After my father died I wrote that everything felt shockingly real. Everyone else kept talking about how they felt like it hadn’t happened, like everything was surreal, and I couldn’t really relate.

I still can’t. Sometimes my mind wanders and for a while I won’t be thinking about it, and then my mind wanders back and the shock of that reality is gut wrenching. It’s been almost four months now. The other day I was riding in the car and “I’d Love to Change the World” by Ten Years After came on the radio and despite quickly changing the station, I still found myself tearing up in the Costco parking lot.

It wasn’t just that this song was a part of his funeral. That I was ok with. It was the fact that the thought occurred to me that I didn’t think I’d ever heard that song come on the radio, and then I remembered that my dad was listening to that station when he died, and then I did what I’ve spent more time doing the last few months than I have practically anything else. My mind ran over the last few minutes of his life. It’s not a conscious thing, but I think I do it because I feel like if I think it over enough times I’ll be able to change what happened with the power of my mind.

I have elaborate dreams where I save him.

I know how incredibly pathetic this is. How self centered. Apparently I think the whole world revolves around myself, to think I am the key to fixing all of these problems. And the fact that I can’t fix this one thing makes me feel like I can’t do anything at all. How ridiculous.

I’m listening to Billie Holiday and the rain coming down outside. If I didn’t feel like shedding a few tears before, I do now.

I guess I always know I’m not doing well when I start saying things like “my mother was right”, but that’s how I feel today. It’s too bad I don’t drink, I feel like in a movie this is the point where I pour myself a glass of something, sit on my sofa, and mope. I guess I can’t even mope right.

I know that failure is a part of life, that if you ever want to succeed you need to fail about a thousand times first. If you don’t go through this failure the odds of achieving anything worth achieving fall down to nothing.  But I keep failing at things that should be simpler than this. I figure out how to do it better, I figure out how to fix my problems, and then things still don’t work. I feel defective. Everyone else I see seems to have things figured out better than I do.  I know that’s dumb, I know it’s really dumb to look at everyone else because for the most part, I don’t want what they have, anyhow. But still….they wanted things, so they went out and got them. They were somehow adequate when it came to fulfilling their goals, whereas I am not.

And I’m disgusted by the pity party in my head.

Every time I get going on a new project, trying to defy my pattern of failure, I end up seeing the last hour of my father’s life play through my head, or thinking about something I’m still pissed about from my crappy childhood, and end up with my head cradled in my hands trying to shake the ideas out of my head.

My optimism is pretty well being beaten down. My optimism has brought me through an eating disorder, through a time when I wanted to die, out of my parents house. My optimism has gotten me through everything. I keep trying to remind myself that this isn’t bad as all the other things I’ve been through, but it doesn’t feel that way. I guess that’s largely because I don’t feel like the same person anymore. I’m a new person, and this new person doesn’t really know what to do about anything at all.