Composition, composure: hurricane's eye

Two-forty-five. A raging case of insomnia if there ever was one, and oh, what a night to have it. The soothing cup of tea and my most recent read were both finished two hours ago. The ink that's flowed out of my pen for the last thirty minutes has formed itself into words centering mostly around the idea of 'forgiveness.'

After finishing up on code work for the night, I did something silly. Utterly stupid, in fact. Something that I know better than to do, and yet I did it anyway: I looked at the sites for other bits of journaling software.

I came away angry—an emotion I seem to know too well these days. Angry at myself for knowing that my innate perfectionism will cause me to kick myself for being unable (or unwilling) to write a piece of journaling software that is the best of its kind, even though it suits my needs perfectly. Angry at myself for throwing myself wholeheartedly into this project after Dad died in March, knowing good and well that it was as much therapy as it was teaching myself to handle a large coding project.

Sometimes I think that if I spent half as much time knitting as I spent just annoyed with myself, that all my friends would have sweaters for Christmas.

I think about forgiveness a lot, in the same way that an unrepentant sinner idly contemplates confession on Saturday night; as something to be done—eventually. Later. Preferably tomorrow. Or the next Sunday.

I think about forgiveness a lot because the surge of pain and anger (at Fate, at God, at whoever is stupid enough or strong enough to stand in my way) at least reminds me that I am alive. With living comes the capacity to feel. Forgiveness is my secret toothache; I prod it occasionally with my tongue and it responds, reasserting its presence briefly before fading back into the silence.

I am angry because I am numb, and I am angry in the hopes that it will banish the numbness. Stay angry, young girl, and perhaps it will cause you to wake up one morning with a strong and vivid plan of how, exactly, to get on with your life.

Yet I still can't find a way to just—react—when someone asks me how I'm doing. More often than not, my responses are weighed, measured, calculated, and cut to size (with allowance for shrinkage) before being presented to others. Better, perhaps, just to draw a box in the air with my hands, point, and say, "This is where the scream would go, if I let it out."

Shortly after Mom told me Dad's cancer prognosis (read: fifteen seconds after the call ended) I started reading up everything I could about what he had and what we should expect. Everything I read came down to a brutal psychological statement: that the three most painful life experiences are the death of one's parent, the death of one's spouse, and the death of one's child.

They don't tell you that you become the hurricane's eye, the central point of stasis around which the anger swirls, destroying everything in its path.

I can deal with my memories of the oncology ward and everything after because I can write about them. In composition comes composure. With the end of the piece comes the recession of the anger; it goes back to its corner and I go back to mine.

As long as there are words, I will be just fine.

* * * * *

See? Calm now. Yes, I know your bill for therapy is something along the lines of three hundred dollars per hour, but will you locals settle for coming over to my house on the 4th and shooting off fireworks? That, and maybe a freshly-baked dessert, is all you're likely to get…

Comments

*s* you can vent to me Any Time :) (and I'd love to come over for the 4th, especially for "home baked" :) but I'll have to take a rain check. Maybe next year? *LOL* (venting is good. is good for those around you, so you don't hit them :)

I have *one* more price ... a drink with maple syrup in it. :p I find myself contemplating leaving a long comment because of three or four conversations I had yesterday, but I think I'll ramble on my own site and not graffiti yours. For once.

hugs. It sounds like you and your father were close as I was with mine. Whether it was a blessing or a curse, you knew when he was going to die and you were able to prepare yourself (as much as you really can prepare.) I had to find my father. Suddenly. I understand the anger. I understand the inability to tell people how you really feel. I understand that if you told people how you really did feel, they'd probably lock you away for a good long time. Don't be afraid to feel...whatever the emotion. Those that can't understand right now will come around. They will form an understanding because they know you. And in the meantime, I'd invest in a good punching bag for that anger. *grin*

The really bitter irony about all this is that no, for most of my life, my father and I weren't close. We didn't get along terribly well at all [in the span of my teenage years this would be a massive understatement]. In the two years before he died, we had finally started figuring out how to talk to each other. Especially after Jeff and I married, and we bought our house in '99. He worked swing shift most of my life, and thus wasn't there for a lot of things. After he retired last year, we talked more than we'd ever talked before. Last Christmas was fantastic. I came home feeling like we'd found a way to make peace, and that from there on out things would be different. He was diagnosed with cancer a month later and gone two months after that. So - were we close? Sorta. More than anything I feel cheated. I got something I'd spent most of my life dearly wishing I could have, and had it for about a month. Mmmmm....punching bag. :)

Despite appearances, I am not a punching bag. I thought I would make that clear. :)