There are so many things I want to write about. All these things that have been swirling around inside me for the past few weeks with no where to go. I realize I think all the time...not that I didn't before, but there is never that moment in time where things get silent. It's always some kind of chatter.
In the midst of all that noise, I've been thinking about guilt. The kind of guilt that keeps you stuck and the kind of guilt that keeps you going. I've been thinking about how guilt is the gate keeper. There's the stage of Grief that is bargaining, the what ifs, if only I hads, why didn't I justs. I've kept those pretty quiet. It'd be easy to say "why didn't I make him stay" or "why didn't I make him promise to wear his seat belt." All that bargaining just rips us wide open and lays us bare. And it makes us feel like we have control...but here's the thing: we don't.
Surprised? well, I'd imagine you're either Free Will or by God's grace, and neither philosophy has room for a third party and our concerns about whats ifs and if onlys. Did I mention I'm pretty tough love? Well, I am. More for myself, but hey, if it helps someone else, by all means. The idea that we have control is the basis for the kind of guilt that keeps us stuck, the kind where we believe we could have done something to stop our loved ones from dying. But in my reality, K could have gotten in that car any night and had that accident any night. The conditions were clear, and without knowing why it happened (only issues with the car having been ruled out), the factors could have combined themselves in that way any other day. Or never. Or it could have been some other event that claimed his life.
I mean, there's some tiny fraction of a percent that makes anything happen the way it does. You never think about how many times a day you could have died. It's probably really good we have no idea how close we all really are. I don't have any stats on this, but I'm just thinking about it. Random combinations of random factors that have random outcomes. Pushed a fraction one way, life. Pushed a fraction the other, death. So I don't dwell. In the beginning, I bargained like hell. As the last person to see or speak to K, to consider he drove my car from my house, late at night. I certainly felt a responsibility...I still do. But I don't feel at fault. I think we all just need to give up the notion that we control anything. We don't. Even with free will. You make decisions, sure, but you can't effect an outcome past the initial decision that started you down that path. I'm not a philosopher, so let me leave that all alone for now. But just think on it sometime, on a night when you're plagued with chatter.
Then there's the other type of guilt. It lights a fire under us. It's the kind where I ask what K would want me to do. Or what he would have done if it had been me instead of him (which makes my mom so distraught, but it's a fair question to pose). It's the type of guilt that makes me feel like I could be disappointing him somehow. It's the kind that makes me want to live life to the fullest, because he doesn't get to. Like if I don't, I'm dishonoring his memory. When K applied for law school, he wrote a lot about legacy. Neither of us could have ever imagined his legacy would be defined by what he did in 28 short years. So in a way, I feel a responsibility to help him create the legacy he didn't get to leave. I'm working on setting up a scholarship in his name at our alma mater, and his little brother, who is my little brother now, is someone I will always watch out for and take care of.
So if you're mired in guilt, my request to you is not to let it be the handicapping kind, but the kind that inspires you and pushes you on to really LIVE for the person you're grieving for. And don't wait to think about your legacy. You don't know if you have 28 or 78 years to create it, so don't wait. We all have such a short time here, no matter how many actual years we live, so don't wait to leave your mark, if you want to leave one at all. If there's something you want to do, do it. I know I will be.
Love.
Friday, February 28, 2014
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
After...and How I Came to Find Myself There
Right now, I am homeless. Not in the sense of lacking a roof, or a bed (though I am sleeping on an air mattress), but in that way of feeling uprooted. Displaced. Transient. And more significantly, in the way that the heart is absent (home is where...and all that). People who know me know what I'm going through. People who don't, well my truth goes like this:
I am 30 years old. I live in one of the most vibrant, interesting, nonstop cities on the planet. I consider myself successful, and go out of my way to be kind and optimistic. My life as it is now, stands divided into thirds, disproportionately. The first 21 years and some odd days of my life. The years of 21 - 30 and some odd days. And the past month, 1 week, and counting. When I was 21, I met K, the love of my life, in college. We went through everything and more, and chose each other through it all. In the early hours of January 18, 2014, he was killed in a single car accident that had no reason to happen, no explanation for why, and has blown my life wide open. And so that brings us to the present day. Or as I've taken to calling it in my mind, After.
To see me, you might not know anything is wrong. After all, I can still smile. I can still laugh. I wake up every day, I go to a wonderful job, I have the best friends and family anyone could ask for in life, let alone in the times of tragedy. If you meet me, I will seem as normal as anyone else, I would think. Here's another truth: I'm walking empty. I am not brave or gracious (words that have been used to describe the way I'm moving through this time). I am present, because I must be. Because I still exist on this planet. Because I don't see another option. More on that another time.
Something I wish everyone understood (without actually going through it) is what Grief feels like. Because people think it's the wild animal of emotions, all snarly teeth and claws and hysterical unpredictableness. I've seen that Grief. It's not mine, but I watched it come out of its cage in someone I love. That kind of Grief breaks your heart all over again. But my Grief feels like exhaustion. It feels like getting sick, without any symptoms or the actual sickness. It feels in turns detached, and surreal, and ironic. It's feels like fear, and like numbness. It feel sticky and soft and like it slips out of your grasp just as you think you've got a hold on it. It feels like barely listening to music. Or watching TV. Food tastes like paper, or sand. Alcohol tastes like advil and a long drink of water (no, I'm not drinking too much. I'm just drinking more than I used to, which was nearly not at all).
