4:30. A.m. I don’t want up. Not yet. I am not ready to do this day without my dad.
I woke hours later. I felt like I ran a race. That’s not quite right. I’ve ran a couple of races and my breathing was controlled and when I was done I just felt done running a race and had a red face. And I was hungry. I didn’t feel anything in my chest. People say this? I felt like I should run a race.
Can I pretend to run a race to control my breathing? Why can’t I do it when I sit but I can when I run and walk miles? I sat and tried. I’ve tried before. I wake early and sit and say the pledge of allegiance in my head and breath. It’s harder because I don’t want to say the pledge allegiance and breath. I want answers for things that aren’t answerable. Not, why did he die? Not, what if they did this? It’s. What will life be like now? What will happen to his tools? His pianos? What will I be like? How will life be without him? And I don’t want to think these things. But what am I supposed to think? I’m supposed to be in the moment. In the moment I am in the future. Working through a life without my dad. I’ve worked through him dying a million times over my life. But I didn’t properly prepare myself for him actually dying. The after, for me with the tools I have. Are they enough?
I’ve never felt so alone. Even when I think of the millions of people who deal with shit worse than this or even the same. I just don’t care. Or I care too much. I want a project. Someone else to think of and save. I’m not sure I’m saveable from this?
At 4:30 every morning I’ve been writing since I started this place to write specifically to see in a single place what I go through. How I go through? So I can go through. Today there feels like no through.
At 4:30 every day now I have to write about my dad not being part of my through. He is thé through Im trying to get through. Without him to help me get through. Is it enough? The things I’ve learned the past few years. Do I have the right tools? I just barely know me. The me that can get through. Is it enough to tell myself that for a day there is nothing to get through? Is it enough that I can tell myself I can get through a single day when there is never a certainty you can get through a single moment?
Why can’t my lungs fill up? A shortness of breath is a symptom of this nasty virus. Maybe that’s what it is? My mind knows better? It is not a virus? You can’t breath because you are forward thinking. And normally that’s not so bad. You can look forward and see your plans you have laid out. Look forward to trips. Look forward to dinner. But now you look forward and there is a void. My lungs can’t fill up from my erratic thoughts of the future I can’t control. I’m not a stranger to this. I recognized it. I just am not sure today what to do about it. That tool seems lost.
I’m furious with all packaging. Nothing opens right. It may be why I don’t love some holidays? All the packaging required. I’m not sure what kind of job this is? Is it an engineer? A packaging engineer? Are these people who sit around planning on how to make us not be able to get into things? So they laugh at some of them? Ha! Try and open that! Do they have to test them themselves? I’m not an engineer, if they can open cereal boxes with perfection it’s because they know the secret to opening it, they created it. Do they bring in small children to test it? Are they looking to make it not be opened by toddlers or just to be secure enough for preservatives, freshness and shipping? Why do some require perforated type lines to follow but the cardboard seems to rip to easily and destroy the perfect can shaped hole left. Margarine? You pull in the middle in hopes you can release one stick at a time like a vending machine. Mine smashed the butter trying to open it. I can never get the last coffee pod from the corner without shredding the box. Shouldn’t it just open fully for a full sized hand to get the last one? Not a toddler hand. It doesn’t matter the engineer says. By the last one it’s now a recycled box.
Maybe an engineer is the wrong job? I don’t know what an engineer does really other than think. An engineer would probably make it easier. Or provide a little tool to go with it? Or not be involved at all. Maybe it’s just a designer? Someone who designs just is that. Like clothes designers. They don’t always wear their clothes. They dream them up for others. Buildings? Designed by thinkers who may never have to try and open the strange door they dreamt up. Or try to clean the windows they designed to creat a specific look of the light pouring in. They create packaging they will never open. Cookies are opened on top now. It’s not easier. It’s just on top. Before, I opened the side and the cookies went into a jar. Now I open following the rules and they can’t be put in a jar without touching them all. But if you try to open it the old way it won’t do it right. Now they go in a ziplock baggie to assure freshness after destroying the weak packing system. They changed even the ends of the package not just the top.
Why is it just some cookies? Oreos seem to be better if they are too hard to get to the ones in the corners under the packaging, shoving cookie pieces into your nails to reach? Why are the generic brands not opened this way? Am I paying more just to open? Why do I even care?
Packages brag; “easy to open, enjoy this new way to open, same taste, new frustrating way to taste it, try and get this out!, might as well just rip this open with your pruners you won’t be able to follow the rules…”
I suppose I need it to say; “tastes the same, packaging tested by some of the most anxious people we could find, you are anxious? Here is your food unpackaged. Enjoy the ease of just not opening anything, it’s fruit.”
I don’t like the waste in toy packaging. I have ripped doll hair out trying to get that stapled in plastic piece they somehow got through the head to the box. I’ve pulled legs from sockets on Barbie dolls. Ripped their ball gowns, shoes flying across the room. Barbie still smiling and ready to play with one leg and no shoes.
Now, is the new LOL’s which have 10-15 single foil packages in a little plastic ball also wrapped in plastic. None of which open but when you finally cut them all they hold something when put together is the size of a golf ball. A lipstick the size of a sprinkle on a cupcake in a package like a bandaid. Can’t open puzzles. They use the picture of the completed puzzle to also be part of what secures it. Opening can lead to ripping the picture.
I need someone to open things for me. Someone who will see the bag of sugar or flour and imagine the mess that might come if it’s not done for me. This is permanent. It’s not going to get better. I’m too anxious always to open anything carefully. I personally don’t care. I can clean up flour. I expect to. I’ve not opened the bag well all my life. My father knows this about me. “Wait, you’ll just rip it down the middle.” “Here, let me open that.” He gets his Genuine Gerber multipurpose functioning tool and calmly opens everything in my life. I need more tools? Or to run a race? Or to play barbies maybe? I just won’t try to open anything today. Just breath today.
Aspenleaf 