April 25, 2000 — my father dies.
April 29, 2000 — paul, jeff and i fly to toronto for his funeral.
May 2, 2000 — my fathers “wake” where i meet up with cousins i haven’t seen in 10 years.
May 3, 2000 — i bury my father and we all fly home.
May 4, 2000 — paul and i drive to virginia beach for a court date.
May 5, 2000 — go to court and get a speeding ticket on the way home.
May 8, 2000 — come home to find out that i have a suspended license and I go back to work.
May 10, 2000 — i get bronchitis.
May 29, 2000 — realise i’ve been spending the last few weeks in some sort of funk that can only be described as “depression”. i’ve gained a lot of weight, i don’t give a fuck about my job, my life and other etc related aspects. paul and i have arguments that are short of starting WWIII and i want to kill myself however the concept of death has sent me to thinking that since I don’t know what it’s like after you die, then i don’t want to do it. which is the one good thing about being a human: we have the ability to reason and to think about the consequences of our actions.
i’ve read enough trippy novels to last a lifetime. i’ve been reading anything and everything i can get my hands on, however they always fall into the same suicidal, woman is wronged, strong woman without a man genre: ie: the oprah book club. every week we go to barnes and noble and every week i pick up about 50 bucks worth of paperbacks that paul said i wouldn’t be happy unless it was suicidal, depressing or something else knocking down the human spirit.
and sometimes i get flashbacks. i’ll read about someone or watch television commercial/show about a woman who changed their life at 30, 40 and even 50. how life is precious and wonderful and we shouldn’t throw it away. and all i can do is get up at 1am and throw up the remains of my dinner into the toilet. that is what i thought about life sometimes.
and i hated work. i hated getting up and getting dressed only to speak to moronic idiots who supposedly know what they are doing and don’t. i hated pretending that i liked what i was doing. and everyone is leaving. all the good engineers are LEAVING. and i wanted to scream and shout and say “i have no fucking idea what i’m doing. stay!” but i can’t cos that would be selfish and i can’t be selfish.
and i didn’t want to, really i didn’t want to, come off being whiny and pretentious. but when the doctor looked at me (my! you’re a big girl) i suddenly became conscious of the world around me. i became conscious that i was in love even if i was hell bent on destroying it. i was conscious that i had a life that was worth living and i wasn’t living it. i remember a few days ago i was laying in my bath and i was feeling up my tummy and felt new stretch marks from the recent weight gain. the skin felt like satin and while it was glaring red against the rest of me, i felt like that was my cross to bear suddenly. that my weight gain coupled with the world surrounding me was driving me to not leave my apartment for days at a time. i can’t remember a week in the last few months i haven’t been late to work. i can’t remember a time when i wasn’t planted somewhere in front of a television or in front of the computer. everything showed my lack of attention: my relationship with paul, my body.