things fall apart

i had a really difficult class this morning. i had that same physical sensation as i did in class last evening - all of a sudden i felt an overwhelming sense of nausea, my head started spinning, i started seeing bright colors, i started gagging and my throat started constricting so that i felt that i could no longer breath. all i could i think was get the fuck up and get the fuck out of the room as fast as i could. yesterday, i succumbed to that feeling, i got the fuck out of the room. today, i don't know why i am so bullheaded at times, but i didn't listen to myself. i stayed in the room. i puked a little on my towel (discretely i hope), but once the gagging went away, i just laid back down in my own vomit (it was mostly water). at the end of the class, i laid there in my own misery and suddenly, something just clicked in my head. i realized that i had been thinking about my father. about how he died. about that day i found him dead. i don't remember how much or with whom i shared any of that day's events. but all of a sudden, i thought of that day. and to my own discomfort, i saw that day vividly.

i had gone to the restaurant that morning. early as usual. actually, a little earlier than usual, cause i wanted to swing by the gym. i had just entered the restaurant, checked the voicemail, looked through the guest book, and my phone rang. i learned that my father had never come home the previous night. i called his cell phone, no answer. no one knew his whereabouts. one way or another, i found myself driving to my father's office. i don't know why, but the whole time i knew inside my stomach that things were very wrong. the night before i had very strange dreams (later on, i found that my brother also shared those dreams). for whatever reason, i had this disgusting, nauseating, awful dread, churning in my stomach. as i got closer to the office, i drove faster and faster, as if how quickly i got there might have an affect on what i would discover. i'll never forget coming up on the shopping center where his office was located. the moment i saw the police cars and the ambulance, i went numb. i parked. i got out of the car, legs shaking. i ran to the office. i ran upstairs. i saw the police officers.

what i knew in the pit of my stomach, i now knew without a doubt was true. my father was hanging. everything after my arrival is still a blur. a big messy blur of cops, and detectives, and my father's friends, and work people, and people from the medical examiner's office, just one big fucking horrible mess.

next thing i know i am at my father's home, breaking the news to everyone. then i found myself at the funeral home making arrangements. it's so fucking weird to make funeral arrangements. you pick a package, and package a includes this, package b...blahblahblah...what casket would you like. what box would you like the casket buried in. tombstone? flowers? how would you like to pay for that? we need a deposit? very fucking strange and inappropriate at a time of loss. a blur. i'm standing in front of my father's naked embalmed corpse. taking pictures. still drunk from the countless beers i drank not sleeping the night before in an attempt to numb myself. trying to keep my balance standing on a chair over his dead body, with disposable cameras, taking pictures. of him. the scarring around his neck. his body. the fresh scars from where they removed the flesh and fluids that keeps the body alive.

simultaneously, i discovered how big and how fucking horrible the mess really was. the legal problems that i discovered. the fucking mind games and lawyers and fuck. the fake burial. having his casket removed from the ground after the fake burial. getting a second autopsy. the real burial. all of that fucking mess just came up in my head today.

perhaps that choking feeling is somehow like the noose that was around my father's neck. it had been choking me slowly. the life slowly draining from my body. what killed him in an instant, was slowly killing me. i guess since i got out of the hospital, i haven't really thought much of these things. but today i realized that it was still inside my head. inside of me. the invisible noose, still surreptiously tightening ever so slightly. unnoticed. and i saw it. i figured it out. it was gagging me. it was choking me. it was making me physically ill. it was telling me to get the fuck up and get the fuck out. run away. get away.

i keep hearing that the only way out, is through it, head on. there is no other way. what has been haunting me perhaps to this very day, i was able to recognize - i looked at it head on. i wanted to go right through it. so tonite, i felt that familiar choking feeling. the nausea. the voice. get up. get out. run away. and perhaps for the first time, i faced it. i looked at square in the eyes. head on. there was no other way. the only way out, was through it. i fought it. i accepted it. i let it hurt me. i hurt it. the panic fleeting. nerves calming. nausea leaving. the grip around my neck no more. i could breath again. the voices quiet. i stayed there. there was no where else to be. no where else to go. nothing else to do. other than to stay in that moment, in the hot room, on my sweat soaked towels, straining, fighting, stretching, pushing, pulling, breathing, sweating...with a happy smiling face...