So How Am I?

Yo:

I've been asked a lot, of late, "So, how ARE you?"

I appreciate the interest. I appreciate the inquiry. But, my friends, you'll have to excuse me if I don't respond with an answer that is anything within the realm of "typical."

For you, of all people, as my friends, must understand that -- despite my having appeared, of late, to have assumed a lifestyle that might be construed as "typical" -- I remain a soul that is anything less than (more than?) typical.

So how AM I?

I am fine. I am functioning. I am addressing all of the needs (and confronting all of the demons) that my New English, Lace-Curtian Irish upbringing might have led us all to expect me to eventually have had to deal with.

There. There was no other way to end that sentence than with a preposition. I suppose that says it all. How am I? "Well, I'm fine, thank you very much -- but, of late, I've been ending my sentences with prepositions. Do you suppose that means anything?"

Do you suppose? Do you suppose anything? Well, then, good for you. Because I, of late, have not been able to suppose anything. Anything at all. For, you see, being confronted with grief the likes of which relates to the loss of a parent -- I dare say -- renders one incapable of being able to suppose anything whatsoever. Oh, one might suppose this and that, but eventually (and quite suddenly), one must admit that one's parent is gone.

Gone.

Forever.

And because one's parent is gone, then the rest of how one related to the world (most often based within how one related to one's parent) is gone.

Regardless of what kind of relationship there was, and regardless of which expectations might have been raised and then realized, or (more often than not), not realized -- the eventual and sudden realization that the relationship between one and one's parent has ended emerges.

So, in case you're still wondering, that's "how I AM."

I'm still reeling in the shock that is having lost the 2nd of both my parents, within 2 years. I'm deep within the depths of discovering what life with real estate, property taxes, attorneys and financial planners is like.

I know that ultimately it doesn't sound like much. But when you factor in the fact that I never intended for this kind of thing to happen (e.g.: I perceived "their" mistrust of me as a reason to cut me out of the will), then it takes on a whole different meaning.

I'm a bourgeois kid from the suburbs of Massachusetts who was raised to be one thing, then rebelled against it (all the while still acting like it) -- who then finally wound up doing exactly what he was raised to do. I was raised to market myself. And that, my friends, of all things, is one thing that you can always count on me to do.

So how am I?

I'm fine.

I'm coping as best I can, and I'm continuing to market myself.

What else is new?