Smiling Through It/Girlfriends & Graduations

It's been a while since I've written, friends. A lot has happened in a short time. I signed a lease and decided to stay in the city (well, in the opposite order). I moved in, and have a roommate for the first time in almost 10 years (heeeey D. Thanks). I made a conscious decision to live with someone...I still don't do so well with being alone. It's like being scared of the dark, when the dark is what's inside your own head. My parents brought back a lot of my furniture, my former life (no cats though; D is a allergic and they aren't allowed here...plus finding reasonable, good housing is ridiculously difficult). Work has been a whirlwind and intense and crazy. And, I didn't have internet until a few days ago at the new apartment, which we lovingly call the Zombie Fortress. Or Zombie Safehouse, depending on your perspective (hashtag a sense of humor). So, here we are, caught up, more or less.

At the time, this would have been a now, but instead it's a then, because time slipped by before I could tell you about it. So let's go back a bit, yeah?

May 21, 2014. The day that K received his Juris Doctor. A Wednesday, smack in the middle of the week and life and things. Early morning, I am in a car down to New Jersey. Man, I hate going to Jersey now. My stomach is riding high up in my ribcage and my eyes are threatening to spill over before we even so much as make it onto the west side highway. On the way over the GWB I'm thinking about how long it takes to fall, and the article I read in the NYT about how the Golden Gate Bridge has the highest number of suicides of any bridge in the country (what is it about serenity and the expanse that comes with the west coast that makes people so committed, I wonder). I can't imagine jumping, having enough time to think and change your mind and it's too late. Or maybe it's all peace and ease and relief? It's not my style, but for some reason it's my thought now. And then just as quickly, we're in Jers, we're in the town I spent the last 6 years in, we're pulling up to K's parent's house. And then it's his little brother at the door for me, and I'm in the living room, perched on the same wood chair I pulled into the kitchen the day of the accident, the same chair where I hugged my knees to my chest and realized that K and I didn't get to grow old together anymore. The day my life changed.

I'm sitting across from K's foldout couch bed, watching his dad tie on K's favorite purple tie ("I'm going to borrow this, okay boy?" K's brother, tightly: "come on Dad..."), me with my eyes wet as I glaze over the poster board of condolences from the kids at the law school, and the funeral program, a framed picture of K, a collage of our pictures that I made him one year for his birthday...and his ashes. His ashes. Again. His ashes. The body of my beloved all crumbled up into something I can't hold or kiss, something that can't laugh or talk, some-thing. Not someone. Not my someone. The beginning and end inscribed on the side, a whole person paired down to dust and dates. Fuck. I'm crying and apologizing to his little brother. I hadn't meant to cry so soon. I'm trying to stop the tears before his mom comes out from getting dressed. I can't, but I'm trying. And so I'm trying to smile through them, smile through all my pain. It's all I've done since January. It's all I know how to do anymore.

We're on our way now, K's family and me, and his little brother's girlfriend. I'm happy to see her, but she seems less so to see me. I know what it's like to be The Girlfriend (more on that in a minute), to be there but not really there, just a fixture for moral support and companionship. I don't know if she feels that way, but I have in the past. More than once in my life. At the graduation, we are escorted to the front. When the processional starts, I'm in tears again. They are pouring uncontrollably down my face, and I don't care if I'm streaking my makeup. K should be here, damnit. He fucking earned this. 2.5 years of hard fucking work, and more late nights than undergrad. No one knows better than me, sitting up with him, reading his case law out loud when he got too tired, quizzing him until I understood the difference between first and second degree murder and manslaughter, or what all the requisites are for a contract (consideration, it's all about consideration). All the hours spent pouring over jobs and fine tuning resumes and cover letters, and learning what kind of law firms K would like. So many hours it was days, weeks. He should be here, damnit, with his class.

Every speaker mentions K in one way or another. I don't know if that was planned, but it makes me proud. I assume it makes his family proud too, but I can only speak for myself. And then it's time. I wish I wore the title of wife, so I could have gone up on stage and gotten his hood and his degree. Instead, the dean called his father up and the whole auditorium erupted into a standing ovation. And my tears were uncontrollable, all the emotion pent up behind my eyes all these months streaming full down my face. But not just with sadness friends, with pride. I don't think I was ever prouder of K than I was in that moment. And I KNOW he was proud. And he should be, up there in heaven. I know he was dancing because he always danced a bit. Always for as long as I knew him, a little pop-lock here, Michael Jackson moonwalk step there. Always a bit of a joke to make someone laugh. I know he was laughing, and dancing, and whether or not you believe in heaven or afterlife or anything, I know he was there in that moment, full of pride and completely deserving of all of the love and adoration and sadness that filled the auditorium in that moment.

