Posts from — April 2010

Wow, a lot has happened for me lately.  My dear grandfather passed away the third week of March.  He was very peaceful at the end and in the company of my grandmother, aunt and cousin.  I got to speak to him by telephone and even though he couldn’t talk my grandmother said that he physically responded to what I was saying.  He felt so present to me as I heard his breathing change.  He had been sleeping off and on.  In my last moments with him I told him that I would just be there with him, that I didn’t have anything more to say but that I just wanted to be with him.  He dozed off peacefully.  I had two such conversations with him before he died two days later.

Digesting this has been interesting.  I mostly feel very much at peace with his death.  I was aware as he was dying that I had begun this intensive and very focused time in therapy as I began to realize that I would not have his love and support, that he would die and that I would not have him as a ballast in my life anymore.  As he was aging, I was seeing my parents more clearly and that brought up significant traumatic responses within me.  It was a surprise, then, a few weeks ago when I found myself at ease with Grandpa’s passing.

I was most scared about seeing my parents.  Perhaps more on that later.

While I have not had existential anxiety related to Grandpa’s death, his passing is something that I am still assimilating.  It hasn’t hit me completely.  Last night it dawned on me that I would never again get to have an experience with him.  My real life experiences with him are over.  Of course, I will be re-experiencing him over and over again in my heart.

Just after I got back I was offered a job – a nice promotion over my temp job within the same department.  So that was a lot to absorb all at once.

And I feel like I am on the cusp of a deeper and more nuanced understanding of what it means to be differentiated from people.  My relationship with my husband is prime testing ground these days.  I am reluctant to blend too much with him.  I am feeling a need for distance I suppose so that I can know myself more and become close again without losing myself.

It’s an utterly fascinating time.

And a post memorial service e-mail from my dad had me reeling for a few days after months of not reeling from things.  I was blown away by the emotionally incestuous nature of his expectations of me.  I felt utterly responsible for him.  I felt fearful for his well-being.  I felt awful for turning my back and knowing that I indeed need to turn my back in order to be a healthy child.  I felt very enmeshed with him.  I felt scared for my own well-being.  I had a hard time finding myself again.  But then I did.

All of this sense of myself as being a separate person or not is also playing out at work.  I am watching closely when I feel the urge to fit in and be like everyone else.  I am so fortunate to have my own office with this new position.  The physical structure of having space of my own is helping me to remember who I am and that I am distinct from the mindsets that others have about themselves and the work.  It’s an odd experience to not be trying to compulsively fit in all the time.  I still catch myself wanting that in a reflexive kind of way – not that wanting to fit in is a completely bad thing.  To some degree it’s a great thing, I’m just finding when it is that I go too far with the desire to fit in.

I am also really aware that my work colleagues do not have to be my close personal friends.  It is enough for me that I respect their work ethic and their care for the department.  It’s a huge relief that that’s enough.

Another interesting thing is that I am aware that as time goes on that I am getting to know both their good points and their bad points more clearly just as they have a chance to get to know my good points and bad points better.  As I come to see them with greater clarity, I can feel my acceptance of them as they are – good and bad.  It’s a great feeling – that acceptance.  I love knowing that to some degree they will have to come to that same level of acceptance about me.  I say that because I see that they have come to some place of acceptance with their other coworkers so I know they will with me, too.  They may complain at times, but there’s both acceptance in their complaining and I can see that at least for one person her complaints are just a feature of who she is.  It’s also been a relief to be able to remember that people may not even be able to see meclearly – that I don’t have to agree with their assessments.  I don’t have to have them understand me.  They can get me wrong.  It doesn’t really matter.

Things are so different when I don’t have to compulsively look outside myself for validation and acceptance.

In my last conversation with Grandpa, I told him that I was happy.  I think I said something like it seemed like he stuck around to make sure I was okay and that he could let go because I’d gotten enough to a place where I was deeply, deeply happy.  I am so glad I told him this gist of things.  I wanted him to know without a doubt that I would be okay.  We never spoke about the challenges I had with my parents, but I think he knew.

I’ve got a lot of stuff I am wanting to experience and figure out this year, things that I hope that being back in the work world will help me to sort out.  I am so grateful for the stability and certainty that this  job will offer.  I am grateful that I no longer need to live with uncertainty about this big component of my life.