Dear Reader,
I am truly sorry for my prolonged absence. Just 4 days after my last entry my son was welcomed into this world. Ever since that point, the objective for me shifted from blogging to taking care of the family and finding our new normal. Which if you were asking, the new normal has very much NOT been found. Alas, here I am. So lets catch up to speed as the near 4 months have been eventful in every possible way.
February
As I stated, our son was born! You would think that once you go through one delivery all the others just become less eventful. I would say that notion is rather untrue. I would say that though the pregnancies from my outward perspective seem to be riddled with more symptoms and even worse common symptoms the delivery seemed to have been more “streamlined”, and I mean that more in the sense that you kind of understand how the dance goes from what point the labor turns active and then the pushing and all the details in between. If you, the reader are a curious male considering fatherhood. I would urge you to ponder less on whether the world they may be exposed to and whether you are capable of providing. Instead of posing the question of whether you can or can’t. Perhaps accept the fact that you will never know the extent of what will be needed to raise a child, however, are you willing to challenge yourself in the pursuit of being a provider? to be something to someone. The truth is, you will never be enough and you will fail but are you willing to learn and make do with the person you are and dare greatly to be something more? Does that mean your less afraid, absolutely not. I was completely terrified each and every time a new addition was on their way and even the thought of having another still begged the question of whether I could physically and mentally be able to be there for them. So don’t let your emotions answer your question, let your virtues speak to it. Are you willing to adventure into a new phase of life and risk somethings for the potential of something only fatherhood can offer?
March
This was a rather tough month. I was going through a lot of adjustments. I was still navigating juggling taking one child to preschool, another to day care and trying to be as available as one could be for the baby while also trying or at least offering to emotionally be available to support the mother to all these amazing souls. Summary, I get an F, “for trying”. What made this worse was I was just getting back into work and the work load did not get touched until I came back as I work solo in my area of operations. I was quite literally feeling the weight of anxiety of being performant at work and at home crushing me. Is that all? no, of course it wouldn’t be the only thing. I was also navigating the unknown of a lesion that had developed under my cheek and with the great efforts and help of Dr. Google, if existential crisis had legs it was running laps on me. To make this worse, YouTube thought it was high time I meet other people with closely related versions of the cancers I could possibly have. So I get to have a snap shot of what my life could look like. It was … a trip. At some point I was able to find some shard of relief for perhaps a week only to have this very outlandish urge and infatuation with suicide occur. Of course this wouldn’t really show itself until …
April
Yup, this was my suicide phase. Did you know there is a website that collects and makes available the recordings of murders, deaths and suicides…I didn’t know this was a thing. I was oddly enough diving deep into suicidal tendencies and how others have got themselves out of it. Somehow that went from: Nitrogen asphyxiation is the painless way to die to how would you like to see someone pop their head with a shotgun? Yeah it was dark and I do not know why but I was intrigued. I spent a solid 4 hours watching firearm related shootings and suicides to hangings and beheadings…and this is a great point where I should make a disclaimer
Please do not go looking for the website I am describing and especially do not view beheadings or other torture related murders on said website if you end up ignoring my first bit of advice.
I can honestly say that I have walked away from that scared in a way that almost is akin to PTSD flashbacks. I would say that my outlook on humanity was lost but much worse, what was my suicidal ideation, actually morphed into an actual possibility. What really slapped the sense back into me was that in these videos there are comment sections and yes, it was nearly as morbid as the videos themselves. However, in this one video, a child unfortunately was seen witnessing her mother taking her life. It was….traumatic to watch and heart breaking to wonder how that girl might have felt in that moment actually living something I was only merely watching and observing. Someone in the comments section, among the sea of crude statements said, “If you feel so inclined to take your life because you feel it is worth nothing, them stop living your life for yourself and live it for others, don’t waste a gift merely because you find no value, give it to others to have.” I am not sure why such a comment made an impact but to that anonymous commenter…thank you…in a way I owe you my life. I may never know you but I am glad I had saw your words. The month ended on a rather neutral note? I wasn’t as convicted of suicide as I was and by this point I was getting feed back on my lesion that it was likely to be benign however it wasn’t definitive.
