Of Facebook and benches
28.08.08, 11:03 pm

Oh God, my dad and I communicated through Facebok last night. It felt so wrong and alien, like two very separate worlds colliding. Who made Facebook accessible to the over-50s anyway? He�s also bloody friends with James, which is so very cosy it makes me want to shoot myself. Maybe he�ll get a diary too, and leave me notes about my inane ramblings. Actually, let�s not tempt that fate. Anyway, I realised that I haven�t seen my dad since early February, which is a bit shameful, and so invited him and Amandroid down to Sheffield for the day. They�re coming on the 20th. I am literally the best daughter in the world, more so because he is also doing a gig with his current band on the 6th and I said I�ll go see him. Two dad visits in a month... that�s pretty impressive. He then ended the conversation in typical style, i.e. unable to actually compliment me fully on anything:

Dad: Hey, I saw your Dumfries photos on Facebook (shudder) � there�s some really good ones.
Me: Thanks!
Dad: There�s also a lot of crap ones.

I actually don�t want to go to the gig, not so much because I don�t want to see him perform, but because it means we�ll have to stay over and will therefore start the day in New Mills on the 7th, which is my mum�s birthday. As always, I have no idea what to do. Have not told the boy that it�s imminent, and am not sure how to mark it. I guess I should go visit my bench or something, although to tell the truth, I have very mixed feelings about it. I was randomly talking to Becky on the phone the other day, and then suddenly I realised exactly why I resented my bench so much. I guess since I shared it with her, completely out of the blue, then I can share it with you lot too.

I think I saw the bench as my way of getting over things, of feeling better. I hoped that by doing some gesture, by building a big marker of how much I cared, that I would feel like I had come to terms with everything, and could move on. I mean, obviously I have accepted everything, and moved on a long time ago, but I think everyone knows that I have a lot of unresolved issues, and am not exactly at peace with the past. And so the bench was going to resolve all that, and all the guilt and hurt and grief that I still harbour would disappear, and I would feel better. Probably a naive way of thinking, but sometimes I just am 13 again. And then the bench was suddenly there, and I was seeing it with a shit load of other people, who all commented afterwards on how much better they felt. I felt no different at all. All the old feelings were still there; nothing had changed.

And so I don�t know what to do. It will be ten years in January and I�m still just as fucked up now as I was then. I can�t bring myself to mention her in conversation... it�s like she never existed. If I do have to talk about her then I get so tense that I shake to the point where my teeth chatter. And it�s such an injustice, because she was such a wonderful, special person. Christ, her funeral was absolutely packed to the rafters. It�s like I made a subconscious decision ten years ago to not speak about her, because it was too painful to remember, and then never challenged that decision. I guess it�s not my fault in a way, but at the same time I desperately want a new plan of attack. It�s not just the fact that I can�t talk about her; it�s the fact that I seem unable to talk about anything sad/upsetting, to the point where it surely irritates other people. I don�t want to be this emotionally retarded for the rest of my life, and I know that I have to change myself somehow, because no one else will do it for me. And so that�s why I don�t actually want to see my bench ever again, because it just feels like a big tangible symbol of my failure.

If I sound depressed then I'm not, not really. Life's grand at the moment. It just felt a bit weird banging on about trivial things again after a load of deep stuff.

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