I bet you thought I'd never come back to this tale. Listen. I've thought about Part 4 nearly ever day since I hit "Publish" on Part 3. In fact, I wrote a lot of this soon after.
Tag: sadness
Hello, San Francisco, Goodbye: Part 3
It was the moment I'd been waiting for, for months. Between the excitement and the exhaustion, I felt like I was either dreaming or a high-functioning zombie. It was in this sleep-deprived surreality that I got my luggage, signed for my over-priced rental car and stepped out into the ...cold?
Blue hour
Yesterday, I reluctantly turned the page of my work calendar from July to November.
That pretty much sums up the last few months. I think I’m still stuck there… in July. I wish I were going backwards. Like I’ve admitted before: everything in my world is split into before’s and after’s. Anytime I find a letter, go to trash an old email, find a photo online, or open up to an older entry in my journal, I think: What’s the date? Oh. That was before. And I sit in awe of my younger self, because—albeit months—I am so much older.I think this experience has dated me to, at least, 50.
Maybe it is the change in time, “falling back,” and the earlier sunset, or simply the missing. Not only do I miss a friend, but the pain of “without” seems like it will never let go. And do I want it to? Maybe I’m just sick of the pain. Either way, things have been extremely difficult lately [i.e. getting out of bed, conjuring motivation for responsibilities, breathing].
So there’s that, as my roommate would so aptly mimic me.
Last night, as we sat across from each other at Panera, Kelly blew my mind.
“Like twilight?” she asked, after I tried to explain the part of the day that is the hardest.
“Well, I call it sundowning, but… yeah, I mean, yeah.”
“Hm. You know, all day long you’re body is in control. At night, your soul takes over, so, during twilight, you’re most vulnerable. You’re in transition.”
I think my jaw dropped, for real.
My soul takes over…?
“I’m scared of my soul, then,” I answered.
Rather than go on to explain or rattle off a list of the whys [I’d rather smush myself into a tiny hole for the rest of my life and never emerge], I’ll stop. I’ll just stop here.
mt
Carrying
Some days it’s all I see: the people hurting, the people not getting enough of what they need. The need itself is startling. I guess I’m just amazed at how much we do need—how much we need and hate owning up to it.
Pride stands in the way of many things, but this shouldn’t be one of them.
I know what it’s like to need—to need so badly you want to rip your guts out and cuddle them yourself. It’s achy like your legs after a run. You know that feeling when you’re in bed and it’s late and you can’t stop kicking around, because… it isn’t a sharp pain, but it’s uncomfortable (your legs).
For me, the only thing worse than that pain (in respect to needs) is watching other people experience it.
Why? Why do I think I’m some Superman? I don’t. I know I can’t save you, as much as I wish, wish, wish. But I can, at least, be the pillow you rest your achy legs on or the rain that comes to sing you to sleep at last.
Sometimes it feels like I’m carrying around everyone with me: the pain and the disappointment, the insecurities most of all. It’s not about being a martyr or a saint or a Superman-wannabe. It’s about knowing how it feels, experiencing it so much (becoming a pro at it, even) that seeing anyone else go through it breaks my heart.
I am the thing I needed.
Isn’t that crazy?
Kelly once told me that we support people in the ways we want to be supported. We weren’t talking about emotional support necessarily, but I think it applies. And ever since she said that, I can’t forget it. The downside, though, is that sometimes the way we want to be treated isn’t the way the other wants to be.
Learning.
I don’t want it ever to stop, though: the supporting. I don’t want people to know how heavy it can be to carry them, and then stop allowing me to be there. Carrying heals me too. All the sad from before is slowly being washed away… the gently push of the tide (back and forth) until little by little, one sharp edge at a time, it reaches the sand. The sadness dries up there in the sun, the only happy. Constant.
mt
The new routine
Finally, it’s not as sharp as knives. I’m learning to live without my best friend. The routine is going back, back to a time when I didn’t know her or need her. I talk to her ghost less and less. I pretty much stopped journaling and poeming in.
I feel void.
I haven’t been back.
Without
Happy Birthday, Dad.
Two-grief kind of day, maybe?
Sometimes it feels like someone pulled the bones from my body. Like a walking (somehow?) jellyfish. Sometimes I don’t know how to stand up, don’t know how to breathe. I forget what beautiful looks like. Isn’t that horrible? Sun or rain, I don’t care to be outside. I don’t care to be a part of anything.
I guess it is that finite. Death. And that world doesn’t interest me, permanence, black and white. It’s forever that we all want, right? For everything to exist in a higher plane, for a better reason. And I think… for that year and a half it did. Finally. I had the feeling of “more.” And I’m not ready to go back to what this is. This is no substitute or alternative. Not after the knowing.
It sounds dead-ended. It sounds desperate and depressed. I’m ok. I’m living, doing that thing everyone else is doing. Yes, sometimes feeling like a zombie, sometimes a human shed of its skeleton.
