I'm sorry. I've been reading the last few posts I have here and I seem to use this space to rant, rage and cry. This is a tear jerker. You've been warned.

In 12 hours I'll be floating above the Manitoba/Ontario border getting ready to land in Toronto. I got the call today. The call that said "You need to come home now. Dad doesn't have much time." My room mate is a saint. She got on her computer, drafted a letter to my school, while I got online and moved my Christmas flight set for 17 days from now to 6AM tomorrow.

My bags are packed. Now I'm waiting until 4:30 to leave for the airport.

It was the strangest feeling packing that bag. What am I packing for? Winter, Christmas? New Years? A funeral?
I packed for a month... who knows if I'll be back after the break.

Earlier today I handed in my last assignment for the term, now I have a week before the next term starts. So I will miss 2 weeks of school. Missing school isn't so bad, but there are only 10 weeks per term so who knows if I'll recover okay. But I guess that doesn't matter. But it's easier to think about than to think the thought I keep pushing back... what if I have to write the eulogy?

A few days ago I had a break, I realized he was going to die. Not just die, but be Gone. And all of the issues I've had with him would be forever stuck in time. I love him, but he wasn't always the best dad. He wasn't always the best husband. But he did the best he could. Right now I'm having trouble thinking about the good times with him because so many of them were coloured with my fear/judgement. I can't see past that bias. And it makes me feel like a bad daughter.

I am also afraid to see him. For him to look me in the eye and know how unsure I am. I don't want him to see that in me. I've been a brave little toaster away from home. When he looks at me he'll know how scared and alone I've felt.

Or maybe it's the timing. I finally felt at ease here. I made meaningful connections and I felt like me for the first time in months. I was wholly me. I could geek out, nerd out and be a giant loser. All of these things I call myself with love. And I finally felt like the old me who let other people's judgements roll off of me becasue at the end of the day I knew I was true to myself, a good person. I was excited to get back to school and show off my true courage. To show the new people in my life that I could be as happy as I've pretended to be. And now I am obligated to be sad and morose. And I don't feel like that.

The last 3 years I've been living in a dome, waiting for life to be taken. My attitude has been - it is what it is and I'll deal with it when it happens. Now that it's happening, I don't know how to act. I'm confused, angry, frustrated, sad, relieved, anxious...

I'm not who you want.
I'm not who you want to be with right now.
I'm not the person you think I am.
As much as the last four weeks have changed me I am still who I always have been. I may want to change some of it, I can't bring myself to do it any faster. It feels to unnatural. Not wrong- but not right for me yet.
Maybe in 10 months I'll be closer to being that girl. Maybe in 10 months I'll be a better person capable of all that I think you want.
For right now though, I am me. I'm not always cheery. I can't turn off my emotions. I internalize a lot. I am not an open book.
That is just the way it has to be.

Before my post I'll mention I'm doing BEDA (Blog every day in April) again. Here is the link. This is an expanded version of today's post.
maureenjohnson.ning.com/profiles/blog/list

So tonight I am heading out to celebrate my birthday but as usual there was a SNAFU in the plan. Someone else just cancelled their attendance. And I don't really mind that people aren't coming, I was just really excited that FOR ONCE someone would be around besides my family. Last year I never went out with my friends. It was exam time and we were all scattered so an "official" celebration never happened. And I really was okay with that. And I've been okay with it since the last real party I had was when I was 18 in my last year of hight school... but since then something ALWAYS goes wrong -
19 reservation cancelled
20 the bar sucked so we ended up somewhere else
21 I didn't plan anything (I may have watched Lord of the Rings with my sister)
22 I graduated the day before so the whole program went to a club that weekend. I never celebrated my birthday.
23 - cancelled
But this year I'm all muddled up and have no idea what will happened next year. Will I have any real friends to celebrate with? My family will be here and I'll be in BC. And now I feel pathetic for feeling sorry for myself.

I have some friends who are coming and I love those friends too, but when only one of my BEST friends can make it out of all the really cool people I hang out with and it kind of sucks. I mean other cool people will be there, but tonight some how turned into meet everyone's new boyfriend night. So I think I might be the ONLY single person there. And the one other single girl just cancelled on me. I spend much of my time with my friends taking care of them and listening to them. There were two people I could guarantee that would pay attention to me on my birthday and they aren't coming.

I just thought I'd let you all know I am on the ning participating in BEDA (Blog everyday in April) check me out there. My Ning.

