My mom moved her switch into the living room, and showed me. It reminded me of when I got my Wii and we played wii bowling. Dad was so invested he accidentally hit our dog in the face with his swing. He also made me play paint it black and slow ride on guitar hero over and over. nothing else.

work has been rough, i've been very tired. moving on is hard, only because I'm leaving him behind. After tomorrow, I can say I've gone my first month without him, and that makes me sad.

 today my coworker made a joke about his brain hemorrhaging 

it's been a really rough week, and i'm so tired.

 today was the first day of work and i had to get up at 7. 

i tried to tell everyone i didn't want to talk about things besides work... but it still happened and the results sucked. I could barely concentrate on my work. I'm sick of crying,  I'm sick of being in pain.

I got some of my little felt boards put up and all my pins up. I still have a ton of room to add things to it, and I'm thinking about where else I can put the little boards because, frankly, I didn't even use half of them.

These classes feel like they're going to be extremely hard this semester, and I'm going to try to stay focused on them.

 Today my mom brought the imprint of my dad's thumb to me. I sent some board games home with her and my nephew, and as I unwrapped and hung the little keychain, a dull nausea settled in the back of my throat and stayed there for a while. 

What is it about grief that makes it feel normalized to mentally understand a person is gone, but as soon as you're faced with a physical reminder it's like you weren't actually aware the person is gone?

I tried really hard to get through a lot of homework today. My VGD class is done until the 6th, and tomorrow I have to do my psych and Num Methods class before I can enjoy myself. Really, start on the Machine Learning stuff too. I wish either VGD or Psych would open up more stuff, because I'd like to honestly work through all of them to be done early. I hate waiting.

My GPU is fully installed and my computer area is completely rewired and ready to go.  It's definitely a lot beefier than it was before, I am wondering if I need another cooling fan, honestly. And if it'll fit. I may post a picture of it, tomorrow. My nephew was staring at my apartment like it was the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

While I was doing my homework I tried to do more Forestry to get that stupid garland. I think there were two dryads that popped up, today. Jagex really ruined that minigame. I guess I should go hard at it though and maybe I'll get lucky one day, then get to move on, like Molch island fishing. It's just so boring. I already told myself I'd do it after I finish the monkey agility course thing (I'm 850/2000 on that) but ugh. 

I'm not prepared for more firsts. I just want you to come back. I told my doctor that I've never felt so much emotional pain in my life, and I think 90% of it is because you are no longer here to give me a hug and tell me everything's going to work out. I miss you so much. That thumbprint makes me think of how "water isn't wet, it just makes other things wet" - There are many things you have touched, and affected, but you will never be, again. 

whoopsie

 i was so tired yesterday i forgot to post. i was cleared to go to work on monday, again. it's been cold as hell at night.

made our first recipe from the new book. it was pretty good. I spent a good two hours combing Pork because instead of shedding like normal his fur started matting. He's not done yet but I hope he's more comfortable now. 

I did really well, and nearly didn't cry yesterday, either, until I remembered that my dad went on a test drive with me as I bought my current car. I wonder what else will pop up. I think I have my schedule mostly squared away. I keep doing projects rather than homework but I'm hoping to be done with those soon enough, the big ones I have left are hanging my felt squares to put my pins/pictures up, clearing out the board games I'll never play, mounting my monitor to the wall, and applying the window cling to all my windows. I think that one will be the most tedious. 

I fell asleep making this post lol, all of that was from yesterday.

Anyway, got more shit done, did ketamine, preparing for work on Monday. I'll post more as I am dead tired right now

Dog Baths

 i finally did not cry today. I thought about you a lot but I did not cry. Instead, I gave porkchop a bath and did laundry and actually put away my clothes (it's hard, leave me alone) and I know I did other stuff, but already forgot what it was. Tomorrow is dentist, more class, and fixing my windows' tint because mine's melted. The next day is psychiatrist, haircut, and massage, and friday is ketamine. 