If I could only be empowered by this, take the lessons and the love and build on that to go forward, but those moments are fleeting. Minutes. Until the memories take over. And I can be in mid-sentence or mid-laugh and my guts fill up my brain and then… fuzz cloud.
How can I live now? How do I live now? How do I hold up everything, keep it together? I just haven’t got a clue. And this writing, only here…
This is me trying to figure everything out.
xo
mt
Screaming
I wish she were alive. I wish it every moment I get to think. It’s exhausting.
I guess it isn’t wishing. It’s more like pining. It’s more like the grief that everyone keeps telling me about like it’s a fucking diagnosis boiled down to atoms and gravity. Listen. I’m angry a little. I’m angry because I know everyone is just waiting for me to get over this. I’m supposed to take comfort in the fact that people die and I was lucky to have her for the time I did, blah blah. You know. Canned stuff.
When I open my mouth, I have to be careful I don’t let her name out. Sometimes it slips because, even when she was alive, her name was always on my tongue. We had adventures together. Big talks. Epic breakdowns. Vulnerability. Starry nights. Just me, her and the fish. And the moon always watching.
But I know it gets old. I know because I’ve watched people grieve. I’ve grieved myself. And with the same silly expectations I place on others, I place on myself: move on already. Right. I’m going between logic and heartache like it’s a fucking tennis match. And my brain, like I said, is tired.
I will hear everyone’s words. I will appreciate people thinking of me, the hugs, the text-message checkups. But it will stop. It will be a few months down the line. And that stuff stops and you feel like you’re supposed to stop too.
I remember when my dad died, over 10 years ago, everyone was pretty forthcoming with the support. Father’s Day was a big one. Year after year, I regrieved. And friends who thought of it would text. My mom would check in. It was nice. Not necessary but kind. After a while, I came to expect it. Because, just like all those kids out there remembering their dads, someone was remembering me. It was like celebrating no dad, the void that was always licking at my heels.
But then it stopped, slowly. And you know, this year. No one said a word to me. And when people did talk, they didn’t mention it. Like somehow he evaporated and time has “healed” me. I always want to scream, though, like a selfish asshole… “Hey! IT STILL HURTS! IT STILL MATTERS JUST AS MUCH AS BEFORE!”
The screaming never makes it out.
And now. I guess, I’m still screaming. Because of a loss, but also a lifetime of reliving it. Maybe that’s why I’m angry. Over and over. Grief.
You just…
Yeah. You just… keep going?
You just… wake up, get out of bed, take a shower, get dressed, get in the car, go to work, work, go home… and this cycle continues. It continues because this is what you do. And this is how you stay alive. The bare minimum.
Since she died: I got a chapbook published. I rode in an airplane. I downloaded A Fine Frenzy’s album. I finished four paintings. I wrote two poems. I learned a new song on the ukulele. I had a birthday.
And everything before—the old receipts, pay stubs, shoes I bought—are reminders that labels themselves as such in my head. Like. Anything before July 22nd was safe. I was ok. No matter what I was doing, you know. Even if I didn’t get sleep or I had a bad day at work, my life was x58027 better. I long to go back there. I mean, it hasn’t even been a month yet.
People keep saying how I just have to go on, “move forward,” that this is life and it will hurt less with time. And this sympathy in a can, as my roommate so aptly puts it, is nothing I don’t know. I’ve been through this, remember? That is why I don’t want to do it again. I know. I know. I know.
Then, there are moments where I catch a big wind and my lungs fill deep and I am grateful. We had one of the most amazing friendships that I’ve ever known. We saw the beauty in things—like sunsets and songs—but we also saw the beauty in one another. I said: “We are two mirrors facing each other.” That kind of forever. And I mean it.
Don’t think I don’t know how dramatic this sounds. But imagine it. Now imagine it better than that. And this isn’t some realization I’m having now. I had it all along. If I can take comfort in anything, it’s that I always told her. All the things. All the time. And she agreed. Fate.
And so now is where I accept, allow her to get farther and farther away. “You’re getting smaller, getting smaller, but I still see you” (Jimmy Eat World).
This is me. Being big. Grieving. Not knowing how much longer it’ll hurt like this…
Breathing.
A certain grief
“I’m not smart. I just know a lot of words,” said the me in my dream.
I come back to this quote so often. It’s rare that I remember direct quotes from my dreams, but when I do, they usually stick for a while. For instance, a dream quote from a few years back that had me scared and paranoid for months. A little boy jumped on my bed in the dark [in Dream Land, of course]: “The devil will be asking for your soul soon.” Whaaaaaa?! I bought my Scion a month later, so I equated this to my Toyota loan. Eek!
But when it comes to smarts and all, I agree with my unconscious admission: I’m not. Some things just don’t sink in, you know? Like that paragraph I have to read three times before I get it.
