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At the end of May this year, I lost my dad (he was technically my stepdad, but, he's been in my life since I was 3. the man was my dad).

And yes, sometimes it is. Sometimes, that is exactly what it is.

But sometimes, it's just not. Sometimes it feels like nothing. You feel like nothing. You feel almost normal, but just off enough that you know there's something wrong, something different, something has changed, but you can't quite put your finger on it. Even if you know what it is, you can't quite get your head around it, you can't find it, you can't grasp it.

It's so hard to put into words.

My stepdad...my dad. I always called him Thom. He was Thom, when I was talking to him, or referring to him in conversations with people who knew him. I introduced him to people as my dad. He was a such a cool fucking guy. He loved music, had a band in the 80s and 90s - small metal band out of Illinois. He had the biggest heart for dogs.

He struggled, there is no removing that from history - we went through some very bad times for several years, and they were awful. But he hit the bottom, he hit that rock so hard he knew he couldn't keep going. And instead of trying to keep going further down, he sat with himself, and he took stock of where he was, and who was waiting for him to come back, and he came back. He dragged himself up out of the hole he was in, the hole that had been created through years of bullshit from other people and deepened through years of shit from himself, until his fingers and his hands bled, and he found the sunlight again. He anchored himself to the people waiting in the sun for him, to make sure he stayed there, too. We didn't let him go.

He went from a self-classified loser, to someone we were proud of, to someone he felt he could be proud of. He worked his fucking ass off to get there. He got a job that took care of him, that took care of us, that made sure we never again had to worry about falling into that hole again, and he found that the things he enjoyed - music, and movies, and grilling, and dogs, and his family - he loved them more when his head wasn't clouded with bullshit.

He helped me get ready when I got my first job. He assured me I could quit when it turned out to be a shitty place to be for my mental health. He cheered for every milestone I hit, even when they were small. He and my mother were the only two people that attended every single one of my graduations - high school, community college, university (others attended, but only one, or another, not all). He was always up for going to the movies if I asked, and he loved Saturday movie nights with us in later years, of which I carry tremendous guilt now for the Saturdays we cancelled because I didn't want to. He loved to grill, he would get everything up and running on a Sunday so we could prepare for dinners for the whole week.

I started cooking and baking a lot, in the last eight years or so. And he was so fucking supportive, even when I wasn't sure if it looked good, or tasted good. I learned to make things he enjoyed at restaurants to see if I could, and he would always proclaim them his new favorite thing.

Sometimes he was rough around the edges, lingering stubborness after all these years. It was frustrating, but we always got past it, got through it, we talked it out and worked it out. He wanted to learn things. He wanted to know things. If he didn't understand, he would ask me if I could explain it before he tried to google it, because sometimes even my disjointed explanations made more sense than what the internet would say.

Monday will be a month that my dad has been gone. It was a very short battle, that he fought as much as he could before we knew what it was, and by the time we did, it was just. That was it. And...I struggle to feel much. I do feel the grief, the sadness, the...whatever it is that slips in, but only for a few minutes at a time, and then it's gone, and I'm almost normal, just untethered, I suppose. And it's a weird feeling, and it brings about more guilt, because why don't I feel more. I'm supposed to feel more. The man was here for 36 years in my life, who raised me since I was 3 years old, we went through Hell with him and made it out on the other side and he was supposed to be here so much longer. Next Wednesday, a week from today, would have been his 60th birthday. And instead, he's in an urn on our bookcase. And my mother and I are...here. Taking it day by day. Trying to figure this part out, because there is nothing that prepares you for this part. Dealing with grief is normal. But what that grief entails isn't. The sadness and the sorrow will come, I'm sure it will. But I just have no idea what's going to be the thing to set it off, and until then I'm just hovering in this pocket of...nothing.