I really wish I could just say to people, I can't be here right now. I'm going through Grief. Or, I can't have this conversation because nothing you're staying is sticking. Or, I don't know the day or time or anything at all because there is exactly one day, one time that matters and it is not now. Or, I need to go home and sleep. Maybe some people do say those things. But I don't...I don't feel like I can.
So why I am writing down this random collection of thoughts and trying to explain this massive emotion? Because writing has saved my life before. Really. Because, I express myself better when I write, when I'm not trying to please anyone or take care of anyone but me. It's a place where I can be beautiful by my definition, and I don't mean like how someone looks in a photograph. I wasn't going to write any of this. I was doing okay (-ish, no, not really, yes, sometimes, but not today, yesterday a little, tomorrow maybe, who knows, two minutes from now, who knows, oh shit I'm tired, why am I so tired all of a sudden, oh right, so...).
One of my current roommates (we'll call her RM1), who has ensured that I am not actually homeless in the practical sense, quoted James Baldwin for me the other day. It was the one that goes
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
And that gave me pause, because yo, I am freakin LONELY. I'm lonely in ways that you wouldn't even think were part of the human condition. Like I said, walking empty. So RM1 encouraged me to write all this down. Because maybe it would help me, but more, maybe it would help someone else. Someone else who wonders if their Grief is being expressed in a way that makes sense (false! non existant), someone else who is lonely and exhausted. That's the why. So here I am, After. After K's accident, after January 18, After After After.
I am 30 years old. I live in one of the most vibrant, interesting, nonstop cities on the planet. I consider myself successful, and go out of my way to be kind and optimistic. My life as it is now, stands divided into thirds, disproportionately. The first 21 years and some odd days of my life. The years of 21 - 30 and some odd days. And the past month, 1 week, and counting. When I was 21, I met K, the love of my life, in college. We went through everything and more, and chose each other through it all. In the early hours of January 18, 2014, he was killed in a single car accident that had no reason to happen, no explanation for why, and has blown my life wide open. And so that brings us to the present day. Or as I've taken to calling it in my mind, After.
To see me, you might not know anything is wrong. After all, I can still smile. I can still laugh. I wake up every day, I go to a wonderful job, I have the best friends and family anyone could ask for in life, let alone in the times of tragedy. If you meet me, I will seem as normal as anyone else, I would think. Here's another truth: I'm walking empty. I am not brave or gracious (words that have been used to describe the way I'm moving through this time). I am present, because I must be. Because I still exist on this planet. Because I don't see another option. More on that another time.
Something I wish everyone understood (without actually going through it) is what Grief feels like. Because people think it's the wild animal of emotions, all snarly teeth and claws and hysterical unpredictableness. I've seen that Grief. It's not mine, but I watched it come out of its cage in someone I love. That kind of Grief breaks your heart all over again. But my Grief feels like exhaustion. It feels like getting sick, without any symptoms or the actual sickness. It feels in turns detached, and surreal, and ironic. It's feels like fear, and like numbness. It feel sticky and soft and like it slips out of your grasp just as you think you've got a hold on it. It feels like barely listening to music. Or watching TV. Food tastes like paper, or sand. Alcohol tastes like advil and a long drink of water (no, I'm not drinking too much. I'm just drinking more than I used to, which was nearly not at all).
So why I am writing down this random collection of thoughts and trying to explain this massive emotion? Because writing has saved my life before. Really. Because, I express myself better when I write, when I'm not trying to please anyone or take care of anyone but me. It's a place where I can be beautiful by my definition, and I don't mean like how someone looks in a photograph. I wasn't going to write any of this. I was doing okay (-ish, no, not really, yes, sometimes, but not today, yesterday a little, tomorrow maybe, who knows, two minutes from now, who knows, oh shit I'm tired, why am I so tired all of a sudden, oh right, so...).
One of my current roommates (we'll call her RM1), who has ensured that I am not actually homeless in the practical sense, quoted James Baldwin for me the other day. It was the one that goes
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.
And that gave me pause, because yo, I am freakin LONELY. I'm lonely in ways that you wouldn't even think were part of the human condition. Like I said, walking empty. So RM1 encouraged me to write all this down. Because maybe it would help me, but more, maybe it would help someone else. Someone else who wonders if their Grief is being expressed in a way that makes sense (false! non existant), someone else who is lonely and exhausted. That's the why. So here I am, After. After K's accident, after January 18, After After After.
And then there is the somehow. Somehow, I keep going. Somehow, I have to. I don't know when After will turn into Now, but I hope it will. I'm pretty sure they tell you it will (in the stages of Grief, they call that one Acceptance). But I don't know how to get out of After. So I've been telling myself the only way through it is THROUGH it. When you find yourself in hell and all that (Churchill this time).
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