Darn Good Question

So, for those of you just tuning in, I had kind of a rough time over the holidays. 

The short version of the story, which is really all I have the energy left to tell at this point, is that I had never properly dealt with the emotional fallout from Dad's death, my stroke, Gordon's suicide, and then Mr Ali and Zamith's deaths. 

Part of the reason I had never properly dealt with this was that I had no one to talk to about any of it.  I came to realize, right around the time the holiday season started, that I was basically alone here.  All of my friends that I would ordinarily discuss this stuff with were gone.

So when I finally got holiday time off from work, I had the time to finally deal with things, and then Kent Kangley arrived, and I had someone to talk to about them.

And I came unglued.  Everything I'd been putting off dealing with for the past two years came out.  I was worried that once I started crying I wouldn't stop, and I sort of couldn't; it went on for days, and didn't get any better when Kent went back to Seattle.

Today I was walking from my place to Higashi-Kanagawa and back, a mere ten kilometers or so, and the solitude got to me again, so I texted Linda.  She was very comforting and helpful, and I only had to stop a couple of times to pull myself together.

She did ask a couple of interesting questions, though.  The first one was, "What gets you out of bed in the morning?" (short answer: fear.  That's a subject for another entry.)

The second question was, "What keeps you alive?  What makes you come alive?" 

I legitimately don't have an answer for that right now.  I don't feel alive at the moment.

But it sure makes me think.