Hamilton, my husband, and anxiety
So I am a huge Hamilton fan. I think most of America is a huge Hamilton fan, I only know three people personally who are not Hamilton fans; my dad who says they sing so fast you can't understand anything, he's old I guess. One of my besties who is pretty oblivious to the whole Broadway musical thing and said I shouldn't name my chapters after Hamilton lines because nobody would get it, she also doesn't like hiking, shes an anomaly. The last one is Dan; Dan was not a Hamilton fan, rather I don't think Hamilton had come out before Dan died, if it had it was so new that we hadn't heard of it yet. Dan never got to experience the greatness that is Hamilton. That's what you get for dying Dan.
I know though that Dan would have loved Hamilton, had he been exposed to it. Dan and Hamilton have a lot in common; well Dan wasn't one of the founding fathers of the United States but they did both die prematurely and they both wrote "like you need it to survive"
Every time I listen to Hamilton all the lyrics about writing make me go "thats so Dan"
"why do you write like your running out of time"
"write day and night like your running out of time"
"write like you need it to survive"
"write every second your alive"
I don't know why he wrote so much, maybe he was too smart for his own good and had to write it all down, or maybe he just liked driving his wife crazy with all the papers he would leave scattered all over the house. In the end it turned out to be a good thing because I have all his thoughts written down on paper for me to read over and over and over again, which I've done after trying to organize them in some semblance of order because really the stacks and stacks of papers everywhere drove me nuts. I bet it drove Eliza nuts too.
One of Dan's favorite writing forms was poetry. pages and pages and pages of poems he wrote. Like all his writing they are really good. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret, I've been working on a new project, typing up all Dan's poems. Hmmmm I wonder what I will do with them after that. I've been working on it for awhile and I thought I was almost done when my mother in law says "O I have some poems of Dan's would you like them" yes of course, I told her, I will add them to my collection. I was thinking she had somewhere between 5-10 poems that he had written her and she had kept. I saw her on Saturday. she had a giant stack of papers "there not all poems, some of them are stories he never finished."
All those papers, all that writing of Dan's I had never read, I didn't even know existed. I briefly glanced at them, but was very busy Saturday and didn't get a good look at them.
Sunday I went to the beach for an over night trip with my besties. So excited to go, I needed some serious bestie time. Something was wrong, something was off. I didn't feel right. I felt like I needed to go home. I kept calling Baby Girl to check on her. "you ok, having fun with your friend" "ya mom I'm fine." I kept calling Justin "you ok? everything alright?" "Ya Jen I'm fine, are you ok?" "I don't know, somethings not right, I'm really anxious and I don't know why." he assured me everything was fine. I told my besties something was wrong, maybe I should turn around and go home. "whats wrong?" they asked "nothing, nothing is wrong but something doesn't feel right, something is making me very anxious, something isn't right" I stayed at the beach with my besties but honestly I didn't have the nice relaxing time I was supposed to. The anxiety monster had me by the throat and I didn't know why, which really just made it worse.
Monday morning I felt better but was still worried about something. The something I couldn't figure out. When I got home that afternoon I almost immediately figured out what all my anxiety was about, sitting on the table was the stack of Dan's papers that I hadn't gotten the chance to look at yet. That's what I was anxious about, thats what I wanted. As much as I love my besties, what I would have preferred to do this weekend is lock myself in my room and read over every scrap of paper in that pile. To touch the pages that he had touched, to follow his handwriting with my finger.
Dan has been dead for four years and four months. Life has been wrong since that moment, life hasn't made sense. I have been continually trying to make sense of it. Somewhere in my crazy widow brain I am searching for something, something that will make this make sense, something is missing and if I can just find it, if I can just find that one thing, maybe it will explain why this happened.
I feel that way with Dan's writings, like I'm missing something, that somewhere he wrote down all the answers and all I have to do is find the right piece of paper. I have gone through all Dan's papers that I had and haven't found the answer. Now I have a whole new stack of his papers that I've never seen, maybe the answer is in there. I need to read through all the papers, I need to find out why, I just need to keep looking. I just need to find that one missing thing that will explain everything.
