It’s funny how things happen at the least expected times, and we have no notice, no closure, no nothing at all when they happens.
The core of my own personal problems I have discovered is that I have no closure on anything. Whether it’s with Gustaf, or with any old ‘friends’ or whatever, but it’s sad that it took the recent passing of my father for me to realize it.
So Wednesday night, after I came home from my run, everything had been normal and according to how it always is; dad was home, barbeque was on, house was open and T.V. was on, so without thinking anything of it I go up for my shower and I come out and the phone rings. It’s my mother telling me that she would be late from work or whatever, and for some ironic reason for the first time in a long time I didn’t feel the need to tell my dad about it, as I saw him laying down in the bed as I came out of the shower.
Little did I know that one hour later when my mom came home and went to get changed, she tried to wake him from what we both thought was a nap; and he wouldn’t wake up. She immediatelly screamed out my name and I came running in and she was yelling that she thought he was dead, and she was screaming hysterically and just not a pretty picture. I’ve never seen my mother actually loose control of her feelings apart from arguments, but I grabbed her and took her outside and calmed her down quickly, and ran back into the room and checked his breathing and pulse, and there was nothing. His lips were starting to go blue and his skin was cold, so I ran to the phone and called 911 and quite calmly told the operator what was going on, and then after that was done, she asked me if I felt comfortable starting CPR on him, and I immediately said yes, and she said ‘okay paramedics are on their way’…
So I run back into the room and take him to the floor, and start CPR, as I had many years of training and such, and after about 5 minutes I couldn’t do it anymore for either a lack of anything and also since my mother knew he was dead and had already been blue.
So I took her downstairs and tried to calm her down, and this whole time I hadn’t lost my cool, or paniced at all. So 15 minutes later the paramedics arrive and they go upstairs to his room and are there for hours doing various things and such and other officers from police come and ask question and then some detectives, and then the fire men and meanwhile the entire neighbourhood is crowding on the front porch knowing what’s going on. So between my mother being in denial, and me seeming to be completely unphased by the situation, everyone starts arriving.
My father was the eldest of 16 and my mother is the eldest of 12, so many many people are coming over who live in the area and such so more or less everyone is doing something. So everyone leaves and my mom starts talking with some neighbours who was close with my dad, and the phone is ringing off the hook with people trying to get more info and such, and I just didn’t know what to say at all.
Even still, I don’t know what to say at all to people, even when I know when the service will be and people are telling me they are so sorry, I just don’t know what to say. Sure I’m upset, and it took me until about lunchtime the day after, when I called the mother of an old tennis friend of mine, whom I was very close with (her), and asked her to meet me the next day and she agreed of course after hearing what had happend.
So I talked with her for many hours, about his death, about my life, about her life, and about the problems I’ve been having and the reasons for me abandoning the love of my life (tennis). And this was more or less me venting, telling her just everything that I’m feeling and thinking and all the pain I feel and why I feel it. Why I feel so lonely, and what’s the cause of it. And it reminded me of something she had said to me 2 years ago, despite being 48 years old or so talking to an 18 year old. She said more or less to me one day:
“Osky, what you need to understand, whether now or later, at your own time, is that you and I are very different from other people. We are the type of people who walk through life and are just somehow affecting other people in masses. We know many people, and yet when it comes to being close to many or any, there are very few if any that we can refer to as our true friends. What you don’t know, as you are very young, is we are different from other people, we are kindred souls, and you specifically have an old-soul; the soul of one who has lived a long time, and is very mature in feelings and thoughts, and yet you are only 18 years old and you won’t believe me at all.”
She mentioned to me today, and I can’t imagine another time I’ve had such a revelation about something. It just makes sense, we walk around and just feel so empty and worthless all the time, and we have been so hurt by things, and had so many things to deal with that sometimes other people don’t know about or even think about, but we have gone through a lot of the same things. She’s obviously a lot older and has more time, but I completely agree, and I start to understand things. And of the thousands of questions she asked, one of them really just made me stop and think, and I really just broke down in the resteraunt infront of everyone to her asking ‘Well Osky, are you happy?’
I didn’t know how to answer, and with tears in my eyes I knew the true answer was no, but I couldn’t say it because I couldn’t face the reality of it. Of course for many years I’ve not been happy, I thought it, but I never thought it or talked to anyone else about it. And so I just told her all about not feeling appreciated by anyone, about knowing that I’m a good person, a kind person, nothing wrong with me, except the fact that I’m not comfortable with myself, the way I am, who I am, and after some more time talking to her I find the roots of some things…
Closure on things.
