Blog Reboot

I actually sat down almost two months ago to write about this startling realization I'd been able to have about my father. Writing a post on my blog was amazing in itself due to the fact that it’s been almost a year and half since I last wrote anything here. So there I sat posting what I felt was a huge chunk of my healing heart when I decided to take a break. I stepped away with the idea that I'd come back the next day to edit and then post. But I let life get in the way… again. Time flies when you are living life!

And the truth is I need to learn to use this blog as a tool in living my life. It’s something I hope I’ll touch on in the coming weeks.   

Let me begin by saying this blog started out as a bucket list item to be completed. I also had finally figured a way to express myself in a literary sense like I used to in high school English and college. However, I wasn't pushing myself to publish, letting my friends know about it, or even understanding how to go about promoting it. So I ultimately walked away from it. Nonetheless, it was always in the back of my mind because I've always wanted to write a book about my life. Then again, I thought if I couldn't write a simple blog then where I was I ever going to get the stamina to write a book. 

In addition to this nagging need to express my voice I also had this feeling that there was some deeper presence insisting me to make a move. I think it was God. From the blogging workshop I happened to attended at a church event the week I started this blog two months ago to the sermon serious on “Surrender” this past month, everything has been pointing back in this direction. The final realization this week: my Dad’s anniversary. As of July 19, 2013 my father will have been dead for two years.  And this blog entry, the one I’ve been having a hard time editing, is basically about him.

Let me explain briefly the remainder of this post. It was written in its entirety about 2 months ago. I will be editing it for time references and general edits but for the most part it is exactly my thoughts as I had them at the time. It is about a puzzle piece snapping into place and the peaceful satisfaction of understanding a bigger picture. Let me warn you in saying that both my blog entry and the blog I reference deals with the difficult topics of depression and suicide. The blogger referenced also uses harsher language than I do but that’s her way of expressing herself in this situation. I hope that despite the harder themes that the heart of my post is encouraging and honors the gift my father gave me (both earthy and heavenly).

Original post:

Today (May 17) I read a post from a blogger that I followed consistently about 1-2 years ago - until she stopped posting. I mentioned her blog in my very first blog post almost a year and a half ago. At that time I wasn't sure if I was allowed to reference other blogs within your own.  I now know that as long as you don't steal whatever they talk about and claim it as your own then the greatest form of blogging flattery is to talk about another blogger in your own blog.  So the blog that started it all for me was the blog by Allie at Hyperbole and a Half.  As I wrote before, her words just spoke to me.  She made me laugh and cry and everything in between.  She also made me realize that this blogging thing is a legitimate art form.

The blog is a mix of her fun drawings and stories that depict her real life growing up to now.  That is until she disappeared. Her last post before she disappeared was about depression, so I always wondered if that had something to do with her being silent. What is amazingly ironic about all of this was her last post coincided with the beginning of starting my blog (albeit - I'm not sure 5 posts in a 3 month period and then over a year of silence amounts to a consistent blog).  Her last post was also at about the time I was coming out of my very own depression tunnel.

So in reading Allie’s post (from May 16) touched me... in indescribable ways. So much so I wanted to comment on her blog and try and put words to what I was feeling. I wrote my comment all out only to find out she had reached her comment limit of 5,000 comments already! All within a couple of hours!  Don't get me wrong, I think that's fantastic and I was happy for her. But I was also a little sad because I didn't get to share my own feelings about her post. I wrote about how the post reminded me of why I wanted to start my blog in the first place - to tell my story. My story of depression, which is so similar to Allie’s story, was depicted in such an elegant, artistic way that can only be described as essentially ‘Allie’.

So before I lost the comment I wrote it down in a draft post on my own blog. I wasn't sure I was actually going to post it or not. Specifically because I wanted to use what I learned in a blogging class about promoting one's blog using other social media outlets. I planned on putting a notice on my Facebook page. And if I made a post about this comment - would I want this to be the first post my friends and family might read?  I could always use it later as a part of telling my story.  But the truth was that Allie's post was helping to find my voice.  It helped me realize a big part of what has happened to me in the last two years and how that recovery has made me into the person I am today.  In essence it might be the perfect place to start...

So for a reference go to http://www.hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html and read her blog about her 18 month depression.

My comment:

"Thank you for sharing. I actually had these exact same feelings a little over two years ago in April 2011. However mine only lasted 3 weeks. I can't imagine 18 months of that much nothingness.  But from your post I think I got to the semi-suicidal thoughts faster. And trying to explain to others about how I want to cease to exist, but that I did not want to actually do something to make that ceasing to exist actually happen, just confused those I managed to tell. However, you understood the feeling. I probably would have stayed in that state if not for a few key people who pushed me into going to the doctor to get on medication. I was lucky, I know this, because 1) I listened and 2) the right medication/dosage occurred the first time. And like you I came back to life in spurts.

My corn - the piece of the puzzle that just changed everything - wasn't unexpected and weird joy.  My corn was unexpected and weird grief. In July of 2011, I had been on anxiety/depression medication for three months and the ultimate test of it would occur. My father, at the age of 56, died without any warning, of a sudden heart attack. I had a very difficult relationship with my father and I had actually cut him out of my life for the last three years of his life. As a result, grieving his death took me by unexpected surprise because of its intensity. It also took me through a whole range of emotions I thought I had forgotten. It forced me to feel everything in all its Technicolor glory for the first time in six months. The grief process is a long one and to this day I sometimes still feel it. But it also allowed me to work on feelings I'd buried for years. It allowed me to find a way to forgiveness which I'd been struggling with for years. It would take me another three months but I would eventually find my way to joy and gratefulness I had not really experienced... ever in my whole life. It is weird, and often hard to think about, that my father dying probably saved my own sanity, possibly my own life. For that I am simply humbled with gratitude.

In the last 18 months, which crazily coincides with the time you have been silent, I have had the most amazing life. Truly. But I still have these moments, often when I am taking my medication (that I still take daily), where I freeze and remember those three weeks. Sometimes a sliver of the nothingness washes over me. I shake it off every time. I pray that I will always find a way to do that but it reminds me just how close that other reality is inside me. I pray you find a way to cope with this alternate reality of yours and also find ways to shake it off.  Thank you for sharing such an intimate part of you."

And that's where for the first time I put into words just how extraordinary my father's death really was for me.  It felt like it was such a big realization to have and I didn't want to lose it simply because Allie's comment section was shut off.

The more I work on this post the more I think it's the perfect place to start (or restart considering this is the 6th post).  But it will be the first post I will actively put out to the world... so a real start.

I am excited to continue this journey.