I sent Kael a song that reminded me of all of our goofing around on Azim Steppe, and he sent me one from FFXI, and listening to them both really makes me wish that old MIDI sounding music was still a thing. I loved that stuff so much, and still do. Some of my favorite music is from super old stuff, like Donkey Kong Country 2 and, obviously, Runescape.

Speaking of which, while trying to get all my stuff done today, I (tried to) work very hard on Slayer, which I'm glad half my tasks used a cannon, today, because i had to be very afk. It honestly feels like such a slow skill, and I really want a break after I hit 93. I have roughly 1 mil exp left, which I won't reach before I go back to work. Once that happens, I'll probably do 2-3 tasks a day, depending what they are.

This guy takes forever but he's fun, and drops a tiny pet version of himself.

 The Song of Healing has always been one of my favorite Zelda songs, across all time. The game itself often made me extremely sad because of all the people you, honestly, were too late to save. It was a game full of grief, but one part, and I think the one that actually always made me the most sad, was when you saved Pamela's Father - probably one of the only real happy micro-endings in the game. I've cried several times over the years when Pamela rushes to hug her father, even in times he and I weren't getting along, I could feel her desperation and relief as if it were my own. I wish there was a song that could have healed us, too.

We discussed, today, how angry I really am at the world. Mostly at the medical world. The idea that one little "whoops we weren't thorough enough" reminds me how hard we should bold and underline the word "practice" in medical practice. 

That said, I don't want to be an angry person. This cord tied to an inferno is too easily pulled, and I don't like the person I am right now. His song, for me, was "You are my sunshine" and I want to go back to the "warm ray" and not this scalding hatred. That's not what he would have wanted, even though he didn't want to die. 

We face several injustices throughout life, and, while it's okay to hate them and curse the sky in the moment, we still have to decide how, if at all, they will shape us in the future. I think the hardest part is recognizing it in the first place, because how can you fight a war when you don't even know it exists? When you give something a name, it doesn't feel as overwhelming and frightening. It becomes solvable, understandable, and, in time, manageable. 

People keep telling me "you'll never be who you were before" but that doesn't mean it has to be an overall bad change. There just needs to be a way to lance this pus filled wound and allow the sticky, stinking hatred to clear itself. Every time I feel it, I cry so hard I give myself a headache, but I think each release relieves a modicum of weight.

And so we go.

 Today was the first day of my only in person class. I had a lot of complex feelings I don't really want to revisit, because they were exhausting. 

Tomorrow I have nothing so I'm going to try to go buy stuff + get dog food + give pork a bath before i tie all his feet into socks so he stops eating them. 

The last real hug I gave you was over a month ago and it makes me want to puke. 

My therapist thought it was interesting that I told her, when my coworkers said take all the time you need, that I said "I'll need forever but I'll take a month." And it's true. I'm getting better at concentrating on tasks for longer and not dwelling so hard, but when it hits, it hits extremely hard.

Finished this:

 nearly made it, today, until grandma called to tell me she got the letter that had my speech in it. she said it would have made you proud. maybe tomorrow, I won't cry.

 Yesterday I worked through a few assignments I still have left for my programming class. They suck. They're all 5+ pages long. I hate them. I have 1.5 left, then the programming assignments themselves, then the midterm and final. I'll try and get what I can done this weekend, then call it good. 

I got done with the typewriter part of my cross stitch, which also took forever. Now all I have left is snoopy himself and the heart cloud. I kept messing up, which is fine, but there was one time I was like "I can get these stitches out of this length and I heard my dad tell me I couldn't and he was right. I guess he's one of my inner voices now.

I watched his memorial video yesterday and, of course, was very sad, but I also tried to remember all the things we were doing in those pictures. It's funny that in most of them, even the family ones, I was right next to him. Even though we don't have a ton of pictures together I'll always be happy that I have those.

The one of him and I after Pumpkins with Pops stung a lot, though.

