Everything can’t be my fault.
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I lost my dad but gained perspective.
There are some people who experience common life events and take lessons from them. Example:
- Don’t date someone who makes fun of you.
- Don’t eat strawberries with white fuzz on it.
- Drink water or your urinary tract and your bowels will call for revenge.
I would do this, but then I also would take it one step farther. These lessons weren’t just a part of being a human. No, not for me.
For me experiencing anything emotionally or physically uncomfortable was a sign that I needed to radically improve myself. Had there not been something wrong with me, the situation would not have occurred.
I also take it further. When people in different states or countries are murdered — I feel guilty. When I see homeless people on the street or know that anyone on the planet is struggling in anyway — I am responsible.
It’s exhausting to be the fault of all things that cause discomfort, and I really never questioned it. It’s been my truth for the majority of my life, until my Daddy died last year.
They say I killed my Dad.
My father was the absolute best. Prior to 2013 he was just your run of the mill functioning alcoholic who worked during the day and drank his lifetime of pain and sorrows away at night.
Then his alcoholism morphed into something dark and twisted and, over a few years lost the functioning side of it and just became, “The Alcoholic.”
Unbeknownst to me he’d actually been diagnosed as very sick in 2007. As his disease got worse the burdens he carried became heavier. Ultimately creating a lethal cocktail of toxins in his body that led to his death.
He began aggressively dying of alcoholism and cancer in April of 2020. 11 months later he died. In those 11 months his sisters and my Mother blamed me.
I was in France. Daddy told me that he’d already had the chance to live his life and that he wasn’t going to take my life away from me. He also said why leave somewhere nice to come sit in a Covid hell hole and not be able to visit.
