12.9.08

LOSS

Day 2

Last night I couldn't sleep even after I wrote the previous blog. I went to sleep around 8am.
Today I mourn the loss of my "nephew." He is the only child I've ever bonded with and I looked forward to watching him grow up. Today he was taken from my Aunt and we will likely never see him again.
This is the worst loss I have yet suffered. I'm sure worse will follow some day, but I hope not for a long time. I hate to lose those I love. I hate to lose track of friends. Once I was in a shopping mall with my boyfriend and he disappeared for a while. I didn't know where he was, and I was afraid he might not come back. Illogical, sure, but I have somehow come to expect to lose people. This, after much consultation with my shrink, stems from loosing my father. No he didn't die. Not literally anyway as far as I know. Before I started university in San Francisco, I spoke to him on the phone for the last time. I needed a hernia operation and because I was a full time student and under 25, he could have added me to his healthcare. His response was appalling. He said it was unethical. I said "I should have known better than to expect anything from you." Those were the last spoken words to him. After I started seeing a shrink in San Francisco, following a major panic attack, I wrote him an email listing things that he had done that had hurt me. His response was to take no responsibility and also to confirm that he is a biggot.
When I was young he was there for fun stuff, but was never there for me emotinally. He did come and pick me up from a summer camp when I couldn't cope. We were forced to sleep in absolute darkness and, though I didn't know it at the time, anxiety was keeping me awake and I had nothing I could even look at. I also suffered a major migraine and ended up upchucking on the way to the nurse.
I recall my father telling jokes all the time, even though they were usually bad ones, we laughed. We went on drives together. We went rafting. But then when I was 13 or so and had just discovered, though could not admit that I was gay, my mother divorced him. I took her side because he was out nights when my mother asked him to stay home so I wouldn't be alone. He was out fooling around. This was confirmed when she called one of his workmates in a panic after discovering his closet had been emptied before he left for a business trip. Of course he never admitted to anything and claimed that my mother left him because she was a lesbian, thus starting the gossip mill. After that, I still saw him and we did fun things together. He wanted me to live with him, but I knew he could not be there for me emotionally and my mother could be. It wasn't his fault. His father wasn't really there for him emotionally either. He rebelled in his youth.
But then he married the evil stepmother. She had 3 children from a previous marriage and I got on well with the two older ones. My father began to joke less. My step siblings told me they feared violence from him. I came out to him, in the only way I could. I wrote a letter and hand delivered it to him while my mother and a friend waited in the car as we were on our way to San Francisco to explore the gardens which are now overshadowed by the Sony Metreon.
I remember my father, before the divorce walking with a begger woman into a supermarket to buy her food. But by the time I was 13 he was already detached. I wanted him to play catch with me in the park across from our house, but he wouldn't, which seemed odd because he loved baseball. I felt I was no good at it and at that age, I wanted to improve to fit in. I never did, though I did take a friend to see the Kansas City Royals play the Oakland A's. We had lived in Kansas before moving to California.
Anyway the joking, generous man ceased to be and was replaced by a cruel and hateful hypocrite born again Moron. So in a sense the father I knew is dead. This thought has been with me for some time but with fathers day signs everywhere I have been thinking what it would be like to have a father who not only was there for me but accepted me for who I am.
The last time I saw my father in person, my mother was going camping for the weekend, but I wanted to spend one last weekend with my step siblings before going to Brisbane for six months.
Whe I arrived, my Stepsister was out front with an African American boy who was a friend of hers. Soon the dopplegaenger of my father came and told me that I shouldn't be there on a weekday, that I was a "bad influence on his kids," never mind the fact that I'm his only son paternally. He then skulked off to his bedroom upstairs and sent the evil stepmother down to tell me how I had hurt my father by coming out to him. I was devastated and called my mother to come pick me up. My father called her before I did and complained that there was a "black boy in his driveway..."
So, if you've read this far, don't ever let your loved ones go if you have a choice. And if you want to be my friend, it must be forever.
I am hoping to get a further extension on my video assignment given that I've been ill all week, missed class Monday, and now have this irresolvable family crisis to deal with. I think I'm now moving to stage three. First I was angry, then all day I've been in Denial, but now I'm just depressed. My Aunt sent me a text just a while ago saying that she had said goodbye to him for the last time. I floated the idea of my cousin fighting for custody, but got no response. A pipe dream I guess.
Hugs would be greatly appreciated right now.
Hope to have good news to report next time when I've finished editing my cut of our group film.

