It’s more than a noun.

Before I moved to Montreal, my whole inability to speak French was something that constantly weighed on my mind. In fact, it stressed me right the fuck out. Everyone would assure me that everything would be fine and I would get by and for arguments sake I have.

Although, not being able to speak the language coherently has it’s pitfalls of course. I’m really not gifted when it comes to languages. My grade nine French teacher can attest to that. In fact I’m pretty sure I only got the grade that I did just so that she wouldn’t have to deal with me again. Adult me can understand her frustration, teachers work hard and having a student who clearly didn’t give a shit obviously didn’t help. Needless to say, life was much different when I was 14.

Never, ever in a million years did I think that I would end up here.

It would have been much easier to take a course when I first moved here, except I ended up getting a job right away and well when you work in a kitchen; your schedule is so erratic that anything that requires you to have a set schedule is pretty much impossible most of the time.

So after my ex and I split and I started doing my own thing, I started to partake in a conversational French course that was offered at a local un-employment center in the neighbouring borough. It was a great course while I was actively participating in it, then I got sick with a hellish lung infection and ended up missing so many classes, I decided that there was no real point in going back for the time being.

Then just for the hell of it, I started taking a beginner class at a local college here. Except that’s not entirely cost effective at best (it was $250.00 per class and there’s 5 levels)–and- for it to be effective at all in a learning sense, you need to be consistent and keep at it. So last winter before my father passed away, I enrolled into the same class that was offered at the center that I had taken before. It was cost effective and I had the time. Then I lost my dad and trying to tackle a French course two weeks after loosing your dad is foolish at best. Yet, I thought that it was worth a shot. So I went to a few classes while struggling to deal with the loss of my dad and the ton of drama that came along with it.

Worst. Idea. Ever.

When you suffer from depression like I do, your short term memory is gone. You team that up with anxiety and just trying to keep it together for the couple of hours that you have for class. There were only a dozen of us in this class and participation is required. I hate being put on the spot and I struggled but I tried. I get very anxious and overwhelmed when I don’t understand something, which quickly turns to frustration and my mind becomes a giant cluster fuck. Than I feel really stupid. I’ve learned to recognize these signs and I try to offset them with internal rationale. It’s not so much that i’m a bad student, I just don’t do well at things I have to do, vs things I want to do.

Anyway- I got called out in class for something. I needed to figure out a noun for part of the conversation.

Imagine my horror when I could not for the life of me remember what a noun was.

The two guys sitting behind me were laughing, the teacher was looking at me with the most (understandably) incredulous look on his face. I felt like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights and my face burned bright and hot with the shame and embarrassment of my failure.

My mind was completely blank, I couldn’t formulate a thought to save my life and I don’t think I have ever been more mortified or anxious.

I was so ashamed and so embarrassed that I never went back.

Yes, I know that’s really over the top and extreme to some. However when you just lost your dad, you’re dealing with depression along with anxiety and a whole host of other things, it’s just a little too much. Even if you don’t fancy yourself to be much of a drama queen (I don’t). I felt stupid and worse yet I was (and still am) terrified that I would never get my mind back.

Depression robs you of so many things, your memory, your dignity and more. It’s defined as a mental illness; it does not just affect your mind. Depression eats at you on all levels, mind body and soul.

So I sacrificed my going back to school for computer graphics to take a level one French course (again). This class is full time for three months. I am terrified. That last incident is much too fresh in my memory and being that I cry a lot these days more often than not, I truly hope that I not only learn something and garner a much needed grasp on the language, but I also hope that I don’t have an anxiety induced meltdown and embarrass myself again.

I’m not one of those people who are OK with having public meltdowns. I am a very private person and I get very overwhelmed and shut down when I feel that people are invading my perceived personal space. I don’t care for pity and I don’t care to play the victim either, because I’m not. I’m just a person who has a whole lot of walls and I only plan to add windows when I’m good and ready to. It’s one of my biggest flaws; however I have always been this way. I wish people would accept that.

It’s not you; I can give you complete reassurance that it’s me and my very messy mind.

A year later.

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It’s only fitting that it’s snowing today. My dad loved it when it snowed; it was the one thing that gave him peace while he was in the hospital right before he died. It’s been a year now but it doesn’t feel like it at all. I remember reading this post someone had wrote lamenting about the first year she had lost her mom. It was beautiful and sad. I thought to myself I wonder what my first year would be like without him. My father was still very much alive at the time, except I knew that his time would be up sooner rather than later.

