I'm too depressed to think of a title

My father died on June 16th. I don't really know what to say. This isnt because Im numb. I got past that. Now I just have so many things going through my mind that I dont know where to start. I just cant believe he's gone. I keep replaying the moment of his death over and over in my mind until I'm convinced that if I could go back to that moment I could stop it from happening. Its so clear. I was shaking uncontrollably as I ran my fingers through his hair. I kept telling him that I love him, and I told him to tell mommy and grandma 'hi' for me when he got to Heaven. Then his eyes stopped moving around and I looked up at the doctor and the nurse. They looked at me with practiced sympathy. "Sorry for your loss" they said. And I accepted it. That's where I went wrong. Even though I can't accept it now, at that point, I did. I hated the idea that he was gone, but I believed them. I cried and cried, but I didn't argue. I suppose that freaking out and calling them liars and throwing myself onto my dad's chest and yelling at him not to go wouldnt really have changed anything, but how do I really know that it wouldnt?

He never knew how much I loved him. He never knew what I really though of him. I thought he was a genius. I thought he was adorable. I thought he was a great parent. He knew everything. He was so talented. He was accepting. He was tolerant. He was tough. He was confident.

He also never knew that for the last few years, I thought about him alot. I couldnt leave without worrying about whether he would be OK. He never knew that I freaked out whenever he didnt answer the phone, even if I knew he was probably just having coffee at the cafe. He never knew that if I was comming home from Watertown and I saw an ambulance, I would call him to make sure that it wasnt him in it.

He probably thought that I didnt care about him at all. For me, it was just like when my grandma got sick. I didnt like to visit her because I couldnt handle seeing her like that. I wanted to remember her, and now him, as they were before. When they could walk, talk, laugh, and enjoy life.

I keep dreaming about him almost every night. Nothing specail really, just that he is still alive. In the dreams, I always wonder why he isn't gone, but I never asked him. Not until the last dream that I had. It was a few nights ago. I asked him why he was here even though I had seen him pass away. He told me that he had died, but that he asked if he could come back to see his two daughters. (Crystal, my best friend, was like a daughter to him, and she and I were both with him when he died) That dream gives me goosebumps.

I dont know what else to say except that I am hurting.

The Second Hardest Day Of My Life Is Finally Over

My father's funeral service was yesterday. Just as it was about to start, I told Daniel that I was leaving and that he should call me when it was over. But I didn't leave, of course. It was hard to sit there, but I think it really helped me. The flowers were beautiful. The chapel was small, and not intimidating. The place was packed. Alot of my friends showed up, not only to support me, but because they cared about my dad, too. The pastor was a friend of my dad's, and I was really glad that he could be there. When he started crying, I suddenly felt a strong bond with him. After the service, he kept hugging me and wouldn't let me go. I needed that. j

After spending the last week going through various stages of grief, sometimes all at the same time, I finally feel a little closure. I feel a little more at peace now.

The Best Time To Get Their Money Is When The Tears Are Still In Their Eyes

The title of this post is an actual quote from a funeral director that my uncle knew. I dislike funeral directors. Sure, they are trained to do anything for you and act really sincere and sympathetic. But anyone would do that if they were getting thousands of dollars from you. How can anyone with a heart sleep at night when during the day they are manipulating money out of the pockets of poor souls in the midst of mourning? Its ridiculous! You should have seen me when I left the building after we met with him. I was pissed! Everyone dies. Its inevitable. And when a loved one dies, those that remain are having their hearts ripped out of them and drowning in a sea of depression, and all the funeral home cares about is using it to their advantage so that they can get away with charging outrageous prices. It's sickening.

How Cruel Is Fate?? Cruel Enough To Take My Father From Me Right Before Father's Day...

Standing by his hospital bed in his last few moments, I was shaking so uncontrollably. I hate the feeling you get when someone has passed on. I am no stranger to saddness. I cry alot; at least once a week, usually more. But the difference is that most of the things that plague my mind are reversable. Changable. Temporary. Death is one of those things that are so definate. With most things, my mind runs itself in circles trying to figure out what needs to be done to make things right, and how unlikely it is that I will ever do those things. I can usually peg my problems on myself, knowing that I brought the problems on myself, at least partially. Its depressing, but at the same time, I find comfort in knowing why it happened. But this - this wasn't my fault. This just happened. So I don't know what to think. And there is no way to change it. I felt - I feel - so helpless.

Update On Summer 2006

Sorry that I haven't been blogging lately. In fact, I'm not blogging right now. I cheated. I wrote a letter to one of my friends, and after realizing that it basically contained everything that I would want to blog about, I decided to just include an excerpt from it here. Ta-da!