May
I got into perfumery…yeah, it is odd to say that but honestly when you are old enough to have a cologne that happens to be slightly unique enough that it becomes discontinued, I believe you would get driven to do some drastic things in hopes of keeping a scent that has served you well. I started off buying remakes or impressions of the scent. I would say Nautica: Voyage is still a solid choice for just about anything. However, I got interested in how someone could smell the original and then generate a copycat. After all, my impression was that you slap a few essential oils together and call it a day. Nope, their are organic raw materials and aromatic molecules and they have their own sub categories not to mention the aromatic side is very heavy into organic chemistry. Needless to say, there is a lot of ways to skin a cat on this hobby and it is ridiculously expensive. Currently I have about 3 dozen essential oils and 10 aroma chemicals. If you are interested in possibly doing the same, I would recommend you check out Shop as they will have vendors that can provide essential oils, aromatic chemicals and accords (premixed combinations) to get you started. I will leave links to some essential oils I found to smell awesome solely on their own and some impressions:
What makes this even more interesting is that I have also taken a fancy to gardening as oils can be produced from floral and other materials and can be extracted in a rather simple but dedicated way. I am interested in that as well, plus it wouldn’t hurt the curb appeal if you got a flower bed.
So that was the somewhat exciting stuff of that month but now I must leave this on a rather dismal note. My wife’s grand mother is worse for wear on her health, it isn’t shocking considering her age that she would have some issue arise but she may be dealing with cancer again, yes again but this time it seems it really is causing some issues. I am not sure how my wife is handling it or whether it is something she wants to avoid but I had gotten a taste of what may come when her grandma went to the hospital and found out she had anemic symptoms which led to finding cancer. She didn’t handle it well and to be honest, who does? I just hope she can make peace with her loss with as little harm as possible.
Speaking of making peace, I also have a member of my family who may also have cancer. Not confirmed yet but the oncologist seems to think so prior to the biopsy. My mother may very well have myelofibrosis and her spleen is enlarged which generally points to the advanced staged of the cancer. I won’t get into the details of what it is…the whole situation is rather fresh. What I can say is the median life expectancy is 6 years and given that my mother has a more advanced stage and the cancer itself is rather aggressive…She may not have long. My father told me and to give a summarized back story, I have been estranged from primarily my father on and off for more than 5 years and the same more or less for my mother as well as they both are still together. He called me and told me the news and all I could think about is how he might be doing. I could tell he was avoiding his feelings and was merely dealing with it by not dealing with it and just doing what needs to be done. To be truthful, I feel guilty that naturally I want to be there for my dad as he navigates the reality that soon (relative term) he will be alone and also my mother as she will be facing a shorter than hoped for life. I feel guilt because as I feel the urge to be there for them I realize that previous to this news I was MIA from their life. I won’t say it wasn’t for good reasons but that doesn’t change the feeling that I feel like an imposter or that my drive to support them will come off disingenuous. Plus, it is my mother and though I may have felt led to estrange myself from them to a degree, I still remember my mother as a mother…as a kind soul who rarely spoke her mind but was always ready to hear yours. It would be an understatement if I said that crying has been a daily ritual for me. Its ironic in a screwed up way that I blog about stoicism and this idea of living a quality life not a lengthy one and how death gets a bad rap…and yet here I am, silently feeling this urge to beg God to keep my mother hear, to live out her life to old age. I guess I already warned you that I am just a human, I must have forgot to mention I am not a very good stoic either. Isn’t it odd? The more you live life and connect and develop meaning and purpose and how that ties to loved ones…that one day, you will have to let it go, no….sorry let me rephrase that. It will be taken out of your life whether by the end of yours or theirs, whether you emotionally let it go…that is a choice.
May you have peace, May you have contentment, May you cherish the very things that one day you will be forced to leave behind.
Thank you for being here…yes here reading this but also, thank you for just being here in this world with me.
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