How could it be so simple as such things? It’s true though, I told her about Gus and how we met, and how I’m not happy with things, and I feel like our friendship is just so one sided and how it makes me so upset all the time, and she immediatly knows how I feel and is able to know that I torture myself because I can’t deal with the closure of it. I’m afraid of the unknown, the things that I can’t control, the feelings that I can’t deal with, just closure.
And I thought about it, neither of us just talked for a few minutes, but I know she could read my mind. This was after talking about some other more personal stuff too, but I could just totally seeing it all make sense now. So she asked about how things with Scott were, and if we had talked in the last few years and I told her, sketchy at best, after we went away to university we sort of had a falling out, and since I’m such a socially awkward person in most ‘normal’ situations, before I left I made a huge deal about thanking him for just being so supportive over the year as I had a lot of hard time. Originally and recently I have been feeling like I was majorly unappreciated, and I thought it was out of pity that he was kind, but I’m not really sure now. Who knows? It could have been the thing that I was afraid of; closure of knowing he was being a friend or not.
And so now I am doing what I should have done 5 years ago, trying to create closure (whether good or bad). So I am sending Gus an e-mail (probably, either that or snail mail) basically just seeking closure. Stating where I find myself in the friendship, what my feelings are towards it, and asking him to be just completely honest as to what the fuck is going on, and why he has been doing the things that he has, and really just try to understand where he is coming from, and if I am even wasting my time with his friendship. The way that Cris sees it, is that either way closure comes around; he admits that he just donesn’t care and has no desire to continue the friendship that I put so much time and effort into dealing with; or he just comes clean and says why he has been doing what he does, and what he feels we are at and why. Either way, good or bad, it’s closure and after it I will know that it’s over, and if it’s bad I can just move on and never have to worry about it again.
Instead of dwelling on the things that I have an unknown over, or over the past, I need to seek closure. It will take me days, weeks, months, years to learn how to do it, but I just need to do it, and I figure that it’s nothing worse than what I am feeling because the worst that can happen with any of it is just that I get hurt, but I am already getting hurt by not knowing, so this way I can move on!
So not only do I seek closure with Gus, but also with Scott and I will send him yet another e-mail about it, asking the same thing, and what the deal is because when someone writes something really personal in your yearbook and says something like “I really don’t want to loos contact with you, I believe that we can be friends for a long time” I take that to heart, but I’m not seeing it at all in reality. It’s again one-sided thing, and I just can’t do that to myself anymore. I’ve got enough shit to deal with, now with the death of my father, but on top of that I’m feeling guilty about myself, and I have no closure on anything.
When the topic of going to France came up the immediate response is I can go there to sort of ‘find myself’ (because that’s why nobody else can find me or cares to know me, because I don’t know who I truely am), but what I had said was “And no matter what happens, I will always be leaving there anyways so it’s not a huge deal”
That made her go ‘crazy’ and immediatly hit me over the head with a rolled up napkin since she knows that I’m automatically assuming that it’s going to be crap, and nothing good will come out of it and I’ve already accepted the fact that I will leave and never have to worry about it again.
~o/ No matter where in the world and life we go, we take our baggage, memories, and feelings with us, and no matter how hard we try we can’t escape it o~
Take that one and add it to your ‘sayings’ books for the few people that actually read this.
Oh and for all the Swedaphones around another good saying that I came up with few weeks ago which summed up my feelings during one of my ‘sad times’:
~o/ När ett liv är slut, vi begråter; men när man lider, ingen kommer att hjälpa en o~
They are both really true, and really sad in some cryptik ways, so I will leave with those dark thoughts as I don’t know how much I will be around considering the viewing is tonight and I must ‘groom’ myself, and then the memorial service is Saturday morning at 10.30, and pretty much after that it will be adapting to life more or less just my mom and I, as we are leaving, and figuring everything out; as there is much to fix, sort, deal with, much less our emotions and the emotions of others.
And as another side note, we all deal with loss and pain in different ways, so one shouldn’t judge another just because they see nothing on the outside, as more often than not, people are more complex than others preceive them.
I am so sorry. I really am.
It is good that you seek closer, though. That is very good for you in every way, I just wish it would have taken less than this for you to realise.
I’m so sorry to hear about your loss.
It’s good to seek closure. It helps one move on.
Out of curiousity, What does:
“När ett liv är slut, vi begråter; men när man lider, ingen kommer att hjälpa en”
mean?