So how are you?

Naturally, I'm still learning how I feel and react when someone close to me dies.

I'm still hit by waves of guilt.  Every time the weekend comes and Sunday approaches is when I feel especially sad and a little panicky.  This Sunday it will be one month since Chuck passed.  One month! I don't like feeling far away from the event.  It makes me nervous that one day I will forget and I don't want to.  I don't want to lose my memory of him and I don't want to forget what I saw that day.  I haven't finished processing (I know there's no such thing as "finished") but I guess I feel like I can't catch up with my emotions a lot of the time and I don't like that.  

I guess I am still not ready to integrate back into life but have to.  Next week I am going with my parents to stay with my Grandparents again.  I need more of that time away.  In nature.  Stripped down.  I need to be outside, take long walks, read books and write.

Whenever you're reading something it always feels like it's the exact right moment you're supposed to be reading it.  And it is.  I read "Beatrice and Virgil" by Yann Martel last week.  Within the first few pages I felt the connection of the juxtaposition in the beginning of the book.  I feel I've been living in a world of opposites for a month.  I have dual feelings at the same time about so much of this.  How strong and weak a physical body is at the same time, for example.  

"God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches you by means of opposites, so that you will have two wings to fly - not one." - Rumi

It's true.  One teaches us more about the other.

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The other big thing this week is the, "how are you?"

In person, in fleeting moments.  In a text.  In a message online.  I didn't know how impossible it was going to be to answer the simple question, "how are you?"

I have no answer.  I have no answer that won't require several paragraphs.  Maybe even a page or two.  

I find myself replying "I'm okay", because what else is there time for in that fleeting moment? And then I feel bad because it's a lie.  I'm lying.  I don't want to lie.  I don't want to cheapen what I'm feeling.  I don't want to answer in a way that isn't authentic and respectful to what happened.  But the problem is, it's just too complex to honestly answer in a moment.  So what in the world should I say? 

Again, I'm brought back to "Beatrice and Virgil".  What I wish I had, I realized is my onelongword to describe my Horrors.  My onelongword that encompasses all that happened and is still happening.  The Horrors that happened to my family. 

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The guilt is the one feeling I never expected.  If I go to an event or work on a shoot or do, well, anything for pleasure I feel guilty.  

I can't even think about the guilt that washed over me the instant I learned he'd passed.  All the phone calls I never returned.  The times I had a bad attitude about his doctor appointments.  When I scoffed at his invitation for a sleepover.  He wanted me and his daughter, my cousin, to sleep over like old times.  The closest we got to that sleepover was the saturday night before he died.  And I left at 1 am.  Would one night of my life have been that much of a burden? Or two nights? 

I can't even think about it.  

I just can't yet.

My family has been brought close together.  It's been a long time since I've spent this much time with them.

That makes me happy.
It also makes me sad.
Because of what brought us together.
All this togetherness.  And now one is missing.  

So you see, there is still this juxtaposition in me.  Along with this guilt is a strange peace.  I feel his passing was the closing/beginning of a strange year and a new chapter.  His passing marked that.  Finally ended something for us and began something for us at the same time.  

Maybe I shouldn't feel like this, but who's to say what I'm "supposed" to feel? I feel like if I don't learn, and if my family doesn't, his death was for not.  Now I know everything is happening as it should and his passing was meant to happen just when it did, but I still feel it.  

Devastated and freed at the same time.  

When the strange peace comes over me, I am very aware of what I did learn.  I started a slow climb to self - actualization one year and two months ago.  Now I am at such a peak of the process I can barely believe it.  I can hardly contain myself.  I have detached more from ego in the last month and few days than I knew was possible.  I feel different callings for my life and I feel a slowing down and a sense of content that I've never had before.  I feel the closest I've ever been to what I always call, "discovering the secrets of the universe".  

I'll write more about this later.  Much more.  

Right now I'm halfway through "The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence" by Deepak Chopra.  A life changing book that I would never have been able to understand, embrace and be so terribly excited by until exactly now.  

There are all these little tidbits in there that are so personal I'd rather not mention them.  At least right now.  I've learned that there are some intimate things I I need to share and put out into the world in hopes others can learn from them, or find comfort, or maybe even inspiration.  And there are other intimate things that are so precious I've stopped mentioning them all together because they're mine. 

The first of many blurbs I'll be sharing from this book: 

"Even creativity is orchestrated through intent.  Creativity occurs at the individual level, but it also occurs universally, allowing the world to periodically take quantum leaps in evolution.  Ultimately, when we die, the soul takes a quantum leap in creativity.  In effect it says, "I now must express myself through a new body-mind system or incarnation."

Thank god for science.  Science is so magical.

"Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality." - Carl Sagan

If that doesn't take the worlds out of my mouth, I don't know what does.

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But back to the question, "how are you?" I guess my answer would go something like this:

HappySadBrokenHeartedPeacefulGuiltyProcessecingDiscoveringLearningGreivingLiving

That's all for now.