I have a bunch of these felted cork squares that I plan to hang that I'll put some pics of him/my family/etc. on, as well as my pins and maybe some pokemon cards or some shit.

Progress:

Who am I supposed to ask about flowers, and where they're from/how to take care of them? These realizations keep hitting like cannonballs.

getting a CT scan is stupid, and it's stupid that 6 weeks ago yesterday you were in that exact same machine and the entire world shattered. It was overwhelming. It didn't help that the nurse asked if you were my dad. Yes. Now please get on with it. 

I came home and just went to sleep. 

It's probably best I don't live there anymore. My mom keeps having people come up and hug and cry and I'm not sure I could handle that. I know grief from others is a good thing but I can't imagine facing it when you're trying to buy something at the store and someone just comes up and boom, time for emotion!

A few classes have opened so it's time to start strategizing.

I talked to my mom about how it's insane how one second can change your entire life, and she said that for her, it was when she had the doctor on speaker phone while dad was laying on the couch and the doctor said "You have pancreatic cancer." That was on July 3rd, and then thirteen days later he was gone. Again, not from the cancer, but because of the series of strokes he had from the brain bleed. The cancer still probably would have taken him, but it would have been way worse, as my mom wasn't going to be able to take care of him well by herself (especially if he'd gotten confused and angry like he did at the hospital, because he would only listen to me at that point).

I got up to find something to eat a bit ago, and, walking through the dark living room, I felt like he was in here with me, like if I'd tried to talk to him, or reached out, he'd be there. 

I think part of the reason I'm so adverse to taking things is because of how many dependencies he had. I don't want to be afraid of pain like that. 

That's all I could say yesterday. It was just too much.

I'm at my parents tonight because I have a CT scan tomorrow. As I drove into town I played my loud rock for dad and went to pat him on the head, as that's what I'd do every time I'd walk into the house, and out if he didn't get up to walk me out (which he normally did). Someone put new flowers on him and cleared away all the old dead ones. The compression I made the first time, so I patted him in the same spot. 

When I got here, their garage was open and yet again I thought he was here, and was slammed in the face with reality. Even though the whole drive here I'd been thinking about it, the realization still hit me between the eyes like a fastball.

We sat here and talked about him for a while and my mom said "I wish someone would say he was a grouch so I can agree" so I did, and we talked about how his voicemail sounds like he's pissed off, because honestly it most likely took him 20 minutes to figure out how to 1. record it and then 2. make sure it worked. 

My mom had me write down my donut order for the morning and she complained that my handwriting is just like his and she could not read a thing I wrote. She gave me the stamp they made so he didn't have to sign documents all the time, as well as a pen set his older brother gave him that he was very scared to use, AKA never did, so I'll put those with all the pens I'll never use because they're nice and I don't want to mess them up. 

I got the bottom 4 rows done on my mom's Snoopy cross stitch, yesterday. That doesn't seem like a ton and it really doesn't look like it either, but it took hours. I think I can get it done by her birthday. I called my brother to see if they'll come up for her birthday, too, because I know it will be hard without dad.

I've been training slayer hard on RS because I want it over with. I hit 91 today, and I need 93. That's only a million(ish) more exp :| Kael, I have "Fishing" playing right now. I still think it's hilarious that you tried the game for two days, got flamed and were given money, then got hacked immediately. Seriously wtf lmao.

I did remember my mom played a looong time ago, back when I was in junior high, and played for less time than Kael did. I don't think she even finished cooking assistant. I took a stab at the password and got it because she's used the same two my entire life, go figure. This is a PSA to heighten your digital security. Anyway, I'm going to add her account to my arsenal because why not. I won't give any of my old accounts membership unless I absolutely need to, but it will be nice to have an extra in case Dietn and I ever do make our GIMs. 

Also, I censored my old posts and reuploaded them to, I guess, remember what it was like to be 23 and still relatively okay. 