A year ago today I was rushing off to the airport trying so hard to keep it together. Alternating between sheer panic, tears and praying that I would make it home in time while kicking myself in the ass for not going home the night before.

My father and I had a tumultuous relationship at the best of times. Moving to Montreal has been both a blessing and a curse for our relationship. When my dad first got diagnosed, it was suggested to me to ‘have it out’ with my dad for all those times he did me wrong.

I disagreed. I didn’t feel that it would solve anything.

I was never a passive person when it came to my father. He knew all those times he pissed me off or did me wrong. I didn’t need to call him out for being an asshole again. The man was dying. While that didn’t give him carte blanche to do what he pleased, I didn’t see what the point of dredging up the past.

So I let it go. For me and for him because sometimes it’s just easier to accept an apology you’re not going to get. I felt at peace with this decision and I still do.

Everyone really liked my dad. He was a good man. He was also horribly flawed and when he fucked up, he fucked up pretty hard. He turned into an asshole when he drank too much. He had narcissistic personality traits and, a fragile ego.
As a result, a lot of people got hurt and I, more often than not, got caught in the crossfire. I am fiercely loyal to those that I love and I spent my formative years with a not so savoury opinion of him. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my dad. I didn’t always respect him though.

I was the apple of his eye though. My father adored me like no other.

I did not expect for it to hit me this hard.

I had already started to experience bouts of depression right after I found out my father was diagnosed and loosing my job two days later. Which is normal, depression doesn’t always last forever. What I wasn’t ready for was how bad my depression actually got. It’s become a daily struggle for me now.

Less than a week after my father died, my mom called me from Ontario. We had been robbed. The bastard that my father rented out a room to had cleaned us out in the middle of the night and he stole everything. He even took the damn dog food.

As if we hadn’t been through enough already?

I couldn’t breathe. I had just come home from Ontario 2.5 days ago and there I was standing there in my office stunned and enraged. The anger I experienced in that moment was like no other. The mind has this way of protecting itself from too much damage. I was in shock for another reason this time and I just felt so violated. How dare someone, anyone do such a thing to another person? It’s even more insulting when it happens right after you just lost your dad.

That was my childhood home. He contaminated it. I would never feel the same way after that.

There’s not much less frustrating than to be 760 km away and be that helpless.

I was surrounded by people, but I never felt more alone than I did at that moment.

I look back on the year that has gone by and it’s a jumbled blur. I attempted to go to school for French but had to drop out because my mind wasn’t capable of storing a damn thing. Memory loss is common with depression.  I went home in May to say goodbye at his celebration of life and to say good bye to the house. It sold in July and it will never feel quite right not to go there again. It was the only home I had known for 37 years.  I can’t eloquently break it down into months because one day just melts into the next. That’s what depression does to you. It robs you of so many things. I knew that it was coming, I just didn’t know when. When I lost Jason in 2009, I suffered from depression and that’s also when my OCD reared its ugly head, except I didn’t know it at the time. So I foolishly thought that I would be prepared this time around. Except…

Your mind can’t heal when the hits keep coming.

Shock is a funny thing. It can last for a couple of days, or in some cases, years. Shock is normal after any traumatic event and loosing my dad was no different. I got up; I went to school once a week and just tried to do whatever I could to function. I was living life on auto pilot and I was grateful that I didn’t have a job to go to at the time. I never knew when I would get an attack of the feels and I am not one for public displays of such things.

I developed anxiety. No surprise there, its depressions bestie. I would stay in bed until noon. Being a functional adult was exhausting. Even more so when you have to pretend to be OK when you are anything but OK at all.
Having to pick up the phone to make a phone call was terrifying. Panic attacks were the norm. So were emotional outbursts. This was my life now and I didn’t know how to cope.

In some ways, I still don’t.

Loosing a parent is a special kind of hell that no one understands until it happens to them.

This is why Nick and I didn’t announce our engagement right away. I needed time and space to just breathe. Only a handful of people knew before our official announcement and it certainly didn’t help matters when a few people said: “Now that the cats out of the bag.” Which made it sound like it was some big, dark secret from some people, which was not the case AT ALL. A lot of people got upset about that, but I can’t and WON’T take responsibility for the things that other people say, nor will I apologize for needing some time to myself. I have long since learned that you can’t please everyone and I stopped trying long before Nick came along.
It was nice while it lasted, some moments were bittersweet though. Like when my wedding dress arrived at the end of March.

