dying

Just a Mile

/ Cassie / Leave a comment

“If you don’t take the chance to live life, what can you say at the end of it?” ~Naveen Andrews

Two years ago I went through something profound.  My world was complacent and in one day everything became something else.  It was almost as if I put my life into a blender and hit the switch on high.  My world became mixed, tangled, and unrecognizable.  And then the bottom fell out.  I couldn’t breathe.  I lost myself and I had absolutely no hope of salvation.

Then, for no apparent reason, at 7:00 at night, on a random Sunday in September, I decided to go for a run.  I was tired.  I needed to give the kids a bath.  The housework had piled up beyond belief.  But it didn’t matter.  At that moment I had to go running.  I put up my hair, threw on my shoes and headed out the door.  It was slow, it was messy, it could hardly even be classified as a run.

But that run saved my life.  I was able to crawl through the wreckage that was my summer and come out the other side breathing.  I kept running and eventually I was able to run a mile without stopping and that became the marker on which I base my life.

When I would fall off the running wagon, I would continually test myself by running a mile.  When I would fall into a deep depression, I would test myself by running a mile (when I finally emerged). When I drank a little too much wine the night before I would test myself by running a mile.  During my pregnancy I would continually test myself by running a mile.  And now, 4 weeks after having my baby, I tested myself by running a mile…and I was still able to do it.  I would tell myself if I could still run a mile all hope was not lost.  If I could still run a mile there was a chance…of something, anything.

These days, after finishing numerous 5 ks, a 10k , and a half marathon a mile might seem pretty insignificant.  Sometimes on my rest days I head out to run “just a mile”.  But in reality, to me, it was never “just a mile”.  It was so much more.  It was something I wanted for so long and I made a plan, put in the effort, and on the other side came out successful.  It was an accomplishment and it set the tone for the rest of my life.  It was something that could never be lost or taken for me.  It was my mile and I owned it.

Running a mile showed me that what I wanted was important.  Running a mile showed me what I wanted was possible.

It was never “just a mile”.  It was my life.  And with that mile I had saved it.

How nothing and everything has changed…

/ Cassie / Leave a comment

“Driving home, the sky accelerates
And the clouds all form a geometric shape
And it goes fast
You think of the past
Suddenly everything has changed” ~The Flaming Lips

Since I hadn’t been on Facebook in a few weeks, I missed random things that were happening.  As I perused a little this morning, I saw my brother had posted that last Thursday marked 6 months since my father passed away.  I couldn’t believe it.  Had it really been six months already? Had close to 180 days truly passed?  Have I simply been asleep or in a coma to suddenly wake up and find out this information? How can something feel like yesterday and years ago all at once?

I can honestly say that I have been through more in this 6 months than probably the rest of my life put together.  The dizzying highs and lows, the turmoil that was self-created throughout the summer, it caused a sort of retreat into myself that I have not quite been able to come out of yet.  True, I am not the person I was in August, not quite knowing which way was up and which way was down, confused about the sheer aspect of living life on a daily basis at time.  I am far from that, but I still sometimes feel the need to protect myself from people, and even from feelings, making sure I don’t become that summertime person I was.

While I have let go of the summer; of my dad, of memories, unsure decisions, and enlightening life changes, I haven’t truly let go.  Everything about these few months still hang around me like a dark cloud that could either blow on by or begin pouring down on me at any minute. Every time I think my stride has become right again and my path is straight and narrow a turn, or a rock, or even a small pebble comes out of nowhere to cause me to stumble and fall.  It causes me to relive and remember things that I don’t necessarily want to.

While I may have used the excuse of my dad dying before as the reason I was so off kilter this summer, I need to stop. First and foremost, it’s not fair to him.  He wasn’t a great man, frankly, he wasn’t a good man either, at least not to me, but when someone leaves us we can choose how we see things, and I choose to remember the early years over the later ones.  It’s not fair to continue to blame him for my short comings.  True, his death contributed, but only in the way that it caused initial strife and turmoil within myself.  I had the choice at that moment to begin getting better or continue down a path of self-destruction and we know which one I chose. I had no way to handle my feelings, or really simply to understand them, so I created myself anew, became someone that I wasn’t, simply so I wouldn’t have to deal with the effects of the pain; simply so I wouldn’t have to deal with feeling anything at all.

So many things died this summer, most notably, important parts of myself marred by uneasy choices and decisions along the way.  I have used the fall to rebuild what was lost and broken, and find the parts that were stolen and forgotten about. Some times I feel like I am back together better than ever and at others I feel like I am still a giant pile of rubble ready to be swept into the trash, missing pieces that are so integral to my survival

I’d like to be all zen and believe that all the decisions, even the bad ones, contribute to who you are. I’d like to think that even the bad decisions have gotten me to the place I am today and I should be grateful.  But I’m not all zen. I’m not even a little zen.  I’m not an optimist, I’m a realist.  In the words of Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Life could be a little sweet, But life could be a little shitty.”  And really, in a nutshell, that’s how I feel.

But if we’re still breathing, if we’re still upright, if we can still find something to smile about, then we haven’t lost our hope.

What I know now more than ever is that sometimes life sucks.  But then again, sometimes it doesn’t.

On Loss

/ Cassie / Leave a comment

“Stand there dance with a memory. The caption reads, “It’s all over now.” ~Appleseed Cast

I guess I should start with the short version.  My father is dying.  Was that too blunt?  I don’t really know what to say or how to say it in a nicer way; tiptoeing around the subject as though it will make it better.  Due to years and years of healthy issues, and psychological issues, emotional issues, mental issues (you get it) he is currently in hospice and only has days left, in the best possible case.

I could focus on the bad things, that’s always so easy to do because they bring forth the most feeling and pain, hurt and regret, anger and animosity.  But I’ll try not to.

Bottom line, he wasn’t always very nice to me, and this is putting it in the best way possible, but everything he did or said made me who I am today, and I kind of like me.

Bottom line, he wasn’t always the best father, but there are times, distinct memories that are good, that I can believe he really cared: coaching t-ball, going to the beach, teaching me to play cards. I will choose to hold on to these things and remember them when things get too dark.

Bottom line: there were times when I down-right hated him and not in a normal teenage angst kind of way; in a grown-up unhealthy kind of way.  But hate is not the opposite of love, not caring is, so essentially I still cared.  I still had feelings and emotions surrounding this man and this relationship, which, in a small way, means I was still living and still willing to fight for something.

I’ve been handling things as best I could, trying not to fall apart or dwell on the past, but my insomnia has come back and I am not getting much sleep.  At night I don’t have anyone or anything to occupy my thoughts and that’s when the worry and anxiety sets in.  I am most worried about my younger brothers, who essentially had a different father than I did and their grief is so much more profound and raw than I feel mine to be.

I’ve been feeling like my skin is too tight, like I’m itching to do something, anything to rebel against this and to prove that I am still very much alive, even when surrounded by all this death.  I need to break free, go crazy, at least just for a short amount of time, to prove that there is something still left in me.

Do we all have things we wish we would have said or done before it was too late?  Yes, of course, but I feel like in this situation, I wish I could say things to simply make him feel better about moving on.  I want to tell him that I hope wherever he is or wherever he is going he finds the peace within himself that he couldn’t find here with us.

Does any of this really matter?  I feel like I have made my peace with it, and while I can talk about it, I don’t hold on to it, or feel (overly) bitter or harbor feelings that are going to weigh me down for the rest of my life.  At the end of the day he was my dad and no one else in the world can make that claim.

And that’s got to mean something.