Letting go even when it hurts
by danica drezner
As I write this series, my goal is to be transparent about the process of working towards my vision. In order to be completely transparent, I must acknowledge the bumps in the road along the way. Each difficult time is an opportunity to reflect and unearth the stories I have been unconsciously living in. If I want to evolve, I must no longer hide. I must do the uncomfortable and tell my story, the pretty and the ugly. And, I must do it in real-time.
The last week has been difficult, overwhelming, and frankly, paralyzing. I’ve noticed my eating pattern is all thrown off and a desire to crack open a hard kombucha and then take an edible. This has been fueled by a wave of emotions that knocked me down and I’ve been stumbling to get back up.
A week ago I got a call from my father and his doctor to tell me that they found cancer cells in his prostate as well as a small tumor right outside his kidney. It was early in the morning and I was in the midst of my ‘sipping coffee and journaling’ routine. After the abrupt call, I felt sick to my stomach. Yet, I maintained my composure and spoke with the doctor to figure out what we need to do to keep my father alive.
Since then, I’ve been the one communicating with worried family members while also calling the various doctors to schedule appointments. The weight of the world is on my shoulders right now; my father’s life feels like my responsibility. Mix that in with the anxious family members and I find myself emotionally overwhelmed and turning to alcohol, weed, and even food to “ease my nerves.”
As difficult as this time is, it is a mirror. It is a flashback to all the times I turned to food to ease the sensations I was feeling throughout my mind and body. It is helping me understand that these emotions I was not addressing, these emotions I have been denying, lead me to search for something outside myself to numb.
This desire to numb is so deeply rooted in my lack of knowing how to process emotions. My family has a history of alcohol and drug abuse. Hell, even with food! My Uncle and I always talk about our mutual urge to run to the pantry when we’re getting anxious. It has become so ingrained within me to look outside myself when I am lost within. I am lost because I do not know what to do with my emotions when I am in a stressful moment so I try to control them. I sit in denial, pushing the feelings away because I honestly don’t know what else to do with them. Reality becomes too much, so I seek an escape.
I love my father from the bottom of my heart, he has always been my best friend. However, because he’s my best friend, it sometimes feels like I have a child as a father. The last few years I have watched him age considerably because he does not take his health seriously and it has caused me so much pain. Yet, this has manifested as anger. I’ve been angry at him for not taking his health seriously and I’m angry that I’m the one being told by his own mother that he needs to go see the doctor. I cannot force him to take care of himself, but that is what it has felt like.
I love my family and I love my father, but I have to accept that I cannot protect them, something I’ve been subconsciously doing since the death of my aunt as well as other family members who died too soon because of drugs and alcohol. I could not bear the pain of losing anyone, but now I accept it is not my responsibility to save everyone. As hard as it is, I have accepted the worst could happen and I know I’m doing my best within my means. I’m working to let it all go and to set a boundary with those who unknowingly cross it so frequently. What is most important right now is that I let go of control and anger. I do not want to spend these moments angry with my father when I should be celebrating my time with him still here.
So, each day I center myself and let go of putting out the fires all around me. By turning to food, alcohol, and weed, I’m perpetuating a vicious cycle of escaping my reality and denying the emotions that live in me. This is a pattern that many of my family members carry out and is a behavior I began to mimic at a young age with food. So, I surrender. I walk away when I need to and I focus on the silence when the world feels so noisy.
As for my father, he is finally starting to take his health more seriously and is being more cooperative with me. The diagnosis has made him face his own reality of denying his need to take care of his health all these years. It is not easy, and it won’t get easier until he is healed, but I am hopeful everything will turn out alright.