Getting Up Again

I certainly didn’t expect to take such a long break away from my blog. It has been a little over six weeks since my last entry. I have spent the past few days thinking about what type of entry I would post once I resumed writing. I left off preparing to go to Thailand with Douglas for work/leisure. It would only make sense to pick up there and share my experience of the trip. But I knew that in doing so, I would be leaving a huge part of my journey out of this blog. Our journeys can appear to look quite enviable from the outside looking in. I get to travel overseas and experience the world like many have never done. Nothing should be wrong. However, life happens for us all regardless of our location. Recently, I was struggling to figure out how to deal with what happened in my life.

Over the past six weeks I kept thinking, If only my life could rewind and resume playing from early April this year. Since then, it seemed my life had been one big roller coaster ride that never came to a stop. While I enjoy the thrill of riding a roller coaster, I can only take so much of it and I definitely don’t want to be on a bad one. In early April, I got on a roller coaster that started out great! But along the way it turned bad and took some time to come to a complete stop. It just kept going and going further up, then rapidly dropping down taking me through several winding loops that went upside down, and then proceeded to repeat itself for the next five months.  When that roller coaster finally stopped at the end of August, I exited the ride exhausted, drained, and dizzy from all the twists and turns. I fell to the ground and felt as though I had nothing left in me to do anything else. I had stopped and didn’t start moving again until just recently.

I am sure many people experience worse rides on a life-coaster than I did, but the ride I took was tough nonetheless. It took off in early April to Portugal for a much-needed vacation with Douglas. Then it left Portugal five days earlier than planned to fly back to Africa where we remained for three days and prepared for emergency leave to the United States because my mother-in-law was diagnosed as terminally ill. We spent two weeks in South Carolina to be by her side. Thankfully the doctors were wrong and she is currently living and no longer terminally ill. We then extended our emergency leave and flew to New York for one week because I received news that my father was hospitalized and critically ill. Then we flew back to Africa where we remained for three weeks until receiving news that we were getting orders for relocation to Vietnam. I then flew back to the United States to spend two weeks of quality time with family before our big move, to only find out my father had passed away during my flight home. I then mustered up the strength to plan his home-going service. I then flew back to Africa and spent the next month packing our home in preparation for our move to Vietnam. We then flew back to the United States for work/leisure and remained there for two weeks. We then flew from the United States to Vietnam, our new home. We then spent three weeks settling into a new country, beginning to adapt to yet another different culture.  Then we flew to Thailand and spent almost two weeks there for work/leisure. We finally flew back to Vietnam at the end of August. This life-coaster was mentally and physically taxing on my entire body, but I didn’t know just how much until it finally stopped.

I became sort of numb. Stillness went through my body. I felt like I could not mentally move anymore. I did not want to think about anything. I had no desire to do the things that once brought me joy; like writing, exercising, cooking, or socializing. Unfortunately, I did not lose my desire to eat. The one thing that would have actually been a nice change didn’t happen! Whenever I spoke to people I still smiled and joked on the phone or in messages. I participated in local events that requested my attendance. I agreed to go out with others when invited to events. I only cooked because Douglas and I had to eat. I found myself doing only what I deemed necessary to maintain a semblance of normalcy for myself and to others. After a few weeks I spoke to a few individuals and realized that what I was doing was called grieving. Because my life-coaster ride took so long to come to a full stop, I never had the time to grieve the loss of my dad.

I can best describe the relationship I had with my dad as different than what I know most father and daughter relationships to be. The character of my dad was also different than what I would describe of most fathers or husbands. Because of these differences my emotions were always at odds while he was living and now after his death. But, above every single difference that existed, my father always loved me and showed it in everything he did for me. I was his baby girl. I was his Nicky. I brought joy to his heart simply by existing. Never once did I not know that fact which made coping during this situation even more difficult. Between battling the differences my father had and the love he possessed for me, I found myself deeply confused, being angry and sad. While many individuals can turn to their siblings or another parent for support during such a time, that notion wasn’t quite available for me. The relationship I share with my siblings is also different than what I know most sibling relationships to be. Because of that difference (though we have always loved one another), it didn’t allow me the comfort of communicating with them my emotional struggles. The relationship my father had with my mother was also different than what I know most husband and wife relationships to be. All these relationships regarding my dad were complicated. So, I chose to keep my emotions and thoughts bottled up inside, a choice I later discovered was the worst possible.

Choosing to keep the pain of everything I felt to myself while choosing to give so much of myself to others was an unfair exchange. It was an unfair and unbalanced choice I made for myself. When two things are not balanced, one of them will eventually fall lower than the other. During the past few weeks I realized I could not keep up that exchange any longer. I couldn’t keep pretending. I decided to make a change. I began to admit my hurt to others. I also began to give less of myself to everything else in my life. While I thought in doing this I was going to feel even more depleted, it was during those moments that I felt my cup filling up again. In the beginning, each day felt empty. No change had occurred. But as the days passed, I began feeling more hopeful. Thinking about my father’s passing didn’t hurt as much. I started reflecting on good memories and thinking of what he would love to see me doing. Things began coming together the way I believed they would at some point.

I am a very positive person who believes in always remaining hopeful. It was in those quiet days that I started to see exactly what I should do to move forward. Once I saw the vision of what I wanted it became very easy for me to start moving towards it. I have now become an active volunteer with the embassy community. I now look into the mirror and can recognize myself again. I have resumed my health regimen that I stopped in April. I am back to exercising daily and eating well. My mental and physical energy have greatly increased, and I feel alive again! Very often, the family members of those closest to someone who passed away, usually allow a part of themselves to die with that family member. I do believe that is normal and to be expected. If you loved that person, it seems hard not to feel dead inside as you mourn their loss. I should have just embraced that feeling instead of fighting it. Sadness still lives in me for the void of my father, but I do believe that while our bodies are here physically, we cannot mentally stay where our loved ones now reside. Our loved ones will never turn us away from staying with them in their final resting place. Rather, they need us to exit on our own and be the best version of ourselves that can possibly exist. They want us to continue living and experience progress in our life. No matter where the clarity of the relationship with my dad falls on the spectrum, I am well aware that at some point I have to start living again. For me, that happened when I made a shift in my thought process.

To anyone who has lost a loved one, I believe our loved ones are patiently waiting and watching for our next move. So I say, let’s get busy living and give them something to smile about.