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0 By The Crafty Cow
Yesterday ended up being an emotional day. It didn’t help that anxiety was controlling every cell in my body. I struggled with spending time with my dad yesterday. Although he was good as gold, I was struggling with myself, and being with him just made that tougher.
How could I tell him?
In a brief moment of awareness, concern, full mental aptitude, he asked me how I was. I couldn’t open my mouth to answer. How could I reply truthfully? How could I tell him I’ve nearly taken my own life twice this year already? That his precious baby daughter hates herself so much that she doesn’t know how she keeps breathing every single day. How can I tell him that the cuts and scars on my arms are what I do to myself because I can’t handle the pain that feels trapped inside of me? I can’t and I won’t. So I simply hugged him and offered him a cup of tea.
I wasn’t expecting the strong emotions that came when I collected some photos later that same morning. Back in the 1970s my dad loved photography and they were all on slides. There are hundreds somewhere (probably in his attic). There was a box containing 22 just sitting randomly on his dining table last week. I took them to get developed not knowing who or what they were of. Twenty of them were of me as a baby and young child, but in that collection of memories and loveliness there was a picture I had never seen. I would have been about 5 years old and I’m cuddling in to my dad.
The hideous disease, dementia
I can’t remember that photo ever being taken or where we were, but never has an image touched me so much. My dad is wearing a suit and tie, and that was my dad, he always wore a suit and tie. Me, on the other hand, except for the flash of unruly platinum blonde hair isn’t how I identify myself as a child. Although I was a content child, I can’t ever remember being ‘that’ happy. I can’t remember my dad ever cuddling me or showing me any physical affection, but he obviously did, even if it was that one time, and yet, I can’t remember it.
What saddens me probably the most is, I’ve realised that I’d began to forget WHO my dad really is. Over the last few years he’s been, unknowingly to all of us, absorbing this hideous disease, dementia. Over the course of time it’s been killing off his brain cells and taking him away from us piece by piece. My dad’s heart is still beating, he walks, he talks, he eats and he sleeps, but in many respects I have lost him. All that’s left is a frightened, older, frailer, confused version of a human being that I’ve known all my life.
I will feel the power of love again
Depression lies to you, it blinds you to the love people have for you. I felt so much love from my dad yesterday, I felt so much love for my dad yesterday. I do today. You can’t love when you’re dead.
For my daughter, my husband, my dad and for everyone who cares about me, l love you and it’s for you I keep fighting every single day. In moments of darkness, where I feel nothing at all, I will feel again. That’s the power of love. You will feel my love for you and I will feel yours for me. If my dad, who momentarily forgets who I am, can make me feel so loved, then I have to keep breathing so as not to waste one of the few things dementia hasn’t stolen from him yet, love.
UNITED STATES
UNITED KINGDOM