I have been so busy lately! I've been working, studying for the PPST, and on top of that, I just got back from the Black Hills.

Work has been interesting. There is a while new crop of girls working there now, but the awesome thing is that I get along with them really well. Today was a little interesting, though. I went to go clean one of the rooms, and I knocked a few times, said "housekeeping" a few times, opened the door, and called out again to make sure there was no one in the room before barging in. No one said anything, but when I opened the door, there was a 50 year old man, naked in the hot tub! He was completely calm, and told me that he didn't need anything. I talked to the lady at the front desk, and she said that he is just weird like that. She said that he does that to every one of the housekeepers, and that when he does answer the door, he is usually naked. Why couldn't he be younger?? *pout* I was a little upset the other day, though. See, there are 3 vacuums on the 2nd floor, and last summer, I named one of them Collin. I didn't get to use Collin the last two times that I worked. Sad.

The PPST. Remember, that was the test that I needed to pass before I could be a Junior? Well I took it on Saturday, and it was uber easy. No problem!! I'm so relieved!! So now I just have to wait for the scores to be sent to the school so that I can register for the classes I need to take (they wouldn't let me register until I pass the test).

What else. Oh yes, the Black Hills. That was amazing. Daniel and i spent 4 days in a hotel in Keystone. Well, actually, we were hardly ever in the hotel except to sleep. We took over 100 pictures while we were on vacation. We saw Mt Rushmore, of course, but that wasn't all the exciting to me. My favorite part of the trip was Keystone itself. Our hotel was right around the corner from this cute little boardwalk and street with gift stores and little resteraunts on each side. It was so pretty! I loved the llittle cafes with outside dinning areas. And there were horse drawn carraiges and everyone else was walking. There was hardly any cars! And on each side of the street was the side of the hills. The trees and rocks were so beautiful. We went on Needles Highway and Iron Mountain Road. Basically, its a scenic drive that takes a couple hours because you have to go so slowly. The road winds around in the mountains and takes you way up high. The turns are so tight that you have to go 10 miles per hour, and there are places with only enough room for one vehicle. There are so many places that you could just fall off! There are a bunch of tunnels through the rocks that we could barely fit the truck through! Near the end of Iron Mountain Road, we saw a huge herd of wild buffalo. There was easlily 100 of them, or maybe 200! They were just walking accross the road. And there were donkeys!!! (Donkeys = lurve). One of them just walked up to the truck and stuck its head in. It was like "Well, HI!!". *smile*

We went to alot of "tourist traps", too. There was a scenic chairlift thinger. It takes you way up high above the trees and gives you a great view. Too bad that I'm very afraid of heights. What else did we do? Hmm...We toured a cave. That was pretty, butI'm kind of claustrophobic, too. We went to Bear Country USA. That's this really pretty drive-thru wildlife park. There are bears, wolves, tigers, mountain goats, sheep, and lots of other animals just roaming around freely. You just pay to enter and drive on the path. There was a bear that kept pacing on the path. There was only enough time for one car to go in between each pace. Everyone got a good picture of him, though! Another really neat place was Cosmos. Its a place up in the hills that has a gravitational vortex inside of a cabin. All the trees bend in toward the cabin, and its hard as heck to walk around inside it. Our tour guide showed us a few neat demonstrations, such as a ball rolling uphill, standing on the wall, and two people changing their height while moving around on a level surface. The inside of the cabin made me feel so weird. Everyone had to stand crooked just to keep their balance. It was great. Oh! And we went to a blacklight mini golf course. It looked so cool! It was indoors and there were murals on all of the walls, one for the 1950's, the 1960's and so on.

Hmmm...well I think thats all I have to say right now.

Haha..

You know how sometimes, kids will see that there older brothers, sisters, or parents have cell phones, they will want one, too. So you give them a fake one, or an old one that doesnt work anymore, and let them pretend. Well, when the kid is 5 years old, its cute. When they're 15...it's freakin hilarius.

And You All Think We Are Dorks Now!

Traci Novy. My best friend in middle school and high school. Hadn't seen her in two years until this last week. She moved to Denver, but she was back around these parts for graduation. I spent all day yesterday with her...we looked through some old photo albums. That was great fun.

And the highlight of the night?

Well, back in 2000, when we were in like, 8th grade, she stayed at my house and we "had fun with daddy's new video camera".

Lmao...I just had to say it like that...again! (I love when I'm in a room full of people, and I say something without thinking about how its going to sounds...)

So anyways...Traci suddenly remembered that one night long ago, we had spent the night hopped up on Mountain Dew and Lucky Charms, and that we had been messing around with the camera. So we fished out the tape and watched it. Neither of us had any freakin' clue what was on that tape. Maybe we should have preveiwed it before we played it for my dad, Tyler, Crystal, and Roy (who were all present when we decided to watch it). OMG. We were so dorky!!!! It was funny as hell, though.

