in a lot of pain and he's not married to Aunt Ree anymore and doesn't enjoy life.
Mary: Is that why he turned bad?
Me: That's the basics.
Mary: So... if he met me... if he met me...
Me: He would like you, Mary.
Mary: Because I'm little?
Me: Yes. He liked little kids your age.
Mary: But... he's your dad.
And at that point, I was saved by two of the kids friends coming over and not having to explain any more. Because how do you explain to a 5-year-old why you have a "bad dad" or why he isn't married to your mother anymore?


On the flip side of things, I went with mom, my aunt, and my aunt's sister last night to see Julie & Julia, which, if you don't know, is about a woman named Julie who tries every single recipe in Julia Childs' cookbooks (all 500-something of them) and blogs about it. It was a wonderful movie, funny and sad all at the same time, with Meryl Streep playing the fumbly Julia Childs and Amy Adams playing Julie. I would definintely go and see it again. (That is, if I had to money to go see movies more than once.) I, however, am saving up my money to see The Time Traveller's Wife, which should be a good movie if it made me cry in the preview (or that could have just been hormones - you never know 'cause I'm a girl).


Julie & Julia got me to thinking that I needed a project. Short term goals, Julie said, which is why she was doing the daily blog after ever single recipe. I have my goal of finishing draft 2 outline by October 2, I know this, but a daily goal of something else would be nice. So I'm on the search.

You just wait.