The Chromatically Challenged Lines of Definitely Maybe

Six months ago, I lost my dad. Or, was in the process of losing him.

The distinction between “here” and “gone” is fuzzy. What I know is that at 4:20 pm on March 28th, I thought the day was as bad as it could get. By 4:25, pm that perspective had been turned upside down.

It is not as simple as naming the moment the doctor called time of death on March 29. There was a series of losses over the course of hours. We reached for incremental wisps of hope, only to have them dissolve one-by-one, through to the moment we walked back out of the hospital.

Why does the question, “what day did your dad die?” have to be confusing?

I hate uncertainty. I want everything to fit neatly in boxes, the edges sharp and obvious.

So often, I cry, “But where is the line?!”

Say I take out my contacts and try to navigate the world, everything becomes amorphous blobs. I can see the rough shapes of obstacles, but my depth perception is off kilter.

I feel like I am going through life without corrective eyewear for my brain. I treat the metaphorical lines as cliffs. Stay away. Danger ahead. It’s so tempting to just sit down and refuse to move.

Unfortunately, in order to actually get anywhere in the world, you have to walk forward.

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here

My brain is always collecting evidence of my worthiness or lack thereof and my therapist likes to point out my tendency towards confirmation bias.

Five years of therapy and I still sometimes question whether I even deserve to be there. If I’m exaggerating inconsequential issues. If I’m worthy of taking up this hour that could be used by someone with “real” problems.

Grey areas.

I remember parts of the very first appointment so clearly. My brain was a pinball machine, trying to figure out what to say and how to say it and would she take me seriously and which things were most important and am I being ridiculous and what if nothing is wrong with me and what if everything is wrong with me and what if I’m just… wrong.

Finally, I managed to bring up OCD. Sort of. I mentioned a couple of super vague details about myself before my brain shut me up for another eight months. She talked about it being a spectrum. I took that to mean that I was exaggerating. We’ve had approximately 92083940238834 versions of this conversation in the last five years. I want clear definitions and labels, damn it, but they’re never clear enough.

It’s there with my friends, too. Which will be the word I say or the thing I do that tips the balance away from me being worth the effort?

Not knowing leaves too much risk. The fact that the lines must exist somewhere means I could run up against them, and that feels intolerable. I want to see the obstacles in high definition and know exactly what I’m up against.

It’s not that I see life as black and white. The problem is that I see all the millions of shades of grey and they fucking terrify me, so I try to force things to fit within predetermined boundaries. Yet, trying to live life in neat little boxes is pretty stifling, so I keep going.

When I miscalculate, or the boundaries move, I crumble. Any given misstep means I could be what I fear most — a terrible, horrible, worthless, no good very bad person. I’m constantly calculating my value, and I grade myself on a really unfair curve.

I’ve been trying to appreciate, or at least acknowledge, the benefits my hyperawareness lends. I noticed it after I wrote that last blog post, which quickly became the most read piece on my site, ever. Suddenly, I realized how often I argue for that middle ground on the behalf of others, because I’m so acutely attuned to my fear of it for myself.

I treat myself as guilty until proven innocent but increasingly find myself extending compassion to others as a result. Empathy flows one direction. Do unto others as maybe you should considering doing unto yourself. OCD and anxiety have shaped me into someone with great critical thinking and problem solving skills, and likewise, maybe this has given me a better thousand-foot view of how ambiguous life can be.

Then, I worry about shame being the source of morality (insert Brene Brown quotes here), because my mind is unrelenting. There’s some OCD superstition bullshit tied up in all that, for sure.

It has taken me four days to finish this post. I kept thinking of exceptions to what I was saying, and without being able to fit them into the puzzle, it feels like the puzzle can’t be shared. Meta grey areas. In these few days, the six-month anniversary of my dad’s death has moved by me, no matter the definition, and in that blurred time between life and death were the last moments I had with him.

Had everything been black and white, the line between life and death would have been sudden, as it is for so many. I wouldn’t have held his wrist and felt his heartbeat, knowing they were among the last. I might not have gotten there in time to crawl into the hospital bed with him, forehead to cheek. Yes, the fleeting moments of hope were torturous, but at least I got to be there. I got to play videos of the kids for him, to talk to him, to crack jokes, to wonder – hope – that he heard them.

Maybe someday I’ll find a way to live in peace with this chromatically challenged world. But at least it gave me a few extra hours with my dad.