The day before the day

I have been using these solo nights in hotel rooms to cry myself to sleep. It's an indulgence I can't take at home, with the husband who will try to comfort me when comfort isn't what I need, and the cats, who I can feel judging me. But tonight a combination of a friend's picture and a song by Dido just brought everything tumbling out.

I haven't had many business trips lately. I spent my last one sobbing about my dying cat, and I will sometimes lay in bed thinking about how much more crying I have to do over him, but I'm careful not to think about him too much. My therapist says the biggest issue I have is my inability to grieve appropriately. My eyes will begin to well up for almost any reason: a person near tears for losing weight on a reality show, or a story about someone doing something heroic, or even hearing about other people talking about crying. And I hate that I can't control my emotions about issues that I have no real stake in. My emotional reactions makes me feel weak.

I don't hold others to that standard, but somewhere I picked up this fucked up idea that crying-- just my crying-- is a nearly inexcusable character flaw. I had a horrible day at work a few weeks ago where I felt like my head was being ripped open by the MRSA infection entrenched in my left nostril that ended up with me going in to tell the boss that I wasn't feeling well and I ended up bursting into tears. It was horrible. I felt like the worst stereotype of a weakling girl who cries at the slightest stubbed toe or dropped ice cream cone.

I wasn't planning on sobbing tonight, here in my hotel room in Seattle, but I saw pictures of a friend of mine with his new baby. He was so happy just looking at the baby. He may not even have been aware a picture had been taken.

I realized I don't have any pictures of my dad and me like that. I have a few of us posing and his smile seems genuine enough, but I there aren't any like the picture of my friend and his son. Even worse, I'm starting to lose my memory of Dad altogether. I have a few real memories-- like the time at the campfire girl performance when I was six or seven. I was emceeing some sort of talent show where I had to pull a volunteer out of the audience and Dad just stood up, as if there was no one else who could do it (and he was right. I was planning on picking him).

I remember, sitting downstairs every day after preschool, keeping an eye on the polyester mustard curtains for his silhouette, and then running upstairs to jump into his arms. But I have very few of those memories I know I really experienced where it was just us two interacting. And even fewer that were happy.

My more specific memories are things like him yelling at me because he thought I stole his cigarettes and smoked them, when really I flushed them down the toilet because I knew they were bad for him. I remember him admonishing me for urine or blood tests with sugar levels that were too high. And I remember standing outside the sliding glass doors of his hospital room the day before he died, not allowed to go in because he was in ICU and I was only 12.

I do have one very vivid memory where the look on his face showed me that he really did love me. We were staying at my grandmother's house one night and during a particularly bad nightmare, I ended up sleepwalking down the street, waking up several blocks away from the house, on a street that was completely foreign to me. I was nine and it was dark. I sat on the curb and burst into tears. A man heard me and came out of his house and called my grandma's house after figuring out exactly where I should have been (not an easy thing when I only knew her as "Nonnie," which was not her given name and helped him not at all when he tried looking her up in the phonebook). He walked me out to his front porch and we watched as my entire family came running around the corner (I had only gotten a few blocks away). Probably the only look on my Dad's face I know I can remember accurately was the one he had at that moment. He was so worried and so happy to get me back. I don't remember if he carried me back to Nonnie's house, but he probably did.

I wish I had a picture of him to post for this entry, but as I mentioned earlier I am in a hotel room on a work laptop, and the single picture I have of him with me as a baby sits on my old desktop at home. Maybe I'll update it when I get back. Maybe this incident will have passed by then and I won't feel the need to be dramtically melancholy. I was supposed to go to bed an hour and a half ago, but that one Dido song made me get up to write this. It hasn't gone through much of a filter (I usually re-read each post 50 times before actually publishing), so I apologize for any run on sentences or incomplete thoughts.

And I'm sorry for getting you involved in this selfishly dramatic post. I'm posting this and going to bed without even reading it. I'm supposed to be at work at seven tomorrow.