san diego's southern cross

'cause the truth you might be runnin' from is so small
but it's as big as the promise, the promise of a comin' day
so i'm sailin' for tomorrow, my dreams are a dyin'.....
think about how many times i have fallin'
spirits are using me, larger voices callin'...
....

crosby stills and nash - southern cross





i have learned many things from this past weekend in san diego. i have learned about myself and about what it means to be alive and in this life. i have learned more about family and friendship and about the bonds that hold us together and move us apart than i ever knew was possible. i learned what it means... to love someone so much that the love will endure beyond what we understand. i don't mean romantic love. i mean the love of a family and i mean what happens to the love and the bond when we cannot define it by life. and in some ways i think i mean a romantic love... a romance between a man who is the best father i know and the strongest woman i've ever met who chose to stand beside him. the woman who will continue in his place to be the solid rock and flexible ties that holds a family together in a house with a garden that feels so much like home that i feel lost now that i am not there.

i have not written about this, although it has been going on for quite awhile. i wanted to give privacy to those who needed it and not speak about a future that had not become definite. i still was hoping (and in my heart am still hoping and praying) that the one thing i was most afraid would not come to pass. i write about it now because this is the piece that i can give... my words and my perspective as a salve or an outlet for how much my heart hurts.... unfortunately i am probably the only one who can or will be helped by my words that seem to be unable to express fully what my heart feels like.

my best friend's dad is dying. i don't mean in the abstract way in which this life is not permanent and we are all slowly dying by a series of breaths. i mean in the concrete way in which he will not be living in a set amount of time. i mean that he, for all of his strength and his fight and his power has come up against cancer and it is killing him in small increments. in small enough increments that we still hope that somehow it will turn out differently but big enough increments to rip that hope and your silly human heart to shreds.

it seems that when i think about it logically that it cannot possibly make sense. you would have to know him... but it's not possible. and that cannot possibly be true. it's too awful and it's too big and it's too much and it's not fair.

and i love him. like a father, a mentor and a hero. i love him because of a thousand things but mostly because he is simply him. i love him even more because he gave me my best friend. she has been in my life for 29 years and she is the other half of me. some days it seems she is the better part and the better half.

and some days, like today, my grief seems so big that my heart seems to hurt from growing large enough to hold onto it. the grief is senseless and frightening and beyond what i can manage with human feelings and human words. the grief feels so big that it makes everything else seem pointless in it's wake... like school or grocery shopping or getting new shoes. those small things are all swallowed up into a undefined mess of daily tasks that must happen but seem to hold no joy or interest... but the hardest thing is getting past the feelings of powerlessness and anger at how this could have possibly happened. the even harder part is that she is my best friend and i know how she hurts and i know how i am impotent to help her. i don't know what to say or do... except to say that there is nothing i can do or say and there isn't a way this will be okay.

i will admit that i have been standoffish to my friends and to my boyfriend. i have had a hard time talking about it - my feelings, my fears and what it all means. i know that talking about these things supposedly makes it better but everytime i talk about it i feel like others are overwhelmed with the duty to say it will be okay and it won't. it can't ever be okay... maybe it won't be as bad but it's hard to believe that it will be okay.

and so it is with that knowledge... the knowledge of exactly where we are that i leave you. we are in unchartered territory - on a map of life. and it is just life. and it's terminal. and it works out okay in the end. and it's already tomorrow in australia. and i've been around the world looking for myself (the only woman-girl i know) and i've got to trust that above all things love endures.

and to dawnielle - even though you may start to like karaoke... "what heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten" - we are family linked together through happiness and tragedy and "you understand why now (we) came this way" and i wouldn't have come any other way. i promise that if you need me i will always come. i'm sorry i cannot do more.

i'll think of a reason later

i don't know why but i've always loved this song... and although i am absolutely religiously against karaoke i certainly rock out to this song and would consider singing it... perhaps there is something wrong with me. in all fairness i do currently have a hematoma...

take a listen and marvel at my guilty pleasure and the lyrics that say: "it sure ain't christian to judge a stranger, but i don't like her. she may an angel that spends all winter bringin' the homeless blankets and dinner, a regular nobel peace prize winner but i really hate her. i'll think of a reason later. inside her head may lay all the answers for curin' diseases from baldness to cancer. the salt of the earth and a real fine dancer.. but i really hate her."

this just in....

1. kj's has karaoke in the afternoon. thank god!!! it's some sort of special event / raffle that involves bidding on baked goods and karaoke. there is also a drunk man here with his 7 year old daughter. it would be pathetic if it weren't so fucking weird.
2. i've been "finding" things lately that include: fortunes, a list of things someone needs to do in order to reinstate their driving privileges, the directions to using plan b emergency contraceptive (the morning after pill) and a new found hatred for karaoke.
3. talked to ferris today. told him everything that i've thought / felt for the past week since he called me drunk. it went surprisingly well. he said that one of his favourite things about me is that i am honest with myself and others and that i'm straight forward enough to say what i think.
4. going to dinner with dan... this can only end in headache but after 08/30 i'll never see him again so we might as well make the best of it.
5. went for a hike today that made the low back / butt muscle sore - ya know the ghetto booty muscle? and i'm excited. it's one of my dreams to have an ass you can set things on....
   
6. car still isn't working. i still don't care.
7. i'm bothered by having children in bars and irresponsible parents. i love kids. all kids. i don't love parents. why isn't being an asshole an arrestable offense???