Demons

I haven't written for a week. Lot of reasons. I've been crazy busy. Emphasis more on the crazy I think. Every year, for as long as I can remeber...maybe even longer, I get crazy (more than my usual) for the two weeks leading up to February 18th. I thought I was going to make it through relatively easy this year. Maybe, just maybe, this particular demon would just wave as it drove by. No such luck. It showed up with a new trick.

There were a couple of brief drivebys. Nothing I couldn't handle. And then the nightmares started. Some are the ones I've always had, of seeing Daddy, of knowing what was going to happen and not be able to stop it. But now there were new ones too. Whenever things have been really difficult over the past few years, I will inevitably have a dream about Daddy. In them, he's the age he would be if he'd lived. And he is whole in body and spirit. We're usually sitting on a set of front steps or fishing by a lake. (Actually, he's fishing, I'm just hanging out with him...fishing....ICK). But he's there when I need him. We talk though I don't often remember what he says. (My Uncle Alden would argue Daddy's telling to listen to him...I'm pretty sure Daddy gets a kick out of that) But in these nightmares, I've been to both of our places and he's not there. There isn't even the sense of his presence that I've always been able to feel. There's nothing. He really gone and he hasn't said goodbye.

To say I've got abandonment issues is to put it mildly. I've learned to deal with them...not always well, but that's a subject for another time. This however, has thrown me. I can look at the nightmares intellectually, see them for what they are. If only my mind could run the show, but I'm trying to live from my heart.

Unfortunately, my heart, it just hurts. I hurt the same way I did when I was four years old and my mother told me what had happened to Daddy. I was left alone to deal with the loss that day. That is still how I tend to deal with it. Not because I don't now have people to be there for me. There simply are no words. They were held in that day and I've never been able to get them to come out. I even stopped speaking to God. It would be years before we made peace.

Isn't it strange, how just when we know how to send our personal demons on their way, they find a new way to kick us in the gut? I've worked incredibly hard to get my life on an even keel. At this point, I'm more concerned with peace than with happiness (may seem twisted, but it's the truth). It seems I have even more hard work ahead of me. I'll work on it tomorow. And in the meantime, I'll light a candle and say a prayer for Daddy and another for all the families who have to go through this hell.