Been a couple weeks since posting. I’ve had a couple of half-typed things but abandoned for lack of direction (and yet here I am coming in with an intent for stream-of-conscious rambling).
Tonight is the midpoint between ten and eleven weeks. And it’s hard to describe exactly how I’m feeling. Sometimes I’m not sure what distresses me MORE: that I’ve made it this far/long, or that the meds I’m on seem to have dried up my tears and left me “existing.”
I still have a lengthy list of isolated “memories” to detail, but felt weird with some of my posts seeming so…I don’t know. Formulaic? Or like I was just filling out some old “writing prompt” from junior high or something.
Another factor of course has been work, and losing myself in some simpler, basic “routines” that do not involve sitting at a non-work computer typing non-work stuff.
And yet…
And yet, I’ve been managing to “write up” posts for more comics than I have in YEARS. Where most of my comics-blog content the last couple years in particular have been sharing photos of “weekly hauls” of new comics or “showing off the shelves” for STUFF I’ve acquired…very little has been actual longform CONTENT–reviews of individual comics or other thoughtful/in-depth posts on some topic.
Over the last few weeks I’ve re-read and written about 8 chapters of the 1992/1993 “Funeral for a Friend” story detailing the aftermath of the death of Superman. I’ve “covered” four comics from the late 1980s–the first four comics that were ever “mine” that Mom bought me. And I’ve got a slight backlog of posts covering a 4-part early-1992 story from “Starman,” and starting into a 20-or-so part run on issues about the villain Eclipso.
And maybe that’s given me a bit of “focus,” on a “project” where I can semi-sorta-kinda-maybe “lose myself” a BIT and not have to overthink my reality, of loss, or what life has become or is becoming. A small, “tangible” “goal” that’s just ME, who and what(ever) I “am,” and “have been.”
Delving back into something that at least in the past had been an enjoyment, and something I just…do. Not to mention that Dad himself often seemed impressed with my writing, and stuff related to keeping that blog up for however many years.
Feels weird to try to say that maybe I’m “honoring” him by doing something for ME. But maybe it’s also a “coping mechanism.”
All these weeks later and I **STILL** have piles of comics to go through in the other room, that I had spread out the afternoon before we lost him. I don’t know what to say on THAT, except that my heart hasn’t been in it.
Despite that, I did recently “discover” that if I attach those stick-on binder tabs to a comic backboard, it makes an EXCELLENT divider-tab for comics, sized quite well for my comic boxes, and thus provides an imminently worthwhile path forward to some of the organization I’ve lacked all these years.
Then there’s the weird week it’s been…with Mom in NY visiting my sister, it’s been just me with the pets–Chloe and Sarah (cats) and Daisey (dog)–juggling them with work and whatnot.
As I sit here typing, I’m in “the Cave” while Daisey’s chilled out on a pillow. She’s been especially “needy” and craving attention…I can’t leave her alone for 30 seconds without her whining, barking, and/or shrieking for me. Though it was pointed out to me the other day that for her point of view, Dad suddenly hasn’t been around, and now suddenly Mom hasn’t, either…so she’s definitely had some major disruption to her “normal” beyond my own (I at least can know what happened, is happening, etc).
This weekend is “spring forward”–the time change overnight–and “Spring” is officially only about a week away. Which lends itself to another range of thought for me…it means that we’re almost through the season (Winter) and into a first full season without Dad. Though Winter was only a few days old when we lost him, so the bulk of the season has been without him as it is.
Guess we’ll see what the coming week actually holds, and whether “plans” work out and how, and all that.
The Life of Walt 