I am half-way through my daily LEFT blog-a-thon. I thought I would post a little update on how it's going.

Well, it's going. I'll admit that I have to force myself to get something on here some days, not because I don't have stuff to write about, or because I don't have time, but because it's an emotional commitment for me to actually write a post, and some days I don't feel like making an emotional commitment. I have also often asked myself, WHY OH WHY did I decide to do this in December??, a busy and rough month filled with so much emotion in itself due to Christmas. I don't have an answer to that one. I am a crazy person I guess. I can't not do it though, I would feel like a loser if I gave up. Even if no one else reads this stuff, the purpose of it is to heal my own mind, and I keep that in focus.

In addition, I have a huge non-bloggable subject that is on my mind all the time, which is my niece Jordyn. So it's kind of hard to take my mind off her and refocus on Joe. But again, I'm trying to stay focused.

I have had some realizations in the past two weeks. One is that I am absolutely 100% not ready to face Joe in video. I cannot do it. I mean, I will do it if a video presents itself, especially in front of my kids, and I will smile and comment and look okay from the outside. But on the inside I will be screaming, on my knees, dying. I know this because I specifically looked for a video one night last week for a post. It was a video of Joe skating on our pond on Christmas morning. I remember the video so clearly and I can still hear his skates gliding on the ice, his pace alternating between fast strides around the ice to quick, cutting stops. But I can't find the damn thing anywhere.

My searching caused me to view several 8mm video tapes along with footage from my digital camera. It was painful, awful, terrible to see him alive. I know, that's just wrong isn't it? I don't know why I feel that way. But I can tell you that it hurts me so much to see him there, alive, talking, walking, being Joe. It's a pain that cuts me as sharp as anything I have ever felt. I don't know why there is no comfort in it for me.

That whole video-search put me in an awful mood (understatement). Luckily this happened in the evening and my kids were going to bed soon so my short-tempered demeanor and impatience with them didn't drag on too long. But it was still there, and I am sorry to my kids for every moment when I can't deal with myself and don't give them the attention they deserve. It's not so much that I take out my frustrations with them arbitrarily, it's more that when they need or want something from me (could be anything-an actual physical object, time, they want to show me something, they are misbehaving and need to be stopped, etc) my fuse is short and I can't find it in myself to be patient and put myself on hold to give them attention. I am a serious work in progress to be a patient parent.

So the whole video topic is one realization and I am thinking about that and trying to figure out if I should just do it (make myself watch video after video) and maybe that will help me to get over that hurdle, or just wait and at some point a natural healing progression may kick in and I'll be okay with it. Not sure on that, but since my mood is so dramatically altered by watching, I think that it might be better for all three of us to put that on hold for a while.

Anyway, another realization I have had is the importance of writing stuff down so I can refer back to it at some point. I rarely go back and read my LEFT posts, and never just because I want to. I don't want to. I have looked back here and there if I am searching for something, but overall it is just too painful to read for me (and it often causes me to wonder, why the heck anyone else would want to read this stuff???). However, at some point I am hoping that I don't feel that pain, and what I see a progression in my grief, even in the little stuff. The little stuff is what matters.

For example, at some point in my life I will read this post and remember how hard it was for me to watch videos of Joe. It will be a memory. I know it will be.
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