August 29, 2010

Sunday, 11:18 am

My grocery delivery is supposed to be here between 11 and 3. Plus I'm hungry. I haven't been able to stop eating, no, binging, since the psychiatrist put me on Saphris. All I did yesterday was eat and eat and lay down. I already ate 2 Ding-Dongs today, so there are only 4 left.

I'm running the dishwasher again. I ran it on Friday (or yesterday, I don't know) with regular Cascade and there was powder left all over the dishes. Guess it's not a very good dishwasher and I just couldn't tell it with those little packets I use.

Called Sarah yesterday. Complained to her about my depression and this new med. She said she'd send me a 2nd-hand copy of the 1st Harry Potter book.

Got a call from Kathleen. She's still laid up in bed with that knee she fell on, hasn't bothered to call the knee specialist that the dr told her to get in to see ASAP. He's afraid of a blood clot forming from what he said. She knows that's nothing to mess around with! It's like I'm talking to a brick wall! Arrgh!

Can't think of anything else to say. I was all gung-ho about this Artist's Way book but I can't see how it's helping me. I am remembering my dreams more but since they're mostly bad dreams I can't see any good in that.

Tomorrow is Daddy's birthday. Hard to believe how fast time goes.

I'm bothered and mad at myself for spending so much money on eating out.

I'm upset about these facial tremors. My chin, mouth, cheeks, and jaw are all trembling and jerking way more than they were. So much for new medicine that doesn't have that side effect. My teeth are starting to chatter and grind, too.

I just feel lost. I know it's the depression, but that doesn't change my frustration or the emptiness.

July 12, 1975

Still at camp. I shouldn't have stayed another week. Danny found a girlfriend...I guess he doesn't like me any more. I know he would have had a lot more fun with Donna if I hadn't been around. More than anything else, I want him to be happy. Even more than I want him, I want him to be happy. And he seems happy with Donna, so that makes it easier to take. When he left Saturday, he hugged me good-bye. He knew I wanted him to, but he also knew it would tear me up. He was still holding me when I started crying. Since I'm going to boarding school in a few weeks, I'll probably never see him again. And after all these years of being together at camp...

(In 1978, I saw Danny again briefly. He was in the chorale at the Bible college he attended, and they came to sing at my Christian boarding school. I was 17. We visited for a while, and it was so great).

I think of you often, and I've tried to find you several times over the years. A little part of my heart will always be yours. Danny, I remember you.

June 13, 2006

On this day in 2006 I had been released from the psychiatric hospital and was in an intensive group day therapy program that was six weeks long. Our assignment was to write a letter to a loved one, and we were given a list of writing prompts that must be included. Everyone in the class wrote their letter to a loved one who had passed away. This is my letter. I have excluded portions of the letter for personal reasons.

06/13/2006

Dear Daddy,

You've already been gone 5 days -- how can that be possible? I still haven't stopped by the funeral home to sign the cremation order - not that they need my signature to proceed, but they prefer that we all sign.

Soon, very soon, we'll have to decide what to do with your ashes. I'd like to scatter them but where? I thought about burying them deep below the historical marker on your Grace Chapel, or scatter them on the back of the property. God knows your heart and soul was in that place.

I remember the way you told jokes. Wow - you could really tell 'em! Remember the one where different people would stand up and say a number? "Some can tell 'em, some can't!"

I remember when we went on road trips every summer, 3 or 4 weeks, because you'd combine your vacation days with July 4th holiday. I got tired of having my birthday in a different state every year, but as a young adult I finally realized how special that was. You and Mother got us to the 48 contiguous states as you planned, and you made history live for me -- what a gift!

The clearest memory I have of you is at the campsite in Dumas after witnessing the two accidents. We were all "slap-happy," you cracked a joke, and I spewed milk all over you. It was rolling down your balding head and dripping off that nose and you were laughing so hard you could barely breathe. I wish I had more memories like that.

I always wanted to tell you that I admired your quick wit. I wish I had told you that the best and the worst of me came from you. I wish you had told me why your marriage to my mother went so awry -- your part in it, not hers. You would always start sentences with "Your mother..." I wish I had known why you two went into yelling fits every night -- all I know is that I have to keep peace at all costs...did I try to do that even then?

I felt the most love from you when you set your life aside for me after I broke my foot so badly and you ferried me to and from work and saw to it that I had transportation whenever and wherever I needed. And you did that for almost a year. You were never once late.

I wish I had gotten to know the man you became: Chaplain Catfish, a generous man who helped people and turned lives around. I accept now that you couldn't be the perfect father or the perfect husband or the perfect pastor, because you're human and a sinner just like the rest of us. I also understand that you weren't the man you wanted to be, either, but you kept trying, kept praying, kept doing your part.

The last time I saw you, you were dying, but you could hear me, I know you could, 'cause you squeezed my hand when I asked you to. I asked your forgiveness for abandoning you the last weeks of your life and for keeping us estranged for so many years. I told you I forgave you for everything you did against me and my mother, real, exaggerated, or imagined on our part. I told you I'd miss you, I held your hand some more. I lay my head on your bed and sang to you for almost 2 hours, I think. You couldn't squeeze my hand anymore. Then you were surrounded by family and friends when you stopped breathing and your heart stopped beating at 4:53 p.m. on Thursday, June 8. When I knew you were gone, I wondered if you were seeing Mother again, and if God had to give you mansions on opposite sides of Heaven.

At your funeral I took your hand and kissed your forehead, and you were so cold. I became a little child again, crying for her daddy. And since you've been gone, I've felt an ache that caught me by surprise. I miss your laugh, and the love you showed for Sharon, and the fire in your eyes when you came up with another plan to make millions and save the world.

When I think of you now it's with happiness that you gave yourself as a vessel for God's work. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you when you needed me. I thank you for the times you were there for me. And most of all, I want you to know that I believe this world to be a better place because you lived.

Love,
your baby girl

Daddy, I remember you.

May 12, 1979

(I posted this yesterday, May 12, but blogspot had issues and my post was deleted. So much for my effort to post every day!)

At 18, do I feel that life has passed me by? No, I just feel that there were so many things I could have accomplished had I but tried...I could have at least tried! Maybe I'd have had a few things published by now. Two poems, and they don't really count, do they?...

I'm in the middle of writing a paper for my Christian Life class, but obviously my mind is wandering...I'm going to the May term...

I'm renting a basement apartment from one of my professors. She and her husband are on vacation right now.

I get more nervous and jumpy as the days go by -- too many murder mysteries, I guess, but some nights I'm just rigid with fear, and I even have to get up and turn on the bathroom light so I can sleep. I'm always ashamed of myself in the morning. But it sure seems real in the night...

This basement is a gloomy place. I'm lonely. Of course, it seems like I only write in a journal when I'm lonely. I haven't been too lonely since 1977, except for last summer. Then it was too violent. I was always sad and I was always crying...

I just pulled off my longest fingernail. Which isn't saying much, but we'd grown to be quite good friends.

I want to call someone. It's terrible to be paying for a phone with no one to call and no one to care enough to call you. The phone rang this evening while I was working on my paper, and I jumped so much my pen scratched down the paper. It was a wrong number, of course.

At times I long for home. For a T.V., for a good home-cooked meal -- real food -- but then I remember how things are at home and I change my mind...

Sometimes I think I'll only be published posthumously. But I'll probably never be published.

I need to work on my paper some more, but I have no motivation. That's my problem with everything....