Distractions

If we are all here on earth, we all have the right to feel worthy. It is those who you surround yourself with that can help you feel worthy, but you, yourself need to believe it to really feel worthy.

Finally, Mum was divorced and life slowly got better for us. Looking back now I know I was lucky to have been given a few years of normalcy before it all hit me again. 

Mum bought her first house, I started high school, and was given a little more freedom to hang with friends after starting high school. It never crossed my mind why life was sailing so smoothly in any moment during those years. But now, I look back and see that Mum was distracted with a new love in her life. It seemed fine. I liked the freedom and so I didn’t question it. 

I guess as a child and in your early teens, you don’t approach every new chapter in your life by thinking about what could go wrong. I wish I could still take things on face value and accept them for what they truly appear to be in that moment. 

It doesn’t take much for that to change. I was 14 when Dad died in a motor bike accident.

He turned 50 years old this year and it’s almost 10 years since he passed. Time is a crazy thing.

I was upset, and it all got really real when I seen my extended family running down my driveway to console me after Mum had broke the news in the car after school.

I was the type to push everything away. Anything to do with the funeral, his death and showing affection I didn’t want to be apart of. 

I just said no. 

I initially said no to my best friends coming to support me at the funeral. I remember wondering “why would they want to come? They didn’t even know Dad.” I had never been to a funeral as a young adult, and so I had no idea this is what friends did. I know now, they weren’t coming because they knew Dad, they came to support me. And I am so lucky they were there. 

The part I struggle with the most and I think most people who have lost a parent will agree, I can’t help but wonder what life would have been like had he been there.

How would he have helped me get through what were the toughest years of my life that were yet to come after he was taken? It’s all left to my imagination. It’s bitter sweet when your imagination is better than the reality you know would actually be true. 

Distraction can be beautiful in helping us through difficult times.

But wow it can be absolutely shit. It’s like a soft haze clouding the underlying problems that keep getting bigger and bigger.

Following Dad’s death, this describes my teenage years almost perfectly. All of a sudden there was a forceful father-figure in my life that I really didn’t want to be there. He wasn’t welcome. I tried, but it couldn’t work.

And it’s funny, since writing it down, I’ve never taken the time to think about it in such a way to describe to someone in person. Maybe that’s the beauty of writing. 

I was slowly pushed into the background of the lives of those that I desperately wanted to be apart of, but mostly felt like an teenage inconvenience. 

If you’re reading this, it’s almost certain you or someone you know has experience death in the family or domestic violence. One of the reason I began this blog, is to get that conversation going - I urge you to reach out and at the very least, show your support and help those feel less alone in the big, scary world.

Make them feel worthy.