My Life Is A Pit Of Despair

I am so depressed all the time. All I want to do is sleep...I used to have my dreams for the future to fall back on, but now I don't even care about them. I don't care about anything...Sleep sounds good...I wonder if I would regret not waking up...*ponders*

Hey...You're That Guy That Called Me Stupid!

Jesse had this theory that supossedly would make a terrific ice breaker, as well as cause a stranger to think about you for a few weeks.

"During freshman orientation, you go up to some hot chick and you just look her straight in the eyes and tell her that she is stupid. That's all. Then you leave. She will just keep thinking about you all the time, wondering who you are, and why you called her stupid. So then a few weeks later, you talk to her again and tell her your name, and that you don't think she's stupid anymore."

Interesting...Thing is, it actually works. Sort of. I think. The first time I ever talked to Jonathan, I called him stupid. I'm not sure if he really tought about me at all, but that was our first smigeon of interaction. Then, at a party last week, we started talking again...this time it was either because I was intrigued by the color of his beverage, or else because I was wearing kitty ears. *shrugs* Either way, I'm glad to have met him. Too bad he's moving to Pittsburgh *tear*.

I Have Fallen Off The Treadmill Of Life And Landed On The Scratchy Rug Of Reality Current

You know, I really don't feel that way at the moment. I mean, I did for several weeks. I honestly don't recall right off hand if I ever properly blogged about it or not, but in any case, I certainly don't feel up to it at the moment. The feeling hasn't gone away, mind you, it's just been shoved under the couch for the time being. I am actually quite happy right now. Well, maybe happy isn't the right word. Sad? Is that better? Maybe..it's complicated.

To attempt to clarify, I am looking at starting my 3rd year of college in the fall, and I am finally starting to talk to the people that I had always wanted to be friends with. I am finally being outgoing. I am finally going places rather than just sitting around waiting for fun to find me. And in top of that, alot of my friends, both old and newly aquired, will not be on campus next year for various reasons. It's sad, really. And then, there's a few people who all year, I wanted to get to know them. And now, in the last couple weeks of school, I'm finally starting to talk to them. I made plans to switch to a different dormitory to be around my new friends, and now alot of them are leaving. A few of these people whom I just got the balls to befriend are now changing schools. It was just like that in High School, too. As soon as I got the guts to talk to so-and-so, they graduated or moved away. *deep sigh*

I suppose I really shouldn't be all that hung up about it...I mean really, are those people even going to think about me in a few years? Doubtful. And realistically, I will move on, and the inevitable sense of emptiness will fill back up with new friends. And in the end, what matters in my life is my future family. All the little things that matter now, gaining the attention of an attractive guy, making friends with a cool girl, and a handful of other insignificant things, they just don't matter.

What do I really want out of my college experience? I want to enjoy myself. I want to earn a degree in Elementary Education. I want to keep the friends that I have while meeting new ones along the way. I want to be myself (once i figure out who that is...)...

Bah. I'm on the verge of getting into it again. (Shuttup, Jaymz...no one wants to hear you ramble). Fine. I'll make it short.Well, every day is a chance to make improvements, and while I see the changes I would like to make, and I am aware of what I stand to lose if those changes are not made, I lack the motivation. (Well you're a fuckin' moron, then, because at the rate you're going, the only way you will understand the consequences of not becoming motivated, is to lose it all, and at that point, it will be too late.) I know! I KNOW, OK??

Well I would love to say that this summer, and next school year, will be different. I would love to say that I am ready to grow up, ready to accept responsibilities, and ready to do what I deem necessary for my continued existance. But the truth is that I have no hope at this point.
So back to what I was saying before...I am definately saddened by several things, most of all by the tangled web I weave, and moreso by my tendancy to keep it tangled just enough to make my life interesting enough to continue participating in. But I blame no one but myself for that. Now for the reason that I said I was happy. Well, I'm not sure. I just am. Perhaps it's because it's the last week of school and (I'm not going to say what you're expecting, so keep reading) I am dreading the summer. I think that since I know that this is the last week in Aberdeen, the last time in three months (or forever) that I will see most of my friends, I am inadvertabtly disallowing myself to be sad (besides the other day in Subway when I nearly broke down in tears because I was going to miss Stacy so much).

---------3.5 hours later---------

OK...wow...I have to be honest here, cuz I don't know what else to do. It is now 2:00 AM and I have no freakin' clue what I was doing for the last 3 and a half hours, but somehow I forgot about this post! So I guess I'm done with whatever I was talking about....