timing and other bullshit

first i'll say...if you're reading this, please don't take offense, and PLEASE don't feel badly. i mean it.

now with that out of the way, i gotta get this out.

i watched "ps i love you" last night...and it was sweet. it was a good flick, but i argued with myself through most of it. well, myself and the author(s). i didn't really like the way grief was portrayed. or wait, not portrayed, but how it was reacted to. i think "holly"'s grief was pretty true to form, and actually so were her friends' responses, but i couldn't quite figure out what the movie was saying about it all. were her friends right that she just needed to move on? the thing with her mom and "this is not healthy" blahblahblah...is it true? when someone dies, is there a timeline to our sadness, and a point when we gotta forget it all and move on?

you can guess the reason i was so conflicted. i know grief... i mean, not a spouse, of course, but he was my dad. i know what it feels like to go through this thing that's complicated and slow-mo and frustrating. i know what it's like to not know what to say to your friends and how to go on living a "normal" life. but i really felt like the movie was on the side of her friends and family, pushing the "time to move on" theme. i dunno, maybe i'm just extra sensitive to the grief-thing right now.

as far as moving on, etc., no one can tell you how to do it right. there is no right. just personal experience, i guess.

so here's the part to which i would hate for you to take offense. where is everyone? i know i'm not a phone person, and i never have been, but i could use some support here. a text, an email, just something to know people are still out there thinking about me. my very closest friends have let me down in the last [nearly] six months with their lack of involvement. i know life is busy and it goes on and all that. i know. and i'm not mad, just sad. my dad's dead, ya know? doesn't that warrant a check-up every other week or so? i hate needing people. i hate that selfish feeling...like "where are you people and don't you care?" 'cause i know they care. i know, know, know they care so much. and i should be the last person to talk, 'cause when am i ever "there" for people? but it hurts anyway.

and what about those people who have been there? the people who really "rose to the occasion" and have been kind and comforting and have not "forgotten" me? i just look right over them in my selfishness. thanks to you guys. you really do mean the world to me...for just being there, and for understanding that this thing is going to be tough for me for a very long time, and there is no "just moving on."

anyway, i really am sorry for my selfishness. i really hope i didn't hurt anyone's feelings with this post.

hearts will break

Today is a week away from my 25th birthday. Birthdays have never really been a huge deal in my family…I mean, we’ve always celebrated and had a cake and all that yummy goodness, but we never went over-the-top with presents or spent tons of cash on parties, that kind of thing. I can think of at least two instances in which my parents actually forgot my birthday until that evening or the next day. Sad at the time, but humorous now. All I’m saying is birthdays (and really all holidays) just aren’t made into major ordeals around our house.
So I should be fine, right? I mean, I’m turning 25 in a week, and just ‘cause my mom will be out of town, doesn’t mean anything. Birthdays aren’t that big, right? But I’m so ridiculously hurting. I get choked up every time I think about next week. My sister’s going to come up and spend the day with me, but that night…I can already see it, the moment I’m going to have in my bed trying to sleep. All alone in the big house, turning a monumental age, and most of all without my daddy. I don’t know why birthdays have suddenly turned into such a big deal. I could almost ask my mom not to go on her trip! I won’t, of course, ‘cause I don’t do that kind of thing, and she has to go, it’s for her business. But man, it’s hard.
I keep asking myself, “What’s your DEAL? Dad rarely even bought you a present on his own!” But it’s like I keep picturing all the times he did. And all the cards he signed over the years. He always wrote such beautiful things. Once he gave me this little blue suitcase, big enough for jewelry…more like a purse. It was terribly ugly, and even more nonfunctional than unattractive, but he picked it out himself, so it always meant a lot to me. One year he even bought me this ring he saw me admire at a store! It was under ten bucks, but the fact that he remembered me commenting on it and went back to purchase it meant the world to me. The stones fell out soon after, I’m sure, but I wore it ‘til it fell completely apart.
A few years ago, my mom dad and I and their pastor and his wife from Estes Park went to a concert together in the town where I lived (about an hour and a half away from them). It was shortly after my 22nd birthday, and my mom asked I was going to drink a beer with the guys. My dad was shocked that I was already old enough to drink. He really thought I was still 20 or younger! I mean, I’m sure if he’d thought about it he would have come up with my real age, but I was just his little girl.
God, I miss my dad. Why does it just kill me some days/hours/moments, and not others?