Tag: Feelings

Thoughts about my name and death and things that happened on a Monday.

Posted on by Warren Dalton

If you haven’t guessed by now my name is a pen name. Honestly, the quiet refusal to show my face should’ve been your first tip off but I digress. It is as much something given to me as something I’ve chosen. I get to sit at a keyboard and be something different from myself. It is incredibly freeing.

This Monday, I paid my respects to my last grandfather. He was a lot of things to a lot of different people. To the people of the church, he was a good Christian man. To the people he worked with, he was a hard worker. To my father, my uncles, and my aunts, he was a father and a powerful man. To me, he was Granddad, the person who had this laugh that will echo through me and make me smile whenever I think about him. A person who connected me to a large part of my heritage. I couldn’t always understand him, he had a thick accent but I’ll remember the twinkle in his eyes and the hat on his head.

I’ll admit I wasn’t as close to him as I probably should be but, I’ll miss him all the same. I hope some of his tenacity rubs off on me. I hope I can be half the man he and my father are. The Dalton part of my name is a goal and something to look forward too. I hope I can make something of it.

The hardest part of funeral’s are watching the people you thought were so much larger than life be human. Seeing them cry and feel lonely and diminished. I couldn’t breakdown with them. I hurt so much to see them and I wanted to join them be overcome but, I think something broke inside me when my brother passed. I don’t know if anything will hurt me like that again. I don’t know if that should be comforting  or a sobering. Probably the worst part is seeing my father standing there like that so much pain in his eyes but, not being able to release it.

Anxiety (Part 1)

Posted on by Warren Dalton

I think everyone deals with anxiety differently and as long as you don’t let it fuck up your life then you’re fine. I asked a couple people, in this Facebook group I’m apart of, how they deal with their own anxiety, what made them anxious. I was surprised about the many ways people dealt with it some people it. It made me think maybe I wasn’t dealing with it in the way I should. That maybe just walking away  from the things that make me anxious wasn’t solving anything.

A ton of things happened this week and I had panic attacks for three nights in a row. Maybe that’s small change for some but It has never actually been that bad for me. First I finally got out of situation that had me on a knife-edge. I was slowly climbing up the walls and I wanted out. So I finally said so. I know it was my fault for getting into that situation and for me not getting out of it when I started to feel this way.

The second day was mostly a layover of what happened the first day but, I found out someone I looked up to had done something reprehensible. For me I knew how to feel about it but, the people in the group I mentioned earlier were split between raising money and condemning them. Maybe this wasn’t a big deal. I guess its hard to separate big and small things when you’re in a whirlwind of your own emotion.

On the third day, because of how badly I dealt with what happened on the first day, I had a friend decide she didn’t want to talk to me. I’ll admit I didn’t use my words well and I hurt another friends feelings. I’ll own that but, they didn’t even tell me their feeling were hurt. So while I had been going through all of this and I needed her she ditched me. I felt like I didn’t understand our relationship anymore. I was hurt and angry and I wasn’t so silently vacillating between them. I had thought we were close and it really cut into me. I don’t know if I can trust them again. For me the forgiving part is easy but, forgetting doesn’t do anyone any good. If you forget you are open to having it happen again. So should I forgive them?

I’m sure this is absolutely boring, but I think that people with anxiety should talk about what upsets them. I think that I have felt so much better dealing with this stuff with words then I ever had just walking away. So if you go through stuff like this talk about it. There maybe tons of other ways people deal with it but I think talking goes somewhere above something like self-harm.

Reunion

Posted on by Warren Dalton

This week some of my old friends from high school and I got together to have dinner and just talk. I hadn’t seen some in as much as three years and some I saw three months ago but, I think it was good for me. Just to get an update,While I didn’t get to talk to all of them the way I wanted or as long as I wanted I had the best time. I laughed better than I had in months and it was all thanks to them.

Some of them were in great places in their lives, getting a great job or meeting people that would be or could be spouses. One moved pretty far. Some of them had significant others who just seem to really get them. One of them was getting over his first big heartbreak. It was sad to see but, we got him to look back and laugh for the first time.  I was there by myself but, I saw the changes in them and found a way to connect to that with my own. It was electric.

For me the highlight of the night was when some one I guess I had looked up to a bit from the old days said “So your published… Your like one of the only one of us to do something.” I can’t really put into words the way that made me feel but I hope it will be in my memory for a long time to come. Helping me get over writer’s block and persevere when I want to procrastinate. For me this was one of the best nights of my adult life.