April Showers

The weather hit eighty degrees Fahrenheit and almost one hundred percent humidity the other day.

It’s my dad’s birthday today.

In less than two weeks, it’ll be the 24th of April screwing a cap on my year in hell.

To put it in a more general point of view, I’m being slammed three times this month.

Let’s start the way all epic stories start, with the weather.

In my life, April has always been the beginning of the bad times. At first, when I was a kid, it was the weather. As April advanced warm sticky weather was the order of the day, and I never learned how to live with it. We didn’t have air conditioning when I was a kid. Things were cooler in Michigan back then, thank you for global warming, and we could usually get by with open windows and fans.

That was never the case in Ohio.

Even when the weather was more pleasant, Southwest Ohio was a subtropical hell hole. We had air conditioning when I lived with my grandmother, and for a few years, I knew true comfort. Still, the weather outside of my artificially cooled and dehumidified home is still something out of my nightmares.

Do you get the point that I hate warm wet weather?

Moving on.

My dad and I used to be really close. When I was a teenager, we butted heads like a parent and child are wont to do. When I was trying to work through all of my baggage and trauma via journaling, I didn’t take any time to consider how the journey I was taking, which saved y life, would affect the people in my sphere.

I hurt my dad badly.

I didn’t stop and consider how telling stories about my life would overflow and cause damage.

My brother and I don’t speak after he threatened to sue me. I gotta be honest. Our relationship was crap before the journaling, and I’m not sure how upset I am about that. Sometimes the damage isn’t all my fault.

And sometimes it is.

I tried to talk to my dad after last April about how we needed to fix things. He was disinterested, and I don’t blame him more than I blame myself. I did the damage, not him. I’m not saying it’s all my fault, but it’s mostly my fault, so I understand his disinterest.

Like I said, my fault. I wish I’d handled things differently. Every day I want to fix this mess. I don’t think I’ll ever b able to. I think I have seriously and permanently ruined my relationship with my dad. We’re two stubborn Michiganders in all of the bad ways.

My broken relationship with my dad was the worst pain in my life until April 24th, 2020, that was the day my middle son killed himself. I know some of you are probably thinking of some form of, “it’s been a year, and it’s time to move on. You’re killing yourself with grief Josh.”

I probably am.

Between my depression and my eating habits are, as I’ve said before, is a long-term suicide plan.

Or maybe I’m just full of shit.

Who knows?

Now to the worst part. The close we get to the day my son died, the more I’m disengaging from reality. I don’t want to talk to my friends and family. I don’t want to write. I don’t want to do chores. And I damn sure don’t want to leave the house.

The other day I was making Ramen noodles, and I thought to myself, “Stephen loved ramen, and now he’ll never be able to eat ramen again. I ended up on the kitchen floor sobbing.

I miss my son.

So yeah, I guess you could say I’m having a hard time.

Maybe, if I try really hard to make it so, I can swim past all of this.

Maybe when it’s all past, I’ll feel alive again.

Maybe I’ll make it through the Aril showers.

Maybe I’ll get to smell the May flowers.

- Josh (04/11/2021)