atonement

I haven't blogged in a long time. And I suppose theres a reason for that. I've been going through a rough time. I ended an important relationship, grieved various losses, moved into a new apartment, and started taking antidepressants at the urging of my doctor and at the displeasure of my friends and family.  I've been on them since December, and have been able to crawl my way back to normality. I've felt, for the first  time in months, that I deserve a tranquil life- that I don't deserve the sadness and emptiness that I'd been feeling. I pierced my nose, cut off  almost all of my hair, moved into a new apartment with people who I really like, and rescued a puppy who was supposed to be medium sized but who, in reality, is going to be gigantic. I go to classes, spend time with my new housemates who have become like a family, and take care of my dog. I find pleasure in day to day activitioes- the predictability of it all. I don't know if its the pills, or the change of lifestyle and scenery. Maybe it's a combination of both. I've been urged, by almost everyone in my life, to stop taking them. Prozac, they tell me, has made me a zombie. A happy zombie, but a zombie all the same. I can think back on the difficult months I just experienced with a sort of pleasant detachment, a sense that I am no longer the same person. And I'm not sure that's really OK.

Just as I kept my family abreast of my sadness, I tell them about my new accomplishments. My exams went well, the dog is peeing on the newspapers or outside with regularity, and I've discovered tasty and cheap recipes that I cook together with my housemates.  I'm glad that the awful experiences of the last few months are behind me. I'm glad that I can update my family and my friends with happy stories, rather than my previous complete disinterest in life. I'm glad I don't have to fake it anymore. But there is someone who I've always faked it with.

My birthfather, despite the fact  that we live on different sides of the world, has always kept in touch with me. I share with him only the happiest of anecdotes- my good marks, my new haircut, the day to day pleasures that I think he wants to hear about. Depression, alcoholism and addiction run in his family. My family. And I admit that in my darkest moments, I would open a bottle of wine, smoke a few cigarettes, and sip until my sadness became funny. I know I'm predisposed to all sorts of innaproppriate coping mechanisms. I know that many of my family members have suffered from depression. And yet, I can't find a way to tell him that I too was depressed. Very depressed. I want to. I want to be honest with him and tell him that I've gone through a hard time, that I'm medicating myself, that I'm slowly finding my way back to emotional health. But I wonder- would he want to know? I know my parents did. I wonder if he wants honesty from me, as a father would want from his daughter? Or is he satisifed hearing the banal, fluffy details of my life. I feel the need to share with him, to tell him how some adoption issues reared their ugly head amidst my depression. I want to tell him  how low I was- how I saw no hope, how I wished that I could go away quietly, how I walked into a piercing salon and paid 15 euro for a woman with 50 tattoos to drill a hole in my nose. How I didn't even feel it when she pushed in the needle, convinced that I deserve whatever pain anyone could inflict on me. How I felt guilty when I saw the trust and love in my puppies eyes- as if even HE was fooled into thinking that I was a good person.

I've written to him a few times, but I've never been able to press "send". Instead, I buy postcards from the corner store, address them in my neat script, and fill the small space with entertaining anecdotes of my life across the ocean. On the way to the pharmacy to refill my prescription, I'll drop them in the "outside of province" part of the maildrop. Afraid to show him my weakness, afraid to be anything other than the happy daughter he gave away. I was once an inconvienance to him- a burden. I'll never allow myself to become that again.