So, today's a thoughtful day.

How do you create happy? If someone asked me if I am happy right now, I'd say no.
But I feel like that's misleading.

And if I can look at myriad parts of my life and say that they are good and ok, but I'm still not happy, where does the blame for that go? Should I be surprised that the sum of the happy parts isn't necessarily happy?

Is it my fault? Can you unconciously choose to be unhappy? How do you know if that's what you're doing?

I want to be able to look at my life and be ok with it, and I don't think I'm at that place.

I haven't moved on from where I was last May and from what has happened since then. Nothing is in the past.

Between leaving New Orleans, breaking up with my ex, my dad dying and Hurricane Katrina, life as I knew it less than a year ago effectively doesn't exist anymore.

It's been months and I still can't imagine my life without my dad in it. I can't believe he won't walk me up the aisle. I can't believe he'll never see my kids. I don't know how to comprehend those things. I don't know if there will ever be a time that I can accept the fact that he's gone. And I feel like most of the time I'm just not dealing with it. Like not thinking about it just makes it all ok.

Do you ever really deal with the death of a parent? People still say things like "oh, my grandma passed away..." or adults tell me, "yeah, my parent passed away too." And it makes me want to scream at them that It's not the same. I've lost two grandparents ... both before I was 16. It's not the same. I know that grief and it doesn't begin to compare. They don't even live on the same continent, they're so far apart. You don't have a clue. And your sympathy makes me want to punch you in the face for its fakeness and insincerity.

And when some 50 year old tries to sympathize, I want to yell at them. If they really thought about it they'd realize that they're being patronizing. It's like they're rubbing it in.
When someone my dad's age says they know what I'm going through, they're parent just passed away, I find it hard to muster sympathy.

They got to have their parent. Their parent saw them live and grow up and get married and have kids. Sure, I understand, you know what it's like to lose a parent, but you don't know what it's like to be 24 and have lost your dad. You got your parent for TWICE ... let me repeat that TWICE as long as I did. So no, you do not know what this is like. Your parent was 70 or 80 and passing away is what someone that age does. You didnt have a dad who's first angioplasty was when you were in 4th grade, or who had quadruple bypass open heart surgery when you were 16 or have a stroke when you were a sophomore in college or get leukemia when you're 24 and die 3 months later. So you know, you deal with that along with that whole growing up thing.

And clearly I'm still SO angry about my dad but it only comes out in bursts and then it goes away into hibernation until something new sets me off.

I want to be able to deal with this loss, but I'm beginning to wonder if that will ever happen. It's so difficult. You can't think about it every day, or every hour, or every minute. And then you feel guilty for not thinking about it all the time. But if I thought about it that much, I'd be even more depressed than I already am. No one can deal with that on a constant basis. And so it all still doesn't seem real. I don't mean that I feel like he's going to come back. But I also can't wrap my mind around what his being gone means.

And I want to be able to move on from here, but I've never really been any good at that. I usually have to do some physical movement in order to facilitate the emotional and mental progression. I know that finally moving out of my mom's place will be such a huge help, but I feel like I'm leaning on that as a crutch. Like I keep thinking that everything would just be ok if I could just get out of here.

And maybe I'm coming off as a mess here. But at least I have a good reason.