Dig Deep

Dig deep, my mom said to me the other night. After her friend died in a car accident. After her horse died from a sudden onset illness. And I thought, what does that mean? What am I digging into, when I feel freshly dug earth, when I feel like shallow ground? Maybe there is some way to turn all this from scorched to consecrated? Or maybe not.

Everyone who's been on the outside, all of the I don't know what to says and am I saying the right things, dig deep with me. Dig deep and understand that it's not about advice given (and I've said before, it's really not advisable to give advice at all, although the desire to do so is certainly understandable) or the way you see me. It's not about you at all, and it's not even about me. It's about K. It's about everyone who lost this brilliant, funny, special young man long before it should have been his time. It's about parents who lost their eldest son, about a younger brother who lost the older. It's about old friends who fell out of touch not realizing that there was an end date on the "last time we spoke" and friends who were new and still developing. And then there's me. It's about The Girlfriend, would-be fiance, never-going-to-be wife, and not-mother. The love realized for so long, but somehow so short by comparison to lifetimes. Inconsequential by the definitions of the universe or God. All of us, missing K in our own way, learning to live with out him in our own way. All of us, digging deep.

You understand my vantage point perhaps, because I chose to be vocal. Because I cope by talking, and writing, and expressing. Because I am built to love and be open (I'm a Leo, all fire and passion as we are, all magnetic, catalyzing and angsty). Because I don't know what else to do with my broken heart, with the micro-realizations of OHGODHOWISTHISMYLIFENOW that might only ever come across to you in smiles slight and weak. Or sometimes in rushes of anger. Or weariness. I am so fucking weary. I'm weary of humans. Of men who think it is a good time to tell me about their attractions RIGHT NOW, of people minimizing and trivializing, who think I should be "over it"...or maybe just forgetting that 4 months might be yesterday and forever all at the same time as far as I'm concerned. To be clear, I don't say or write anything I don't want to. I don't feel like I have to tell you anything. There is no obligation or expectation on my end. So I ask, dig deep and leave yours behind. Try and remember who you're talking to, that the absence still exists. That my smiles and active engagement are there to protect us both.

This came up the other day: why bother protecting anyone? Why bother faking normalcy? Because the other option isn't an option. The other option is anger. It's letting you understand that you are striking a raw nerve ALL THE TIME. It's a sobbing mess, incoherent, so low it becomes nonexistent. And if there is one thing I cannot, will not do, it is lose my existence. I cannot dishonor K that way. I cannot collapse into myself, or give in to the hollowness inside of me. To be clear, I do not fake normal for you. I fake it for me, as tiring as it is. I fake it because anything else isn't even survival. It's not even base. And that I just refuse.

I have missed K from day 1, but every day it grows. I miss talking to him, and having someone who loves me so much, they put me first, just as I am putting them first, so that we are always trying to do the best thing for one another and nearly always getting what we need. I miss companionship and consistency. I miss the respect of someone who is emotionally invested in you. I miss love. Someone asked what I will do, with all this longing. I don't think missing and longing are the same thing. I don't long for K. That's pointless. I do miss him though and I doubt I will ever stop. And when it comes to what I will do, well, I suppose I will do what I have been doing. I will try to heal as best I can. I will keep writing. I will try to figure out how to do more than survive. I will dig deep, and keep growing, as we all are meant to.

I do not believe in "what doesn't kill us makes us stronger." I do not think I am stronger for this, and sometimes I feel like it IS killing me, at least the parts of me that are caring and human. Nor do I believe we are defined by our adversities, or even in spite of them. I don't believe that we are tested, or stretched just to capacity, no, I think sometimes we are pushed past limits and we break. At times, we are given more than we can handle.  But I think at the end of the day, that is our survival mechanism, our means of evolution. Not opposable thumbs or invention. The ability to be pushed and pulled and broken and to continue on because we realize there isn't another choice. For all of us making that choice, for all of us digging deep, that is how humanity has survived for so long. That is how we evolve, and how we become better. Think of all the times that something brilliant and hopeful grew out of something tragic and heartbreaking. I could give you examples, but I think it'd be more meaningful if you thought of it on your own. A little homework for once. We are incredible that way, humanity. The bad may be ever so very bad, but the good, oh I believe in the silver lining of the good. Because what do any of us have, if we don't have hope that something good can come after something like this?

Until the next time.