After, and we're meeting a few people now. Some friends, and parents of students. "This is K's girlfriend" his parents say. And it's true, I am his girlfriend. I'm also his partner, would be wife. Girlfriend is so fleeting, so teenager. I hate it. I hate the casualness, the insignificance. The way it feels like I don't matter when I know I mattered to K more than he ever let on to anyone but me. I can cherish it, sure, but I hated the way I felt pushed to the side. The way the only possessions I have are a few t-shirts from our trips, a hat, a scarf and a leather bracelet. That's it. I don't even have the second copy of his degree that the law school gave (they give two), or the pictures we took together in a photo-booth in Florida, our last vacation (his dad keeps them in his car). I can count the number of photos we have together almost on one hand; we always took pictures of each other, but didn't necessarily take them together. And sure I have photos and memories, but there's something about the way the soul lives on in things, the way our energy embodies the possessions we love, leaving little traces behind everywhere. I wish I had more of those little traces so maybe combined all together I'd have something significant of the person who captured my heart for the last decade of my life.

So now that this chapter is done, the emotion is coming harder and heavier. Tears are disobedient and flowing more freely, more unbidden. Smile through it, smile through it. My anger is quelling and quiet, but still stirs on occasion. My stomach is unsettled with unfairness even now, and my frustration that people think I'm fine because some months have passed is louder than ever. Sometimes I feel like I'm laying just under a pool of shallow water, looking up at the sunlit surface. Everything is slightly off, slightly blurry. And I'm screaming but no one can hear me, I'm drowning so slowly that no one notices. A friend asked if I was okay the other day...the answer is still not really. I don't know when I'll be okay. I don't know if I ever will be (please don't reassure me. It doesn't help. I just want to be heard). My missing is so loud these days, my heart so heavily broken it hurts in my chest. I don't wish for a time machine, except late at night when it's still and loudly silent and I feel like God might have a moment to listen...and then I beg to be just a bit selfish, just to go back and fix that night. I beg to not be alone anymore.

All my love is misplaced and wandering now, and it all feels so wrong. Being "the girlfriend" and having no claim to anything feels wrong. It's all so unnatural to me, and yet I go on. Sometimes I wonder why I do, how I do. I don't know. I just do. And the smiles and laughter...it's all so false. It's all so useless. But here it is anyways, leaking through, trying to convince the rest of me we have to keep living.

And on that note, goodnight friends. May the next time be a little sooner, and just perhaps an inch less painful.

Music Redux: Childish Gambino - I'd Die Without You

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.

This is Not Okay

How do you say you're not okay without worrying people? How do you make everyone understand how profoundly sick and wrong you feel, without them feeling like they have to rally and do something? I'm exhausted. I'm not okay, and I'm exhausted. I keep considering the profound unfairness, the heaviness of being empty, and sadness. Nothing deep or wondering there. I'm just plain ole fucking sad.

Friday night I got the news that a good friend of my mom's and some one I cared about was killed in a car accident. Some stupid girl was texting and hit her head on. The week before that, another friend's father was murdered. And it makes me want to vomit up all my hurt and anger. It makes me feel so sick. I don't know how to explain it, except that it feels like there is something profoundly wrong going on right now. I feel like the universe is snatching up my family and my friends, or the loved ones of my family or friends. I have heard or experienced or read about so much loss in the few months since K died. And there's that phenomenon of being more aware of something once it applies directly to you, but I don't think that's what it is. I think something malicious is out in the world, no matter what you believe in or don't believe in. It feels haunted and creeping, and disturbed. Dark and undetermined. I wrote this on Facebook, but I think it bears repeating: love hard and leave nothing unspoken. 

Death is a fact of life. I get that. We all have some expiration date, and we don't get to know when it is. I get all of that. What I don't get is why it feels like this. Why it hurts so much in so many different ways. Why loss feels like just that, like this tremendous absence. It makes me confused and my mind contorts around trying to understand it. So I keep writing, because some part of me feels like these words will straighten it all out. But I don't think they will. I keep hearing that my story is helping other people. I would like to understand that better, because all I am seeing now is a few feet at a time. I can't see down the road I'm walking, or even what road I'm on. I feel like I could walk to the ends of the earth and just keep going, and hope that maybe I'll walk right off. All I'm feeling is tired of all of this, and wanting. And it all feels desperate and terrifying. It feels depressed and low and hard. 

Tonight I had a bad dream about a friend's dog. I've been spending a lot of time with this friend, and I generally worry about wearing out my welcome, because I know how intense I am right now. And I appreciate the people who love and care for me, who go out of their way to spend time with me, but I'm still pretty checked out and I don't know what it's like to be around me. I imagine it's difficult and annoying and I try to be aware of that as much as I can. So she has this amazing dog who she loves (and I know how she feels because I had a dog like that growing up), who also loves me (how lucky am I). And I was asleep on her couch, having this dream where I was walking him and he got sick and I was terrified. And I woke up to said dog barking at the delivery man, which startled me, and then suddenly I was just kind of in Panic and felt like I had to leave her house. And then it felt like I should leave her life, like I had committed some horrible betrayal by having this dream. 