Here's the thing though, the answer isn't in those papers, my logical brain knows that. There is no answer, there's no explanation as to why Dan died. I'm not gonna find it, ever. However it's also not going to stop me from looking. I will spend today and maybe tomorrow reading those papers, looking for the answer that is not there but trying to find it anyway.
If you would like to read my book about our grief here is the link
Buy my book here
I know though that Dan would have loved Hamilton, had he been exposed to it. Dan and Hamilton have a lot in common; well Dan wasn't one of the founding fathers of the United States but they did both die prematurely and they both wrote "like you need it to survive"
Every time I listen to Hamilton all the lyrics about writing make me go "thats so Dan"
"why do you write like your running out of time"
"write day and night like your running out of time"
"write like you need it to survive"
"write every second your alive"
I don't know why he wrote so much, maybe he was too smart for his own good and had to write it all down, or maybe he just liked driving his wife crazy with all the papers he would leave scattered all over the house. In the end it turned out to be a good thing because I have all his thoughts written down on paper for me to read over and over and over again, which I've done after trying to organize them in some semblance of order because really the stacks and stacks of papers everywhere drove me nuts. I bet it drove Eliza nuts too.
One of Dan's favorite writing forms was poetry. pages and pages and pages of poems he wrote. Like all his writing they are really good. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret, I've been working on a new project, typing up all Dan's poems. Hmmmm I wonder what I will do with them after that. I've been working on it for awhile and I thought I was almost done when my mother in law says "O I have some poems of Dan's would you like them" yes of course, I told her, I will add them to my collection. I was thinking she had somewhere between 5-10 poems that he had written her and she had kept. I saw her on Saturday. she had a giant stack of papers "there not all poems, some of them are stories he never finished."
All those papers, all that writing of Dan's I had never read, I didn't even know existed. I briefly glanced at them, but was very busy Saturday and didn't get a good look at them.
Sunday I went to the beach for an over night trip with my besties. So excited to go, I needed some serious bestie time. Something was wrong, something was off. I didn't feel right. I felt like I needed to go home. I kept calling Baby Girl to check on her. "you ok, having fun with your friend" "ya mom I'm fine." I kept calling Justin "you ok? everything alright?" "Ya Jen I'm fine, are you ok?" "I don't know, somethings not right, I'm really anxious and I don't know why." he assured me everything was fine. I told my besties something was wrong, maybe I should turn around and go home. "whats wrong?" they asked "nothing, nothing is wrong but something doesn't feel right, something is making me very anxious, something isn't right" I stayed at the beach with my besties but honestly I didn't have the nice relaxing time I was supposed to. The anxiety monster had me by the throat and I didn't know why, which really just made it worse.
Monday morning I felt better but was still worried about something. The something I couldn't figure out. When I got home that afternoon I almost immediately figured out what all my anxiety was about, sitting on the table was the stack of Dan's papers that I hadn't gotten the chance to look at yet. That's what I was anxious about, thats what I wanted. As much as I love my besties, what I would have preferred to do this weekend is lock myself in my room and read over every scrap of paper in that pile. To touch the pages that he had touched, to follow his handwriting with my finger.
Dan has been dead for four years and four months. Life has been wrong since that moment, life hasn't made sense. I have been continually trying to make sense of it. Somewhere in my crazy widow brain I am searching for something, something that will make this make sense, something is missing and if I can just find it, if I can just find that one thing, maybe it will explain why this happened.
I feel that way with Dan's writings, like I'm missing something, that somewhere he wrote down all the answers and all I have to do is find the right piece of paper. I have gone through all Dan's papers that I had and haven't found the answer. Now I have a whole new stack of his papers that I've never seen, maybe the answer is in there. I need to read through all the papers, I need to find out why, I just need to keep looking. I just need to find that one missing thing that will explain everything.
Here's the thing though, the answer isn't in those papers, my logical brain knows that. There is no answer, there's no explanation as to why Dan died. I'm not gonna find it, ever. However it's also not going to stop me from looking. I will spend today and maybe tomorrow reading those papers, looking for the answer that is not there but trying to find it anyway.
If you would like to read my book about our grief here is the link
Buy my book here
Comments
Post a Comment