After my mother died, I felt this immense sense of freedom. I felt that I could do anything I wanted. Anything that I'd ever been scared of before merely seemed like a challenge. I felt and I knew that nothing could ever hurt as much as losing her. I felt ready for anything and I wanted it all. I got tattoos. I drank until I threw up and then I drove home. I rode Greyhound buses across the country by myself. In the mornings when I woke up, I cried.

I can only imagine that my father's death will bring about similar feelings. I doubt that I'll retain the recklessness I had when I was eighteen but I know that I'll feel free again to do what I want with my life. What a gift it seems sometimes, to be smacked with the reality of mortality. If this is it, if we're going to end up dying in a hospital bed, or in a car crash, or even peacefully and in our sleep, in five, ten, twenty, forty years, then why the fuck don't we do what it is that we really want to do with our lives? If I can live through the pain of my father's death then can I not live through the pain of changing things that I've needed to change for a long time?
10:41:16 AM     comment []