My father has been gone for 3 months today. I didn’t notice it until I was eating dinner with mom and she mentioned it. It’s an easy thing to forget I suppose. It was kind of cold outside at the end of January, nothing like the glorious day today has been.
I went running with Leesa today. We’re doing a run in a couple of weeks down Young street and I haven’t been keeping up with my training so we go out each Sunday. I really enjoy running with her because she is like family to me – we are completely honest with each other and she calls me on the stuff I say that doesn’t make much sense. She is one of the few people who constantly challenges me and doesn’t feel bad about it. She is as analytic as I am and a true pragmatist.
I went climbing with Leesa a few days before I gave-up my compulsive life and her comment that I was really insecure stuck with me for a very long time. In my post Goal Oriented Action – A Great Proxy For Confidence I spoke with little personal experience about setting and working hard to achieve goals being a fantastic substitute for confidence and if you do it for long enough you will eventually build confidence. 2 months later I can say with personal experience that working towards goals is an effective way to eliminate the need for confidence.
It is kind of funny because I can’t say it builds confidence; not yet anyway. What it does is take your mind out of past and places it temporarily into the future to set the goal and then directs your attention into the present moment. This focusing on the moment is peaceful because there is no depression based on memories or anxiety based on the future. All you have is future / present time that allows you to work towards a future by just being.
I miss my dad a lot, but I don’t think about it much. Memories of his laughing still float in and out of my mind each day. I touch his urn and say “good morning” or “I love you dad” when I’m up really early to go to work. I don’t push the thoughts of him out of my head, they just aren’t there as much as they were in the month following his death. I took the time to grieve my ass off and then took responsibility for my actions moving forward. I can’t undo any of the things in my past so I made amends a well as I could and created the possibility of being better than I was in February 2012 for the rest of my life.
I think about my mom more than anything. She’s doing a lot better, but for her the loss is a lot greater. She doesn’t really have the goals that I do to keep her going and lose herself in. I’ve got a couple of business to build, my health and spirit to stabilize, friendships and relationships to cultivate, books to write and people to mentor. Her action list doesn’t have those things on it. I’m not sure what is on there to be completely honest because we don’t talk about that stuff. I like it when she laughs and jokes around with me, Des and Sarah, and when the neighbors brings over their two children and my mom talk to them.
It almost pains me to say this, but my life is better now than it was 6 months ago. My dad’s passing was a wake-up call to me, and he gave me a stern warning about life a week before he died. He didn’t do many of the things that I was doing, he preferred life and experiences that were not clouded in compulsive escapist behavior and he was hopeful that I would stop. I think he’d be happy with the choices I’ve made in the last 2 months and I don’t think there would be much he would say I should change. I love myself unconditionally for the first time in my life because I am being integrity and living an authentic existence, and that is good because without these or the unconditional love of my father, I’m not sure what the last 3 months would have been like.