It was a final gift from my dad. Except he knew nothing about it, he just gave me permission to rack up his credit card in whatever way I saw fit. I was supposed to buy a new laptop as a graduation gift but plane tickets for Nick and me and ultimately my wedding dress took precedence.

I remember how excited I was when my dress arrived, I pulled it out of the box and marveled at how beautiful it was and then I sat there and cried. It hurts knowing that my dad won’t be there when Nick and I say I do.

So it’s been a year. It’s been full of struggles, most of which I kept to myself. It’s taught me a lot of things though.

• That people automatically assume that depression is a feeling, not a disease. So you have to try not to get angry when people say things like: “Don’t dwell on the past.” This isn’t helpful at all, in case you were wondering. Especially when they themselves still have a dad.
• That it’s OK to not be OK.
• That there will be days when you randomly burst out in tears and have no idea as to why.
• Those moments of I’ll just call my dad and ask him and then remembering that you don’t have the means to do that anymore will cut you deep and fill you with regret for not taking the time to learn how to do whatever it is that you want to do, from him when you had the chance.
• To be more open about my mental illness. Depression is hard on so many levels. Some days it’s all consuming and getting out of bed is a bigger challenge than most people know.
• You’ll see the true colors of your family members and some of them are rather ugly.
• That the people you expect to be there for you aren’t. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the one’s that do.
• Little things can cause a memory trigger and it usually brings forth more tears. Like the first snow of the year after you lost your dad. It reminded me of one of our last conversations.
• Birthday’s and other special occasions are hard. Especially all those firsts, it’s funny how a quick text or a quick phone call takes on a whole new meaning when they stop coming.
• Some days you will feel like you’re drowning and you are helpless to stop it. All you can do is hang in there as best as you can and hope that you have a rope to hold onto.

The list goes on and on. The worst part of loosing my dad is/was loosing myself in the process.

I used to be such a different person than I am now and I am not sure how I feel about this. 

I miss the person that I used to be and while I begrudgingly accept that I can never return to who I once was, I would give anything just to feel whole again and not hurt anymore.

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Priorities vs options and good intentions.

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There’s that saying: “Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.” -Maya Angelou

Now don’t get me wrong.  Sometimes I am a sucky friend.  I’m the worst at keeping in touch with people at the best of times and it’s not because I don’t love my friends, I have legit memory issues and well adulting is hard yo!

I have learned one thing through the years though, even more so after moving to Montreal: who my circle is.  I have a lot of friends and I am fortunate to be surrounded by them and I am secure in the knowledge that they love me, even when I am not always around, or when I am not very lovable.

I have one very important thing in common with these people though: Loyalty.

I know who will be there for me in a heartbeat and I know who won’t.  Some people I can count on when it really matters and some not so much…  So it irritates me when some people complain that I come home and I don’t go out of my way/make the time to see them.  It’s not usually a secret when I come home (except for that one time) and I’m really not that hard to find when I am in Ontario.  Up until recently, I would always be staying at the same house.

Mind you, it depends on why I returned in the first place.  I had truly wanted to meet up and see a ton of people but I was just done.  So done with this whole adulting thing and having just finished up final exams for this term, my mom sold the house, my dad died and the list goes on and on.

I was SO very, tired this time around.

So sadly I missed out on a lot of stuff, but it was in part by sheer exhaustion, not so much by choice.  I made my mom and option this time around.  I didn’t come home to Ontario for a vacation per se. I came home to give back because I haven’t been able to help out as much in a physical sense, I was however pulling my weight behind the scenes which is just as exhausting. Except some people don’t ‘see that’ and it doesn’t count in their mind.

But fuck them.  Seriously. 

Anyway, it was nice to be able to come home and not only help out my mom but indulge her a little.  It doesn’t take much to make her happy and if taking her out for a few meals and doing some laundry makes her day a little brighter, than so be it. She’s the best mom ever and she totally deserves it.  She bends over backwards to make people happy, even when they don’t deserve it.

