Broken Promises

Chapter 23 - Trying to Move On, Failing

There are many things I have learned as a single father, not the least of which is how impactful feelings can be. At times, it is nearly impossible to know whether to make a decision based on feelings or intellect. Maintain care when all the science says nothing will get better or trust in miracles. We live in a society that rejects feelings. Feelings are vile and dirty. Society says they make us weak. We essentially program people who feel to reject that self and identify as objective. We make them lie to the one person they should never lie to, themselves. We put them in a civil war with their inner self. We are less than if we feel deep. We must no longer feel. We must be emotionless. Your daughter has been dead long enough. Get over it.

People are often oblivious of the feelings of others and even themselves. It is not intentional or cruel. It is no different than someone who is colorblind being asked to describe an outfit. They will tell you shapes, lengths, but the color is imperceptible. It is the lens people were given at birth. It is similar to fight or flight. Some people react with fight while others react with flight. Those who are born with the ability to feel are subject to a life of confusion and often sadness.

It frequently starts with the parents who try to correct out the behavior. To toughen up the child. Do not cry. Do not ask questions. Be like everyone else. To boys..."why are you being such a girl." The child finds their true self smothered, often pushing them into anxiety or depression. I remember in graduate school being told that my feelings would hamper my success. I could not be "the best" because I was worried for my underperforming subordinates. I wanted to know why they were underperforming, so I had a chance to help them. I advocated against a potential firing of an employee because she was going through a divorce and had just come out of the hospital for uncontrollable diabetes. I knew firing her would remove her health insurance, remove her livelihood, cause issues with her divorce, and generally not be appropriate at the time. I was given no choice and scolded for lack of objectivity. I did not sleep that night. When I let her go, my heart sank as I said the words. Admittedly, I felt a little better when she called me a profane name and slammed down the phone. I found I disliked this world. Instead, education fit my core values. I was free to actually care. In fact, it was often rewarded

There is a time to be objective and there is a time to feel. No one wants a surgeon crying when operating on a child who has been hit by a car, but neither do we want a teacher who cannot demonstrate compassion and empathy when a child is struggling. Neither approach is always right or wrong, but the approach taken limits the possible outcomes. Must a duality exist in opposition to the other?

A thought came to me a while back. Are true and profound feelings for most just not possible? Will it always be a struggle to comprehend or can they become part of our core self? Maybe they are there but like the appendix, not used and atrophied. Clearly they exist. They are what send millions to therapy each year. An abstraction that wants to be known. It demands it. In the end, don't we all need to be known?

What if we treat feelings like a foreign subject? We embrace physics and mathematics, often because they are abstract, unknown, and some of the most difficult concepts one can explore. Are feelings any different? One cannot rationalize the concept of numbers, but we accept their existence and seek to understand how they work. The revelation came to me that feelings may not be that different. If we are open to embracing new paradigms, maybe we can better appreciate ourselves and others and form connections that encompass the best of both worlds. Even more thought-provoking, can we change our core self if we honestly confront the unknown? Should we want to?

Maybe we need to start respecting the feelers and their feels and realize that they are what will hold our society together as it seems to be coming off the rails. Maybe we should tell the non-feelers to embrace the feels. Or maybe we should embrace our uniqueness and strive to find harmony in ourselves and between others. And maybe we should stop judging people for not being able to "get over it" when they lose what meant the most to them.

Recently I have thought how quickly I severed the connection with all your homecare nurses and therapists once you passed. It was not intentional. I only see it now. I am sure they are used to it. Once medical care is no longer needed, nurses move on to other cases. When a child passes, it is the same, but I think as parents we want to forget the medical part. Sadly, we subconsciously put them into that category without realizing it. I have talked via Facebook to one of the nurses once in ten years and another maybe twice. Moving to a foreign country soon after you died, made it too natural to disconnect. There was so much new to do there and fewer reminders of the past.

Frank, Tris, Monique represent so much emotion that it is just too hard to have a conversation with them without having so many painful memories flood in. I hope I can get over that one day and have a real conversation with them. Each are friends on Facebook. I have kept up with Tris a bit as she reached out during continuing education for her graduate teaching degrees. We spoke about you a little but kept it light enough that it was not too difficult.

While I treated your caregivers as a chapter in your life whose doors closed, they meant more than that. They were instrumental in your care and my emotional well-being. They were phenomenal people worthy of sainthood. They deserve all the thanks I can give. They loved you and cared for you. They were friends. They were family.

May 2018

In May 2018 your cousin, Micah, graduated high school. What made this especially difficult was that this should have been your graduation year as well. Since he was only a couple months behind you, all your milestones would have occurred very close together. School, driving, prom, graduation. While your mom and my sister were pregnant, it was kind of assumed that you two would grow up best friends.

High school graduation snuck up on me. I was not aware of its potential impact on me until it was too late. This is probably one of the first major milestones since your death that really hit me hard. I was not prepared emotionally for how much this would affect me. I drove to his graduation which was about forty five minutes away at a university arena. About twenty minutes into the trip I got so overwhelmed that I just felt like I could not breathe anymore. It was like this cloud swallowed me whole and sucked all the air out of my lungs. I was so broken that I ran off the road and almost had an accident.

By the time I got to the graduation site, I was not able to sit with the family. I did not feel a part of them. I felt alone, in a vacuum. I was just not in a good place in my head. I felt like I needed to be alone so I could focus on surviving the event without having to explain myself to anyone or hear the inevitable platitudes.

I sat across from the family in the arena and just waited for it to be over. When his name was finally called, it was like a dagger. It was not fair to him, but it was what is was. It was a reminder of what was never going to be. You would never graduate high school. You would never go to college. You would never get married. You would never have a baby girl of your own. You would simply never be, and the world did not care. It just continued to go on.

After they called his name I left as quickly as I could. It was just not possible to stay until the end. I skipped the celebration after and drove back home. I did not feel like I fit in with the event. I needed to be in my dark place alone. Alone was known. Alone was safe. You would be there with me as I imagined how this day would have been for you.

May 2019

In 2019 my niece graduated. I had dreaded this for the entire year. I had no idea how this would affect me. Was everything okay now that your graduation year had passed? Would her being a girl trigger me? There was no way to know.

As the time came closer, she did the sweetest thing and sent me a text message that told me not to go. She sent me a link to a live video so I could be alone and watch her graduate without having to go through all of the experiences of the year before. I could break at home, outside the eyes of everyone. I really love her for that. I just want this to be better. I do not want to keep breaking. There are just so few pieces left.