Honestly

I don't know how to be fine when I'm not.  I don't know how to be ok.  I try.  I try so hard to act like everything's ok, when the honest truth is that it isn't.  I'm not ok.  I'm not fine.  I'm really, really not.  I miss my dad so much all the time.  I just want to hear his voice one more time.  I want to apologize for the fact that we argued the last time we talked.  I want him to know I still loved him even though I was mad at him.  Everyone keeps telling me that it's not a big deal that we argued and that I was mad at him, but to me, it is.  People keep saying that if things hadn't happened, the argument would have been completely forgotten about - and they're probably right, but that's not the way it happened.  And I would have talked to him on my birthday, but instead I spent my birthday in the car on the way back home to New York, the day after the funeral and the burial.  I should have seen him at Christmastime, not in a coffin.  I should have been able to call him on his birthday.  It's not fair.  It's not.  I try.  I try so hard to be ok and to be strong, but I'm so tired of pretending.  I'm not strong.  All I want to do all the time is cry.  All I want to do is break down and cry - how is that strong?  That's not strong.  That's weak.  I'm weak and I'm pathetic and I hate this so much.  I just want to be home.  I want things to go back to normal, but what even is normal anymore?  And then there's the fact that I'm the worst older sister in the entire world because if I'm feeling like this, then I can't imagine how Cody and Hailey must feel.  I feel like I don't have as much right as they do to be sad and to feel like this because they lived with him.  I saw him once, maybe twice, a year and talked to him on the phone for like 10 minutes a couple times a month.  And so I know they must be hurting as much as I am, maybe even more, and yet I can't bring myself to call them because I know I'll cry, and I don't want them to see me weak.  I want to be strong for them, and if I cry in front of them, won't that ruin my attempt at being strong?  And I feel guilty for being excited about going to Australia because how is it fair to be excited about anything when my dad can't be excited about anything ever again?  And then the people telling me that he's in heaven now and that he's looking down at all of us - what if I don't believe in heaven?  I don't know what I believe in.  I'm so jealous of people who believe without questioning it.  I'm jealous of people who just have faith.  Because I don't.  It's so hard to believe in something that there's no actual proof of.  I want to believe he's in a place like heaven, but how can I believe that if I'm not even sure it exists?  I hate this.  I hate it.  And I don't know how to ask my friends for help.  I know my friends are there for me, they keep telling me they are.  But I don't know how to take them up on their offers of "I'm here if you need anything."  I need to talk.  I need someone to listen.  And I don't know how to ask for that.

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