Sunsets and Uncomfortable Realizations

I think I have visited this topic before but since I clearly have not resolved anything we shall wander there again I think. Yesterday was a lovely day filled with errands and later an outing and ending with my fried chicken and a newly put up Christmas tree. All in all a most wonderful day spent with a most wonderful friend.

We ended the day out at Kellogg Lake for sunset pictures. While we were strolling around the lake taking some very festive apocalyptic looking geese shots I was thinking about my dad. I think I have clearly established that my dad and I had a strange...I can't even call it a relationship...thing. Our lives were spent vying for the attention of my mother, not really talking to one another, resenting one another and generally holding one another in contempt until they were suddenly both dead and I was left with a LOT of unresolved issues with them both. But that is my issue to put to rest and I have been working on it. Sometimes it just makes me a little sad that we had no time for me to get old enough to understand them both better and maybe...just maybe...fix some things. But that was not to be and they left without really saying goodbye. It was all so sudden. Mom has congestive heart failure at the beginning of April and by the next November they are both gone. Poof...just like that...I was a 30 year old orphan and I was lost. 

I have spent the last 25 years trying to make peace with the grief. We were such an isolated and insular unit that losing them was like dropping me in the jungle somewhere and expecting me to find my way out in a week. I wandered around making horrible decisions for a few years. I just was not able to process the grief or find a way to not be overwhelmed and paralyzed by their loss. It has gotten better. With the help of a counselor and my poor friend who constantly has to talk sense to my anxiety I have made progress. But at times...like last night...I begin to wander into parental nostalgia land...which can be either cathartic or a trip down the rabbit hole and into the dark.

I am pretty proud of myself that I managed to opt for just nostalgia and not the darkness. 

I realized...walking around that lake that I am not so very different from my dad. Those of you who knew my dad...please don't be terrified...there are important differences that remain. I do not hold women...or men for that matter...in general contempt. I NEVER use the C word and I don't irrationally yell hateful things at those I purport to love...so I've got all that going for me. 

The similarity lies in our shared extreme introversion. I suddenly realized that my dad's dream life would have been to spend all day...every day...at the water fishing. He would probably enjoy it if mom or I went along but we would have to sit in silence with him...just fishing. But his true nirvana would have been to sit in silence with himself fishing 24/7. I am not so different. My dream life would be either driving or hiking around outside with my camera...in silence. When I am out by myself in the car taking pictures there is no radio there is no speech...unless I am talking to critters. I do like it when my friend comes with me because we can talk but she understands the silence and treasures it too. It's kind of sad but it's my truth...I am the most comfortable when I am by myself. I enjoy the silence, I need to be quiet, and I need the solitude. Without them I become very grumpy. 

So...I think I have decided to make peace with, and embrace, those parts of my dad that live inside me. I have always done what I think most kids do when they have a difficult parent in that I picked a side and determined that I would NEVER...EVER...be like the other parent. I have spent my whole life trying to be the polar opposite of my dad and there are some parts of his personality that I have successfully avoided but I need to accept the parts of him that live in me and deal with them in a healthy way. I will accept that I am a bit too judgmental at times but I will remind myself that my problems are usually with the behavior and not the person. I will strive to be better but acknowledge that it's there. I will accept that I have a LOT of unresolved anger and a temper that still rears its ugly head from time to time but I will find a way to vent that anger without maiming anyone in the process. I will accept the fact that I am happiest by myself and stop criticizing myself for it. I will sit in the silence and enjoy it and not worry that it's not normal. The more my fellow introverts speak their truth the more normal I feel.

Rather than fight that image of dad sitting out in his lawn chair, judging the world as it goes by with his own weird standards, wallowing in his anger, resenting those who seem happy I will embrace that lawn chair. The only difference is that I will sit in that lawn chair and accept my flaws and enjoy my silence and my solitude and leave the resentment and bitterness behind. I mean...really...if I were skinnier I would wear overalls every day too...they are so comfortable and you never have to fight with a belt. We are not so different, Lester and I, but that's okay because I can accept it and change the plot to a more happy ending for me. I am just sorry that he left before we could find a way to sit in our silence together.