Emotionally I'm feeling like a new person.
I hit bottom around my birthday. I felt pretty much nothing but pain and loss and anger. Months of not dealing with Dad's death and being overtired and stressed from school and work just came to a head. But I eventually hashed things out with Jim, cried to Jen, called my family back and got a hold of myself. I still feel like I'm the walking wounded, like I have a tiny badge on my shoulder that reads "fatherless child" but most of the time it's bearable. It's more a constant dull ache than the bottomless void that I was teetering over.
My Mom posted a picture on Facebook last week of my dad from about three days before he died. It hit me like a hammer to the guts. Sucked me back in time to when I was sitting at his bedside holding his hand and telling him that it was okay for him to go while praying with all my heart for him to take one more breath. I get so wrapped up in that pain, in that loss, that I forget how to live, how to laugh and enjoy just being alive.
I'd still give it all up to have him back.
We'd arranged for Dad to get to take a ride in a Porsche around a real private race track. It was his last trip out of the house and the first time his life he ever got to sit in a Porsche. It was the closest we were able to get him to a Nascar race. It still hurts that he never got to do all the things he dreamed of.
But I'm still trying. I'm going to classes and getting better grades on my tests. I actually feel like I'm learning how to be a nurse now. I'm trying to get to know my classmates and I'm finding out that I really do like a lot of them. I'm part of a group of people now who are trying to change their lives by helping others. We laugh at the same disgusting stories about poop and drainage tubes over lunch. We bitch about ditsy professors and condescending classmates and we come to each other for a supportive shoulder when times get tough. I'm not the only out of towner or the only person with a rocky history, I'm not the only person trying to pick themselves up off the ground. I can figure out how to smile.
So I get up each day and go to class, I come home and cuddle with my cats or my husband and do some studying. I even go out for drinks or dancing with the girls every once and a while. I go to work and get encouraged by all the wonderful nurses and techs who stood by me through my darkest hour. The people who have helped me keep my promise to Dad to keep going and become a nurse, to do what makes me happy.One day at a time.
