Dead dad dream + general update of sorts

[juushika]

Dream last night that my dad was hanging around my family's home, writing an intensive thesis on Shakespeare's Richard III—which I was thrilled to talk about, because I'd just lived through a reenactment/time travel? of the story, which was actually a supernatural romance. He wasn't haunting, wasn't very ghostly, but my mum said the thesis was a way of processing his death and when he was done with it, he could move on. My dream-consciousness didn't ping to the fact that "student who lingers in graduate studies indefinitely" is a problematic archetype I wish I could inhabit.

I can pinpoint exactly what caused this. (Read a post about someone else's dream of a dead parent. Finished Animorphs, so I'm thinking about my next big reading project: resuming the Shakespeare read-along in July. Finally settling in to this place, which means open season on processing repressed shit.)

It's still bizarre as hell. That surreal, bland atmosphere of "oh no, your dad's still here, he's just dead." My dad studying Shakespeare, when in reality he tolerated it because we loved it but couldn't understand a word & frequently fell asleep during the plays. Just before his diagnosis we started to find work-arounds, of reading play summaries before the play. So perhaps the two will be tied now, my dead dad and the longest-running obsession of my life, which is great. !! Great!

* * *

During the move I was too busy to be online; after the move I was too exhausted to be online. Now I have about ~5 hours a day of alone time to kill, given my sleep schedule and Devon's work schedule. I'm alternating between productive days of unpacking and/or library visits, and unproductive days where I just want to stare at Overwatch or YouTube and stop existing for a while. (It's funny that "reading a lot" pings as healthy while "staring at screens a lot" pings as unhealthy despite that both are escapism.) There's no particular anxiety to be escaping except an encroaching, existential dread:

I'm supposed to be okay, now! The external stressors are largely gone; all that's left with me. But I'm a mess of brain chemistry and unresolved trauma from the last two years/five years of Cancer Family and 15/34 years of living with a bad brain—so if all that's left to cope with is me, then that's still a lot. It will be hard and may not be successful, and it'll probably begin naturally now that I'm safe enough to process it.

Terrifying.

Sitting down at the computer to write can't be easily categorized as either healthy or unhealthy. It seems to hover between: it's not engaging with the world/apartment, but it's not escapism; it's engaging with myself. ...And also socially, so at some point I'll need to find a balance of "being involved with the physical world but also maybe interacting with people there," except that during and since the move I've been seeing a lot more of Devon's friend circle, including meeting partners-of-friends who had only heard of me as an alleged partner-of-Devon, so that need is mostly fulfilled and the thought of more is exhausting.

I do really like it here, though. I wish the act of finishing the entire space were less overwhelming and didn't involve furniture—I wish it were done. But place itself, and that we have it for a while, is good.

Comments

[starshipfox]

I can relate to the feeling of trepidation: finally being somewhere safe, and having that space to process, can be terrifying. I don't know if there's any solution, other than building in some support mechanisms and positive routines to give yourself some kind of framework to fall back on. That's hard thing to achieve, though, I'm aware. It's funny that staring-at-screen is supposed to be a bad form of escapism, while reading is good. I do think reading escapism allows my mind to relax more than staring at YouTube, but when I'm feeling really bad the only thing that remotely supports me is TV and lots of it.

<3

[thawrecka]

I feel like catch up time to process often ends up being the mental and emotional equivalent of when people get ill when they finally take a holiday, like your brain decides now is the time to throw things in the air and stop dealing. But there's value in that.