I did make it a point to stay later this time with the hopes of seeing/doing more but i’m old yo and when I don’t get enough sleep and my allergies are being douchy I get uber lethargic and it just takes too much effort overall, even more for those who would never respond in kind (aside from my mom putting my ass to work on the daily).  You get what you put in after all. However, to the people who claim to miss me and complain and carry on that *I* don’t make time for them…

Would you make time for me?  Montreal isn’t that far, I’ve lived there for 11 years now and only five of my friends have made the trip to see me.  I don’t care about your excuses.  I know some circumstances can’t be helped, I totally get that…  However I am unemployed, a student and yet I made the trek for the second time this year.  There are SO many ways to come see me on the cheap, you just need to be willing to do them.

So your excuse(s) is invalid. 

Tea, toast & tears.

It wasn’t enough to get a letter today from the government informing me that I apparently owe them $758.00 because they ‘re-assessed’ my taxes.  That’s not a huge deal because I have the T4’s to be backing up that bullshit claim.  That’s the one downside to doing your taxes online, you need not hand in your slips, but it’s a damn good thing that I hold onto these things because them ‘readjusting’ the amount of taxes I owe is ridiculous.  Evidently the people at revenue Canada can’t do math?  How do you just “decide” that I didn’t pay as much as I said I did?

There will be none of that thank you very f’ing much.

So I can just add that to the great big pile of stuff I just don’t care to deal with but can’t ignore…

Alas, this isn’t about that.

It’s about my dad. 

Back in June he was diagnosed with lung cancer and emphysema.  Before you put on your judge-y pants, my father quit smoking over 30 years ago so this disease?

Not just limited to smokers.

So there is no cure for emphysema and while my dad was able to kick cancer in the ass, it doesn’t change much.

In fact, it doesn’t change anything at all.

They figure that he’s had this disease for years and it went largely ignored because of our family history of having lousy lungs, so the time that we have is extra precious because we thought that we had more of it.  Something I think that we all take for granted.  Sadly most people don’t get to living until they realize that they’re dying.  We’re pretty candid in my family about pretty much everything and death is no exception.  As soon as the diagnosis was announced my parents made sure that everything was in order and my dad planned his funeral.  So all of his wishes are laid out and we know what he wants and we’ll be certain to make sure that we send him out the way he wants.

Aside from that, life is pretty normal more or less.  It’s always in the back of our minds because it’s not going anywhere, there’s no cure.  Emphysema slowly cuts off your air until you stop breathing.  It’s cruel and while it’s something I try not to think about too hard, I try to make the most of the time I DO have with my dad.  I’ve been trying to get a family picture done twice since I’ve been home because it will most likely be the last.  It never seems to work out and I wonder if it ever will.  I went home in July after I heard the news and Christmas was one of the best one’s my family has had in a long time, it was nice.  Life goes on as it should and while my dad puts on this front of false bravado, I know it’s a ruse.  He’s trying real hard to be brave but I know he’s scared and it breaks my heart because I can’t imagine dying in such an agonizing fashion.

Shit got real when I came home and my dad was outfitted with his oxygen supply.

It got even more real when I seen him at Christmas and he was complaining that he was gaining too much weight from the steroids to help him breathe and yet all the weight gain makes it more difficult to breathe.  Seeing how frustrated he was because he couldn’t catch a break and breathe like a regular person.

Today as I was sitting in class, I got a text from my mom.  Dad has a lung infection, he’s in the hospital.  You should call him.

All of these things take on a whole new meaning when you have emphysema.  So I called my dad, we tried to have random small talk, he asked me about school, listened to me bitch about what douche-bags the tax agency is and tried to be all nice and normal all the while ignoring the fact that you could hear hospital sounds in the background while they tried to find a place for him.  Tried to keep things light and airy when he said he’s trying to stay on this side of the sod (grass) a little longer.

I tried not to fall apart as my dad said I love you to me and heard him start to cry as we were hanging up.  That happens every time we talk now because neither of us knows if that’s the last time.

My father is dying a slow death and it fucking sucks. Part of me really wants this to just be over because the wait/wondering is brutal and scary and emotionally taxing.  I can’t even imagine how terrifying it is for him.  Yet part of me wants him to at least stick it out long enough for me to finish school so he can see me graduate from university.  It’s a really big deal for me and it would be extra special if he was there to witness it.  I know he’s already proud of me, but that’s not really the point.

I can’t handle the feels.

Thank God for Nick.  While tea and toast when I get home from school won’t make it all OK, his hugs are amazing and he doesn’t mind when I come home and fall into his arms as I ugly cry about the injustice of it all.

I just can’t even.

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