Sunrise, Sunset, Sunrise

It has been over a year since I last posted. An uncountable number of experiences have befallen me over the past year, but instead of recounting them all, I am going to write about what I learned. I find that my most pensive and insightful posts have been about lessons rather than the experiences that spawned them.

I suppose an important lesson I learned is that communication requires emotion. I consider myself to be emotionally mature and possessing of the ability to communicate but I realized that it is very challenging to have and do both. It is rare that I should find myself unable to empathize with a companion and even rarer that I wouldn't be able to strike up a conversation. Just yesterday, I befriended many people while wearing tiny fairy wings at the Renaissance Festival; I was the self-proclaimed largest fairy there. Here's the thing, though: I often make new friends on a purely superficial level. These superficial friends (hereinafter 'superficials') exist in all of our lives. If you are anything like me, though, when you go through a deeply moving experience, whether public or private, you might be surprised how many of these superficials step up to the plate to assert the assistance of their strength. Superficials are the true test of my ability to feel and communicate simultaneously.

In late July, my father's cancer finally won out and he passed away. Although he was ready, the rest of us are still feeling his absence, and I think we always will. Looking back through the blog, I came across an old post about my dad's cancer and that was when this idea came to me. After I had written about it, I had my dad read it and his reaction came as unexpected to me. Somehow, he was surprised by my reaction to the news and to the feelings that I was experiencing. Even near the end, he was shocked to find out how much I was feeling. My father went into liver failure, almost overnight, and his brain started to suffer from the sudden overabundance of non-filtered toxins in his blood. Thus, when he said something that didn't make sense, we just started to take it in stride. These shady moments, though, mostly served to punctuate his moments of lucidity. One night he had gone to bed and suddenly turned on his light. My mom was crying in the living room so I went back to check on him. To say that I was startled by my father's violent outburst is putting it mildly. "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON OUT THERE? WHAT AREN'T YOU GUYS TELLING ME?!" If you've never had to remind your father that he was dying and that it made you sad, consider yourself lucky. But even when faced with his own mortality, he thought I was sad because of something else, not just him. This would seem to suggest that I wasn't adequately communicating my emotions to him. I'm not looking to be reassured about this, as a very great blessing, I don't really carry any regret or guilt about the whole thing. The last words my father and I exchanged were "I love you" and that's as it should be. But if I can't adequately tell my father how I'm feeling, how the hell am I supposed to express it to a superficial?

That's just it, though: I don't express it. What I've learned is that instead of making everybody else feel weird, I crack a joke, say something reassuring, and move on. But the fascinating thing is that I think my approach has actually just made the whole thing worse. People react very strangely when I make light of the situation or feign a light heart. The truth is obviously much darker. I'm not a robot, and as much as I'd like it sometimes, I feel deep sadness like the rest of humanity. Apparently I'm not special. . .

Lame.

Although it is infinitely harder, I've started to consciously tell people that I'm not doing very well, and that it is very hard. The plain truth. Who would have thought it was so hard? Don't answer that, by the way. I am well-aware that the truth is often harder, but I just didn't expect the truth to be this hard. But be faithful, if you find yourself sugarcoating it for the cheap seats in the back, where the superficials like to hang out in the theaters of our lives, the first word is the hardest. It isn't the truth that poses the challenge; rather, it is the commitment to tell it.

Thus the lesson: even though it sucks, when people ask me how I am feeling, they are getting a cold, hard truth-slap square across the face because sugarcoating it just won't suffice. It makes me seem unfeeling, it makes them feel uncomfortable. Who needs it? The added benefit to this approach has been the seamless transition of various superficials into actual friendships.

There are obviously a million lessons that I've learned from my father, and particularly from the last couple weeks that I got to share with him, but this one feels like a particular winner. I might not always make you laugh, but if you converse with me, you will learn about me rather than the ridiculous tales that I weave to create false familiarity. So long surface-level banter, hello meaningful conversation.

*See first paragraph*

"Get some sour cream and onion chips with some dip, man, some beef jerky, some peanut butter. Get some Häagen-Dazs ice cream bars, a whole lot, make sure chocolate, gotta have chocolate, man. Some popcorn, red popcorn, graham crackers, graham crackers with marshmallows, the little marshmallows and little chocolate bars and we can make s'mores, man. Also, celery, grape jelly, Cap'n Crunch with the little Crunch berries, pizzas. We need two big pizzas, man, everything on 'em, with water, whole lotta water, and Funyons." - Half-Baked

I intended for that to be the title of this blog post, in a subtle homage to Fiona Apple "When the pawn..." but alas Blogger cockblocked my attempt. Bitches.

So I just spent an hour arguing with my dad over whether or not he should get medical Cannabis. (At this point, I have to point out that the image on that website is four people who make their living thanks to weed. Beautiful.) As a cancer patient (who is in chronic pain, I might add, thanks to his uber-enlarged liver. Also, he isn't sleeping at night anymore because of combined pain and nerves) he would qualify for medical marijuana to help with pain management and to help with the side-effects of his impending chemotherapy. Did I use these reasons to argue my point to my father? Nope. Instead, I went with the catch-phrase approach: "Cancer? Try Chronic!" "If somebody told me I had terminal cancer you best believe I'd be tokin' the good shit." and my personal favorite "Fuck terminal illnesses, dad, get the Ganja." Surprisingly, none of my quips got the point across to him. I think my next approach will be exposure therapy to repeated playings of "Purple Haze." If that doesn't get him, I might have to throw in the towel here. Of course, my dad's arguments back to me were equally pathetic...things like "no" or "haha". The battle rages, I think.

I legitimately think my dad needs something to manage his pain because I share a Macaulay trait with him: we don't express our pain. If we are in pain, we rarely show it. (Ask any of my friends who have had to drag me to the hospital, like Nicole, for instance). Since being home today, my father has only gotten off of the couch to go to church with my mom and I, but otherwise he just lays there, wincing when he moves. To the untrained eye, he appears to just be lazing about on a Saturday afternoon, an endeavor that would not be held against him, even without cancer, but to those who know him, he is in a lot of pain and showing it. It would be a lie to say that it didn't trouble me. But, what can I do? The answer, of course, is not much. Still praying, still researching, still making myself better, but when coming face to face with stuff like this, it forces a reality check.

While being home, I can't relegate the troubles here to a distant part of my world, only letting them tickle the outer limits of my law school calm, like reeds on a lake causing tiny ripples, barely visible at the center of the water. I feel, at once, eager to return to the glassy surface on my proverbial lake in Lansing, and a strong pull to be here in Saginaw, providing a level attitude. My mother is still not herself, and my dad is starting to show his true feelings (something that is very unlike him or me). It is an unfortunate situation here at the Macaulay stronghold, but, as usual, we will keep on keeping on. This coming week, like all coming weeks, will be full of challenges, but I am confident that my father, mother, and I will face them head on and find support when/where/if we need it.

To finish this on a happy note, because I'll be damned if I write a post that is purely devoted to my concerns like some pussy emo bitch that wears black nail polish or like some emo dude who listens to Panic! at the Disco (you know who you are, haha), I call to attention, again, the fact that there is a website devoted entirely to legal marijuana in Michigan (sweeeeeeeet, man). Also, the music used for the Olympics promo about ice dancing? Lady MOTHERFUCKING Gaga! Seems inappropriate, but I'll take my Gaga when I can. Bitches.