11.9.08

What a rough week and then some

I've been feeling ill for some time. I've been having migraines as well as fevers daily and have not been able to get out much lately. School has started up again and I've switched from Creative Writing to Media Arts. I'm supposed to be working on a film edit, but am having trouble with linux and had to totally reinstall windows last weekend. I saw a specialist yesterday and was reasured that my scans didn't show anything to worry about. My ear, which was perforated, is healing nicely and there is no sign of it re-opening. So that's good news. But that was yesterday.
At 1 or 2am I spoke to my mother and found out that My Cousin's Girlfriend has been lying about him being the father of her boy. Well maybe not totally knowingly lying because she wrote in her diary that it could have been 1 of three people. So my cousin got a paternity test which came back negative. Of course he's crushed. His mother is crushed. I'm crushed. My mother is crushed. The boy is now two and the two of us have bonded. Now he is being taken off by child protective services and I will probably never see him again. I've never liked kids but I liked this one. Partly because I thought he was the son of my cousin with whom I've been close all my life even though we don't see each other that often. And of course the kid is adorable.

Anger: My thoughts were negative before learning about this lengthy deceit. My doctor's appointment fell on september 11th. I looked up some numbers on Iraq. on 9/11 around 3000 people died. But now. 7 years later; god I can't believe it's been 7 years; Bush's totally unrelated Iraq war has claimed the lives of over 4000 Americans and over 90,000 Iraqis. Meanwhile Osama has had time to regroup in his hidout and the last time I heard Bush talk about him he said "I don't think about him that much." So much for bringing the perpetrators to justice. Afghanistan is in a sorry state and they don't have enough troops to fight the Taliban, much less find Bin Laden. 7 and a half years later, it will be the job of the next president to find him and get us out of Iraq. It's good to see some change here in Australia though. Now the US is the ONLY major civilized country not to sign Kyoto. Australia was the 2nd until the last election, not that I follow Australian Politics that closely. Friends tell me not to watch the news because I will be depressed by it. Maybe there should be news light for those who suffer from strong Welfschmerz. I look at the world and think what it could be. It could be so much better.
I was watching the West Wing as its fantasy whitehouse is so much better than the real one right now. In the episode I watched last night Bartlett invoked the 25th ammendment, stepping down from the presidency temporarily. Apparently GW has done this twice, a very scary thought, both times to have a colonoscopy. Anyway the point, yes there is one, is that Someone had to read the oath of office. I was struck by the first part of it and imagined that with Bush's penchant for not reading anything longer than a page, maybe he just didn't think about the part about protecting the constitution and only got as far as I ... do solomly swear that I shall faithfully execute the office of President of the United States." Yeah I think he's at least maimed it. It's pretty had to get the worst approval rating since Hoover. And in Hoovers defence, he didn't actually cause the great depression. Bush on the other hand is fully responsible for what has happened though apparantly Dick and Rove have been making many of the decisions as Bush recently intimated, saying he wasn't in "those meetings." As for Congress, well I'm quite dissapointed in my representatives. The speaker of the house represents my district in the US, and she refuses to hold actual impeachment hearings when here we have a president and vice president who without a doubt in most peoples minds have commited major crimes and in outing Plame, even treason, yet congress won't impeach. Congress tried to impeach Clinton for years, wasting lots of money, and the only crime they could even come close to pinning on him was purjury, but even that is doubtful. He only said that under the precise description given by the lawyers, he had not had sexual relations with Lewinski. Outside the courtrooms definition, yes he lied, but purjery is still questionable and if purjury is enough to impeach a president then how can a torturing, wiretapping, constitution ignoring president be given a free ride by a Democraticly controlled Congress, whom we voted in to change things but they haven't been able to.
This world is a crazy place. It's times like these that I'm in a way glad I don't get out much. Life is much simpler in the world of my imaginings.
Anyway I've been up all night after hearing the news about my little lost nephew, so I should try to get some rest, but I haven't posted a blog on here in so long, I thought it was about time I added something.
To all the good people out there, wherever you are, peace and love.
TM signing out.