The weird thing is that it was also 10 years ago that my dad went to the ER because he was on too many pills (his doctors suck, but I won't get into that) and I remember thinking "this is it."

No, my dear, you still had a good decade with him. I've been thinking about when "My dad just died" turns to "he recently passed" to "he passed a few months ago" to "it was a while ago" to "years ago" and I don't like it. At all. I don't want to leave him in the past.

These thoughts, though, make me think of Ocarina of Time. Sheik's cryptic quotes always stuck with me, but these resonate right now:

"The flow of time is always cruel... its speed seems different for each person, but no one can change it... a thing that doesn't change with time is a memory of younger days."

"Time passes, people move... Like a river's flow, it never ends... a childish mind will turn to noble ambition... young love will become deep affection... The clear water's surface reflects growth."

As the lyrics from "Hurt" says "If I could start again, a million miles away, I would keep myself, I would find a way."

Me too. Through all of it. There are choices I could have made better and people I could have avoided, but I wouldn't want to change the fact that I am who I am, with the people I'm with. 

It's been a month. 

Dreams

 Staying busy is a blessing and a curse. I've been finishing up my summer class stuff before everything starts next Monday (as much as possible) and I guess it helps, for a while, to concentrate on that (though some things make it more apparent). I guess it's like having someone scream in the room next to you rather than directly in your ear, but then they're directly next to you again once your focus wanes.

Through all that I've been working on random Runescape stuff. My big long term goal is 93 slayer, so I can finish the achievement diaries, but I've been having a hard time staying focused on one thing, so getting there's been difficult. I've been doing herb runs to work toward my favorite cape (Herblore) and some birdhouse runs because bird nests are mega expensive, but doing daily/hourly stuff really makes a game not-that-fun to me. Doing dailies in FFXIV was better because it was always something different, and always with friends. Kael promised he'd help me get the Starcaller title on FF as well, which is from the BLM relic thingie, I think. And the dog mounts.

I also decided, a few days after you passed, what my first tattoo will finally be. Kahl's constellation tattoo is very simplistic, so I want to do something in that manner except with the Taurus constellation, with an emphasis on the Pleiades constellation. You were a Taurus, and mom told me that when I was extremely small I pointed toward the Pleiades and said they were my stars. That constellation is in Taurus, so obviously I need to take ownership of our stars. I was going to do it on my left forearm, probably on the inside. That arm's connected to our heart, and I've always wanted to make sure that no matter what tattoo I get, it will never be something I regret. That's why it's been so hard to choose something, honestly. What if it's just a phase and I'll hate it in 10 years? I know that this is something I'll never hate, and I'll always carry something we share. 

I've been worried about the biopsies they took, but I'm hoping they were just a baseline. Hope is distant, right now, just because I used it like a life raft all last month and, in the end, I sank deep into a biting, frozen ocean. 

I know our emotions influence our dreams, and I've started dreaming of you, in very not good ways. I hope that stops soon. I want to have a dream like mom where I'm told that you're okay, and that we are okay.

That said, I still find it insane that I had a dream over a year ago that I was visited by my first child, and I specifically asked if they knew you, and they said no. Of all the stuff I asked them, that part woke me up crying because I was so afraid it would be true. Shortly before we found everything out that dream came back to me and it's so haunting. Why would I have asked that specific question, of all things I could have?

I hate the coincidence or the premonition or whatever the fuck it was. I hate it for being right. All I wanted was for you to see me graduate, get married, and have children and I feel absolutely wretched and robbed.

School starts in a week, so give me a bit of oomph to make it through the beginning. I will need it.

Time Flies

 I was talking to Kael a bit last night about restarting FFXIV, and he said "It's been 5 years" and I'm amazed at how, yeah, holy shit, we've known each other 5 years this summer. It's insane to me how you meet someone and it feels new, then bam. It's been half a decade. Thinking back on the fact that I've known a couple of my RS friends since I learned how to drive is also insanity, to me. When we were at the memorial service, Kahl (not Kael) talked about how I've known her and we've been friends for ~10-11 years, too. Where does time go?

