Clumsy Kisses

The anniversary

Now that the anniversary is here, I have no idea what to say. All year I’ve had things to say, points to make, things to rant about, etc etc and now. I just don’t. I’m sad, of course I’m sad. I feel like a strong gust of wind could blow me over. I’m still pissed off that life ended up going this way. I miss my dad. I miss his stupid jokes and the way he called me Bec and his illegible handwriting and the fact he always had a hankie in case you needed to mop anything up and the way he kissed my mum every single day before leaving for work and I miss having another voice of advice and I miss him mocking my music collection and I miss him volunteering to pick me up from places. The hankie, oh fuck the hankie. I threw up on that thing more than once in my childhood.

I haven’t cried. Yet. I’m not a crier. Never have been. I have a feeling my mum will set me off. I have to go to the Job Centre soon (do not fucking want), and then I’m meeting my mum at the gym, then we’re spending all weekend at hers cos my aunt and uncle are coming up. That’ll be nice, I just want this afternoon out of the way, you know?

I’m grateful for some things. I’m grateful I got my dad for 24 years. I’m grateful that he was so nice to me, even when we argued (and Jesus could we argue). I’m grateful I have a wonderful family and friend network that’d dragged me through the past year. I survived. We survived. I have survived. I’m proud of myself.

I keep remembering the day my grandad died. He’d had a stroke ten years previously (after two suicide attempts…) and lived a miserable, angry existence unable to speak or move. He finally died of pneumonia right at the beginning of 2004. We’d been away for New Year and my dad got called back early by my uncle, because my grandad took a turn for the worse. He left in my mother’s car, which was how Himself and I had got there, and left me, Himself, my mother and my grandma to get home in his car with all the stuff. It was hilarious. We had stuff piled everywhere, we sat on pillows, and my grandma and Himself, in the back, had to have the parcel shelf across their laps. When we got home, I was first in the house. I walked in and my dad stood in the doorway between the dining room and living room, crying, telling us that he had died just after we’d left the hospital that morning. It wasn’t the first time I’d realised that my parents were mortal but I remember thinking, my dad is in pain because his dad died. Despite the fact they didn’t really get on, despite all the anger and bitterness and stuff, he was a child who’d lost his dad.

It just gets me that so few years later, I am that child too. I’m a grown woman but, fuck I feel like bawling like a two year old at the vast unfairness of life.

This is the honest side of surviving suicide

Teethless

Spare me a thought when you’re old and you’re finished

I am back!

In which I vomit on the keyboard for a paragraph

Bad Day

Six months

Bravery

No one discusses what they don’t understand