And like a Phoenix, I will rise out of the ashes...

Okay, so when I started this blog a month ago, my intent was to create a funny and introspective documentation of one person's mildly frustrating efforts in relocating to New York City. Funny and introspective, kind of like me. As I go back over all the posts from the last month, I see a little bit of funny and introspective, but I see a lot of pain under the surface too. While the average blog consumer may not see the pain, I can see it conspicuously poking out from behind.

Personally, I don't want to read about someone else's angst, and I don't imagine that anyone else wants to read about mine, so I feel a little guilty and disappointed that my blog is coming dangerously close to turning out to be less funny and introspective and more thrashy and outlet-for-painy. My inclination is to say, "It's silly that I feel guilty and disappointed, but nonetheless, I'm sorry for vomiting angst all over you. I'll start over and be funnier and more introspective." But after reading through it all, I didn't even really vomit angst! Well, maybe just a little... But the pain and the thrashing are all happening inside, and I'm trying to hide them by being funny and introspective (which is really kind of like me).

In her last blog entry, my sister, Salty, referred back to an older post of hers about pain. She's afraid of pain so she has anxiety about dealing with pain, which causes more pain, which gives her anxiety about anxiety, blah blah... As I have mentioned over and over, I'm going through a lot of that same stuff, hence the occasional thrashing. It took Salty a long time to drop the bomb in her blog; the bomb that explains the pain. That's not really my style, but neither is dropping the bomb at the end of a post. So hitch up your skirts, ladies. We're going to wade through some shit.

When I was six years old, my father shot and killed himself. There it is. Now you know.

I don't know a lot about him, or about what happened, because I was six. I was brought up in a working-class Catholic family that didn't know how to deal with that kind of tragedy, other than to ignore it. My sister's feelings were stifled. Mine were coddled with unhealthy and unsatisfying solutions like toys, food (a story for another time), and a spiral perm. No kidding--when my mom agreed to get me a spiral perm in fourth grade (heh), she really justified spending $80 on my nine-year-old head by saying it would make me feel good about myself.

I get really frustrated because I can't squeeze the entire story out of anyone...the closest I can get is my sister, who was eleven at the time and although she has a lot more of the story than I do, she doesn't have the whole thing. In fact, I don't think anyone knows it all...from what I understand there was no real explanation, no note, no witness. He was found in his car with a picture of my sister and I. About a year before it happened, his youngest brother had died in an accident, after which amorphously he said to his oldest sister, "now I know what I have to do." That's the best I've got. My Mom, who was probably closer to him and to his illness than anyone else, doesn't talk about it. As a kid, I felt like that was because she thought it shouldn't be talked about, but as I've grown older, now that we're twenty-one years removed from it (Feb. 7, 1987, I think), I think it's because she didn't have anyone to talk to for a very long time...Nobody else was in her position (trying so hard to understand and help only to have it literally blow up, left with two children to support, abandoned emotionally by family and friends who didn't want to talk about it because they were afraid of pain).

One of the main differences in the way my sister and I are coming to terms with all this is that she can afford therapy (and lovingly shares the wisdom) and I may not make rent (more on that later). So right now I have no outlet...this is it. This is my outlet. So I might thrash about. I might need to talk about it. And I'm not going to apologize. I may feel guilty and disappointed about it, but if I do that's okay and not silly, those are just feelings that come with this territory. And ultimately those feelings are the problem behind all my angst: the inability to properly cope with or confront my pain, and the guilt and disappointment that comes with being unable to do so.

The truth is that nobody teaches you how to deal with your pain, you’re just expected to learn by example. It just so happens that my examples weren’t very good at it, so it’s completely okay that I don’t know. In fact, since I had to unlearn before I could begin teaching myself, I think I’m doing a great job so far.