And this is true for the fact that people tell me I had my dad for 33 years, but they don't understand that in many ways, I am still a kid and I need my dad to help me grow, and honestly 33 years doesn't feel like a long time. That said, he lost his dad when he was 18. My mom when she was in her 60s. She told me that honestly we will never feel ready to lose our parents, and that it hurts and you feel lost and that you still needed them no matter what age you were. 

I'm lucky to have learned what I could from him, and that I can still figure things out on my own thanks to knowing the way he'd do stuff. It still just surprises and hurts me every time I find something wrong and my first instinct is "Call mom so I can figure out what dad's doing so I can ask for help." The shock is still there, and with it the extreme pain, and that is okay. It's part of grief. I was told that it hurts so bad because I love him so much and it's true. I do, and did, and will. I will never feel like I had enough time with him, even if he'd gone when he was 120. 

The way he passed, though, makes me think that perhaps his own prayers were answered over ours. His mother had Alzheimers, and now his brother does as well. He said he never, ever wanted to go that way, and watching some videos I've watched for class reinforce the fact that he was probably on that path. As much as it feels my insides are wrung out to dry, and as much as I hate to say it, this was probably the best route to go on his terms.

My department head told me that we're given the breath of life first, and then our name. And a lot of us don't like the name we're given, but it's the first gift our parents give us, so we keep it. I was named after a Cardinals baseball announcer, which is stupid. But that's what my dad liked. Anyway, we're given and given and given, as life goes on, and we're given firsts and lessons and this and that and one day, things start being taken from us, and that doesn't feel good.

He told me, though, that instead of thinking of things that are taken from us, we should, instead, think about the fact that it's now our turn to give things, whether that's to our own children, to pets, to nieces and nephews, and that did help a little. My nephew is currently playing BG3 so I asked him about that. I'll try to focus on giving my animals the love my dad would have (not that I don't love them already) and giving my younger friends insight on life they may not think about.

The night of the memorial I had to go buy Dr. Pepper, and I saw a girl I'd worked with at one of my other jobs. She's a senior in HS now, and I asked her if she liked this place better. She said yes, because after me and the other "adult" left it got really toxic. That didn't surprise me. I told her to keep doing well in school and to look out for herself. 

I think one of the best things we can do for younger people is just be approachable. I made a good friend last summer while working as a student and since then I've watched him make a lot of "first" decisions as an adult. Do I agree with all of them? Nah. But he knows I'm here in case something goes ass up. I love that kid like he's a little brother, and I'm glad I've gone through the path I have to cross ways. 

This morning it is storming, and it's nice to listen to. 

Starting Over

This Tuesday will have been a month since you've passed. Not a calendar month, persay, but four weeks. I've felt a lot of things, a lot of overwhelming things, since July 4th. Almost none of them have been good feelings. Still, I'm thankful for my mom and my boyfriend, my family who's talked to me since then (aka my grandma and one cousin). I'm thankful for my friends, both IRL and distant. I know I've retreated quite hard into myself, and have really only spoken to a few people (and thanks to you, who poke me now and again.)

I've deleted all the previous posts, which is funny because they all came from 10 years ago, almost literally. Reading back was hilarious, but it's probably best to archive them all since they had personal information. Going forward, I'm just going to use peoples' online names, just for safety.

I think about the song "Life Starts Now" that I listened too so often when times were tough, and, Kael, this is the first time it's hurt to think that life is starting again. I don't want life to start without him. I know none of us can control it and all we can do is press on, but I wish, so badly, that I could go back. I don't know what I'd give for more time with him, because there are no words to say how much I love him and appreciate all he's done for my life. It will take days to talk about, and I guess I can do that here, but it's extremely hard. The only thing I want is impossible.