I am feeling so down. I am cutting people out and I just want to feel life again.
I've been this roller coaster and I thought I was doing okay and this morning I felt chipper too. and then it all went down hill. I mean everyday has been a bit of  a roller coaster for me but normally I can buck up and take it. Today is different. I feel bad about certain people and things. Things I can't control. Reactions I can't make sense of and I feel like a terrible friend to some people right now. The thing is I am trying to be a good friend but this one friend was a bad friend and then I shut him out and now I am trying to make it better and I think he is now pissed at me because of a reaction I had to something he told me. My reaction wasn't this way or that it was just acceptance and I think he wanted me to throw a parade for him. But I just couldn't muster the strength to be super peppy and be a cheerleader. Because his life did something that it always eventually does, and yes it is good but it is also normal so I had a normal reaction. And now it feels worse than it did when he was treating me like crap for the last two months because he isn't even responding to me. But you know, I am going though stuff and I thought he'd understand and he doesn't he just is just expecting things to be like it was 7 months ago when my family was balanced. I mean my family has never been perfect but it was pretty good for once for two weeks it felt like that two weeks could have lasted a while longer and then it all got shook up. And after I told him about my dad he only once, ONCE in the bi-weekly conversations we had asked me how things were.

It's like he forgot and I get he hates his family but I was there for him when his sister was going though chemo for the second time and when he thought it was back again the week before my dad was diagnosed.

I don't know. I am just angry at him. And it seems to pop in my head a lot. Because so many people ask me about him, because I was the only one who kept connected to him, and now we couldn't be further apart.

There are other things on my mind, but I don't know what I want to say about it.

I've been having these moments.

I wake up in the morning and I forget. My life is what it once was, there is no evil lurking at my door. The rug is not about to be swept from under my feet. All is the same as it has always been. And then I remember that everything is different. My life is not the same.

Since I found out, I've been avoiding it. It is so easy to lie to myself. I told myself wait for all the results and then deal. Because there is nothing I can do about it. And there still is nothing I can do about it. But since learning that he will die from this, I found it's been harder to lie to myself. And the moments are more frequent.

I used to have them only when I woke up and then the dark cloud would follow me everywhere. I could smile through it. I could be me, just a little sadder... now I find I get happy for a moment, laugh at a joke and then I remember and it's like the world is crumbling around me.

He's not going to get better.
I can't lie and say it's a possibility.
It's in him and it won't go away.
And then he will die because it is there.

I just talked to one of my cool cousins. One of the ones that has always let me be me and even if he does still look at me like I'm 4 years old, he always has understood that sometimes there are no words or anything to make anyone feel better. He said very little, it was his dad who had died just under two years ago of cancer. So he knows what we are going through. But his few words, his statement of "I'm here if you need me 24/7" was probably one of the most reassuring things I've heard in a while.

Okay, so this is a hard one for me. In part because I don't know if I have the guts to be more honest with myself here than I do in my head. I keep pushing my real feelings away from me. My dad has cancer... there it's out there for all the world to know and understand my crazy mood swings! It has and hasn't hit me. I cried about it for the first time three days ago, after almost three weeks of knowing. Before that I was just waiting. My eyes would get teary but never full on tears. The same thing kind of happened after my uncle passed... it took a while for the tears to come. But I had way more relief when they came than I did this time. It was also a one time thing, I'm sure it will hit me again at some point.

I know I'm angry but that anger makes me feel guilty. I don't know what to do with it.

I've kept myself busy, ignoring a lot of what I'm feeling because I'm at home and I don't want to take my anger out on my family. There are some friends who I've turned to for distraction... most don't know what's going on with me though. So you now all officially have permission to let it flow through the grape vine, so I won't have to have awkward conversations announcing it. That's the other reason I'm writing this is so you all know and let it flow through the group.

On the note of awkward conversations. I finally had to field one of the family phone calls, and the least likely person hit the situation right on the head and I didn't know what to say. Her words of comfort were not really comforting, but hard hitting simply because it was honest... for once an honest response from her. But I couldn't comfort her any more than she could comfort me. And it didn't help that I was on the phone and she couldn't see my head nodding in agreement, probably making things more awkward.

My mum has this habit of hitting be with a lot of serious information when we are stuck alone in the car. I got a huge bomb of information and it was probably the first time she was so frank with me about the subject matter. At times I know she safeguards me and doesn't tell me everything, and I prefer when she does this sometimes just so I won't have to deal with stuff, but this time I got the whole picture and I'm not sure what to do with it.