I'm already sort of out to my dad, but I haven't properly talked to him about any of the stuff that happened to me recently. Pretty much all he knows is that I had a crush on my roommate (who he knows was female) and that things ended badly. I feel like I should tell him more, and, under other circumstances, I would do so in a heartbeat. The problem is that he's recovering from cancer. He had his second-to-last chemotherapy treatment last week, but today he was still feeling sick enough to not go to work. I'm afraid of sounding like a whiny, insensitive idiot -- how bad is a crush, even one resulting in a broken heart, compared to cancer? On the other hand, I do feel like I should talk to him about it, for a few reasons. My mental health is...not great. I thought for a couple days that I was getting better and that maybe I was fine after all, but today was a bad day. If nothing else, there's a good chance he'll see me break down into tears at least once. The list of triggers grows ever longer (Star Trek, Rachel Maddow, the "It Gets Better" campaign, Catholicism, Indiana, Star Wars, comic books, Japanese, Chinese, Lady Gaga, Ke$ha, my cat, funny cat videos, cats in general, anyone vaguely feminine with short hair or brown hair or glasses, ...even EC gets to be too much sometimes). If it's only one or two things I can hold it down, but it boils up again after only a couple days. I think each time the bad stretch are getting shorter. But I'm not sure. They're also getting more worrisome. I'm only going to be with him for another couple weeks. If I'm going to to tell him, it has to be in person. Would it be a bad idea to talk to him about this now? If not, how should I approach him about it? Also, any tips for dealing with the triggers and beating the blues? I know that time is the only thing that will cure it, but life must go on until then.
No, I don't think it's a bad idea, but you might want to begin with asking how his life is first and stuff like that. I think that coming out to him would make him feel more relevant and important which is a pair of things some cancer patients definitely don't feel like sometimes. (That's in the experience of some that I have known anyway.) On triggers, I am curious why Star Wars appears in that list. Like you say, time can help, but so can exercise and meditation...
Thanks. Actually, one of the main reasons why I want to talk to him about it is precisely because I want him to feel relevant to my life. He and my mom divorced when I was less than a year old, so, even though I've seen him fairly regularly, he hasn't been a huge part of my life. Star Wars is on the list because it is vaguely almost similar to Star Trek, which my roommate was a huge fan of. Anything that relates back to my roommate, my dad, my dead cat, my (dead) chemistry professor, and now my lower-than-expected GPA acts as a trigger to a greater or lesser extent, hence the frequent crying.
