Fire around Me, Fire within Me

“The trouble is, you think you have time."-Buddha

"There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds."-Laurell K. Hamilton

"The things you hide in your heart eat you alive."-Anonymous

"She's been through more Hell than you'll ever know. But, that's what gives her beauty an edge...You can't touch a woman who can wear pain like the grandest of diamonds around her neck."-Anonymous

Ten years ago, on this day, I was eighteen years old. I was living in Missoula, Montana, and was a few weeks into my first year of college. Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 was a day just like any other day. I woke up, went to my classes, did my homework, went to the Wednesday night worship that I usually went to, I had no idea that on that very day, my life had changed dramatically.

On the afternoon of Thursday, September 27th, 2007, I was sitting at my desk, doing my reading for my Introduction to Psychology class, when my Mom called. I answered the phone, and said "Hi Mom." Or something similar, and she said, "Jasmine, your brother John just called. Your Dad died yesterday." My Dad had been fishing with a friend of his, and his boat capsized, and my Dad was holding onto the boat, and his friend was trying to pull the boat and my Dad back to shore, and at some point my Dad's friend looked back and my Dad wasn't holding onto the boat anymore. It seems that my Dad had a heart attack, and drowned. He was 53 years old.

My Dad was a man that I never got to know. He left before I was old enough to remember him, and the next time I saw him, I was 15 years old, in the summer of 2004. I saw him for maybe an hour, possibly less, and then after that, he didn't stay in touch. I had this plan, though, that when I was old enough, and had time, I was going to go back out to Michigan, where he lived, and spend time with him, and get to know him, and let him get to know me, because my theory was that if he got to know me, he would want to be involved in my life. However, he died when I was 18, so I never got the chance to know him, which is something I'll always regret. The logical part of me knows that I was 18 when he died, so there wasn't a lot I could have done to build a relationship a that point, but there's another part of me that just thinks I should have tried harder to have a relationship with him, even though I don't know how I would have gone about that. 

A couple of years before my Dad died, I started dealing with depression. I'm not going to talk about the things that led up to it, because that involves more people than just me. I didn't realize it was depression at the time, but looking back, I'm pretty sure that's what it was. When my Dad died, I fell farther into my depression, but I didn't really talk to anyone about it, because I didn't know if it was okay for me to feel that sad about it, considering I didn't know him that well. I kept most of my feelings bottled up back then, and I still keep a lot of my feelings inside, but I am working on talking about them more. I still get depressed sometimes, but I have ways of coping with it now, and most of the time, just talking about it makes me feel so much better.  Knowing that I am being listened to, that someone hears me, and that my feelings are valid, it just makes me feel better. It bothers me when people tell me to just pull myself up and stop being sad, because, sometimes, just getting out of bed feels next to impossible. But I do. Everyday I get out of bed. It might not seem like much of an accomplishment, but somedays, it is. 

Sometimes I struggle with low self-esteem. Not really sure why, but sometimes I feel like I don't have anything to offer anyone. Like I don't have anything to offer the world. Sometimes I'm not sure why people like having me around, or why they are my friends, because I feel like I have nothing of value to offer them. But my friends obviously see something in me that I don't, because they keep sticking around. Maybe one of them will tell me why, someday, because it would be nice to know exactly what people see in me that makes them stick around. But, also, sometimes I feel like people don't actually notice when I'm not around. Feel free to prove me wrong on that. I'm afraid to fall in love, because I sometimes feel that I am just too much for anyone to put up with, but hopefully someday I will meet a guy who can handle me, bad days and all. Anyways, this blog post took an unexpected turn, but I've been keeping it inside and most of my family and a lot of my friends don't know about any of this, but they will now, and it's just time that it's all out in the open. "You don't know my story, but one day I'll be brave enough to tell it"....It looks like that day is here.

Anyways, Dad, I hope Heaven is great, and maybe when I'm there too, in the very far distant future, we'll finally get to know each other.