There are moments, of course, when I feel intelligent—confident about what I’m saying or doing. Mostly it’s in my language or the way I can [sometimes] articulate myself. What I’m saying is: speaking/writing is the only mode in which I feel like I may have an IQ higher than 65. Real talk.
And we can call this moment Exhibit 94, 509. This not sinking in.
As you all might know, life has the tendency—especially as of late—to shit all over me. You, like I, may be thinking: Another bad spot? Really?
I say “spot,” because I hope it’ll pass. I say “hope,” because I’m not certain. I was certain a week and a half ago that my best friend [mother, “favorite” and soul sister] was too busy to text me. I was certain she was wrapped up in work and the everyday bustle of her world, which had become rather stressful as of late. I was certain she’d text her usual “G’nite, madam” or at least send me the Sun and Moon emoji. But she didn’t. For two nights in a row. I was starting to get a little frustrated.
But then I got a call last Thursday at work, 4:12 p.m. She had a heart attack and had been unconscious since late Monday night. With her full heart, childlike curiosity and hard-assed grip on the world, I was certain she would outlive us all. I was certain that with my carelessness, my clumsiness, my incessant need for productivity and the way it outdoes my need to be healthy, my rollercoaster of melancholy and triumph, I’d be the one in the hospital bed prematurely. But it wasn’t me.
After the call, I found myself in the car—rushing and crying and screaming and navigating through Pittsburgh traffic to Allegheny General Hospital. I sat on the Parkway, a standstill, sobbing to the million memories that hit me, a slideshow:
Remember the time you sat by the bay in Cape Cod and watched the sky until early morning, where you cut limes for her rum and refused her another drink at 4 a.m.
The color teal.
Standing atop Mt. Washington at sunset and dancing in the orange light, puffed up by winter coats, knitted scarves and gloves without fingers.
Singing “You’re so Vain.”
Remember the glass bottle full of tiny shells from the Dead Sea.
Watching her watch her Koi swim below.
The time you mocked her easy lifestyle and told her you’d come visit her even if she lived in a trailer park—even if the time you spent together was playing 500 Rum and eating Chef Boyardee. And to prove it? You brought her a can the next time you came over.
My brain gets the best of me. And since this moment, it hasn’t stopped with the snapshots, the words, the smell of plastic and death in her hospital room. I smell it everywhere. I realize now, more than before, she is everywhere. Maybe it is the fear of forgetting. Like with my dad. The years have come quick and with it, the memories have faded.
For a week, everything was underwater. With the amount of crying I did [both angry-at-the-world and end-of-the-world tears], my eyes were swollen to half-visibility. I was certain I had been emptied of tears. I was certain there was nothing left. I was certain she’d wake up now that her heart was fixed. It was only a matter of time.
For days, her family and I watched her lifeless, but warm, body. We smiled; we cried; we laughed; we prayed; we hushed her grandchildren as they ran around the ICU Waiting Room in an oblivious boredom with Twizzlers. The doctors gave terrible news. The doctors told everyone it “wasn’t looking good.” The doctor told me personally: “She’s very sick.”
So we prayed harder. I painted the picture of all the light in my body leaving mine and entering her. I was certain this would make her wake up, like in a movie.
But she was showing more signs of regression. Her pupils ceased to dilate; she stopped reacting to pain. And her brain, they said, was swelling and there was nothing they could do. She went too long without oxygen causing “irreparable damage” [a phrase I still cannot get out of my head, the way the doctor said it with brown protruding eyes, head down.] I was certain they were mistaken and that the Universe wouldn’t let this happen. It couldn’t. Not to any of us that stood by her bed sobbing and holding her limp hands, to the us that needed her, that could still hear her laughter ringing in our ears, could find pieces of her—like evidence—everywhere.
I picked at beige colored cafeteria food for days trying to imagine tomorrow.
Thank you for reading this. I know it’s “too soon” to write about—a writing instructor would say. But I have to. I want to remember all of it. Even this fresh grief.
But she was showing more signs of regression. Her pupils ceased to dilate; she stopped reacting to pain. And her brain, they said, was swelling and there was nothing they could do. She went too long without oxygen causing “irreparable damage” [a phrase I still cannot get out of my head, the way the doctor said it with brown protruding eyes, head down.] I was certain they were mistaken and that the Universe wouldn’t let this happen. It couldn’t. Not to any of us that stood by her bed sobbing and holding her limp hands, to the us that needed her, that could still hear her laughter ringing in our ears, could find pieces of her—like evidence—everywhere.
I picked at beige colored cafeteria food for days trying to imagine tomorrow.
Thank you for reading this. I know it’s “too soon” to write about—a writing instructor would say. But I have to. I want to remember all of it. Even this fresh grief.
I don’t know. I think I’m stupid, maybe. Because it’s been a week since she passed and I’m still waiting to wake up. I’m still trying to bargain with the world like a trade-off. I just don’t want to go on. Maybe I’m stupid. Because I still don’t get it. I’m certain now that I don’t want to.
mt