In case it's not glaringly obvious in the things that I write here, I have an extraordinary capacity for guilt and I feel guilty for things that are completely out of my control. This is something that I'm currently trying to fix.

Although my parents do not know where my blog is, they do know it exists. I've made them promise me that they will not go try to find it, and in return I agreed to send them entries that I knew wouldn't offend them. There are a lot of things in my blog that would offend my parents on many levels, but I also wanted them the opportunity to know what I was thinking and doing. I did this mostly because I was feeling guilty about not writing emails several times a week to my parents anymore after I started this blog. They used to be the recipient of they types of things you might find here.

So, rather than calling my parents after I got the news about my father's suicide, I sent them a copy of the blog the entry and prefaced it with a note that I didn't really feel like talking about it. I really didn't. I had a lot of things to process before I felt capable of talking about it.

I felt guilt over sharing my sadness about my father's death, then subsequent sadness over the way he died. Even though my dad knows that in my heart he is and will always be my dad (vs- my father), it still felt a little disrespectful to mourn this. My dad has always been there for me since I was five; the year he married my mom. My dad has always made me feel that I was 100% his daughter, for better or worse. He's my dad. Simple as that.

My dad sent me a simple, yet very meaningful, note to me yesterday acknowledging my sadness and what a shock this must have been for me. He didn't try to turn it around to say that I shouldn't feel these things because this man never did anything for me, nor did he question my feelings. He acknowledged my feelings and supported me. That's the kind of dad he is, and why I feel blessed to be his daughter.

I want to thank the people who've left supportive comments in my blog after that entry. I have sorted through my feelings and have a fairly firm grasp on what I was feeling and why. I'll write more about that later on this week.

I'm in a much better place now.