letting go.

this year. oh this year has been about letting go. definitely the last 12-13 months & even more so in the extreme, the last few.

letting go of the poison in i let into my life is something i continually struggle with. poison cruelly cloaked as love. but finally revealed as lies. i'm still recovering from my emotional self-hospitalization from what that toxic life, that toxic person did to me. what i did to me. to this day some of the more tangible reminders - & the junior high school behavior that accompanies those reminders - don't help the healing process much.

then there's dad. maybe i don't have to "let go" of him. perhaps it's letting go of his suffering, letting go of the 5 years he fought & journeyed through what life dished out & made it his own. it's letting go of his physical presence. that i can never hug him again, never lean my head on his shoulder, never hold his hand, never seek his counsel again. this is a harder lesson. but i might approach it the way my surprisingly resilient (i didn't give her enough credit!) mother is doing. she talks to him. all the time. time for me to start that, i think. so whatever voice inside of me answers to my soon-to-be conversations with him, i'll know it's him...

& the hand i hold inside my heart, that will be him, as well.

and that, i will never have to let go.

xoxo

with.

my father died. he died april 15. he's somewhere in the earth & somewhere in the sky.

my mom told me to get to sf. my tickets were for 4 days but i packed for 2 weeks.

ames, who is my f*in savior, picked me up from the airport, dropped off my bags at the house & brought me to the hospital.

i spent the next 5 days with my father. the first 2 nights i slept at the house. the last 3, i slept at the hospital in his room.

i held his hand the last 3 hours of his life. i rested my head on his leg as he took his last breath.

i was with him.

and he will always be with me.