Yesterday was colossally bad. I think I can accept now that May 31 is simply cursed for me, which hopefully in the future just means I’ll protect myself better.

I met with my dad to work on the storage unit. Pulling up to it, he asked me if I could move the date up for the truck to pick up my belongings, and tells me he’s going to be at the Lake the week we’re moving and therefore it will be difficult to get into the storage unit. I know it’s my hard expectations of the day that made that comment exceptionally cruel, but I just kept thinking here’s a man who for 15 years has always left the Lake mid-week to come home for various stupid condo board meetings and church committee meetings, and on the day his daughter is moving across country, he just wants to stay at the Lake all week? And I imagined myself letting myself in with a key I don’t even possess yet, navigating that huge space to collect all these damn boxes. It was a lot to bear. Without knowing how to stop, I just started crying on the spot, thinking about the stupid day and having another ruined anniversary when I went in thinking. “There’s nothing that can happen today that will feel any worse than some of the others. Anything goes.”. Ha!

So I asked to be taken back to the train. And on the way asked for my own key. We went to Home Depot and across the parking lot was a Friday’s and Dad asked if I wanted to go to lunch. I accepted, trying to give it all another chance (several chances) before blowing out of there never wanting to see him again.

I asked at lunch if we could nurture his and my relationship alongside my nurturing the relationship I have with him and his wife, and he implied I was being divisive, and refused my request, and it all crumpled me again.

Today is his birthday, and once again we’re in this terrible pattern where we fight about how much he believes I’m not over my mother’s death (and why can’t i be) and then I struggle with how to be nice to him on his birthday.

I don’t know what to do at all anymore. I just feel so lost.