I don't know how to explain it, but it felt like the embodiment of everything I've been feeling. Like something had gone wrong for someone innocent and beautiful and hopeful and wonderful. It felt wrong. So I kind of tried to tell her about this dream, and felt horrible, and left her house--fled her house, really. It feels like I don't belong anywhere. It feels like I need someone I don't have, the one person I never worried about burdening or asking to just hold me without question of why. I miss being held by someone who loves me. I hadn't realized how much I missed that, but I really do. Or just having someone to listen who gets you and how you see the world, without you worrying about offending them or whatever. Without you worrying about how it might hurt your friendship. I don't have the energy to worry about these things, but I do. 

I am so overwhelmed by all of this. I want to be anywhere but where I am. But that is not a choice I get, so here I am. I am not okay, but left without choice to be anything but. 

This is Anger

I am unpredictable. Not my emotions, but me. I have no baseline for any response, and offense happens easy. Too easy and it makes me uncomfortable, my own pendulum of happysadangryemptynumb, my own foreignness. I feel xenophobic about myself. Is that even possible? Maybe in some irony. As much so as the fact that there is comfort and familiarity in the way I start hyperventilating rage and yet there remains a grave concern in myself for my inability to tamp down that same anger. This whole bit, this is anger. It's going to be as rough to read as it is to admit, and I wouldn't blame you for stopping now. Just don't judge me too harsh tonight, friends.

Here is something that makes me very angry as of late: anyone trying to identify with my situation. I'm an asshole tonight. Empathy and sympathy such close bedfellows, but the mere suggestion shoots off exploding shiny spots of anger in my brain. The parent of someone they cared about, a friend of a friend, someone they were tangentially close to. Fuck outta here. The anger is so loud then, because how dare they? What gives them the right? I'm an asshole for that too. Everyone is different, and death touches us all. And we react differently. I know this. There is rationality and caring in there too, but I just feel so raw. And so few people have lost their partner the way I have, with the jolting suddenness. With the lack of expectation or preparation. And to be frank, with youth. So don't suggest you get it. You don't. This is Anger talking now. Forgive me. Forgive how I am all metallic and right angles, glass frozen in ice, shards of quick to furry and unforgiving of your trespass. Forgive me when I cannot forgive you. It is unfair to ask, but nothing about any of this is fair.

All this anger rolls over me, rolls me over; themes of oceans and tides maybe, or a strong wind. Color it with something violent underneath, make it ugly. Make it hurt. Let's hurt something beautiful today. Utterly obliterate the innocent. I want scalding water dripped slowly on skin, I want stoning. Give me buried alive, something slow and murderous. Let's get horrific. Let's make it abominable. Oh but Sara, this isn't you. This isn't who we know. I'm sorry, but welcome to me, in After. Welcome to I don't know myself anymore, welcome to when will the space behind my eyes stop being empty. Welcome to when will I be present, when will I care? Welcome to how anger simmers just below my surface, and you'll never know because control. Because smiles. Because easy going. Because I can't let it consume me. Because anger is not me, not forever. Because something more sinister: I am a very good liar now.

I don't want to post this. I don't want you to know this truth, whoever you are right now, reading this. I hate the anger. I hate how easy it is to go to that place, that royal injustice so deep it is a splinter ten miles long through every inch of my body. I'm toying with deleting this. But I got so angry writing it, I have to believe it wants release. I've said I was ugly before, and here is the ugliest. Here is the most pathetic, the most embarrassing. And maybe the most honest, all laid out and spread before you. Judge me. Or don't. Sympathize. Or don't. Know it's not desire that is this anger, but consumption. It is disgusting, but delicious. It is satisfying, because it is feeling. It's the heady smokiness, crowded like a room, where otherwise there is absence. Where otherwise it is empty. And who wouldn't take the fulfillment of fullness over standing in the biggest, emptiest canyon and echoing against yourself forever, mired in solitude. Alone.

So I just breathed out friends. This whole time, holding my breath, writing this. All clenched up and mean. And scared. Because anger is fear. And I have told you and will tell you more, it is terrifying to be this empty. It is terrifying to be new and exposed. And I have no idea who I am. I have no idea who I will become. A friend said this was exciting, this development. This reinvention, this new persona that can be crafted as intentionally or as lazily as I might prefer. Maybe that's true, but I'm not there yet. I still feel like I can't touch bottom, so how can I learn to swim? I can't, just yet. Or won't. I don't know. I do know shock is wearing off and wearing me down. Days have been darker, my personal fog denser and more impenetrable. I imagine if you feel energy and color in the world the way I do (yes I am odd in more ways than just Grieving), I must be some indescribable mix of dirty hues and shades of shadows and tones that exist in nightmares. I said let's get horrific, didn't I?

At work, someone decided my project managers needed to be made aware of "what was going on with me." What is going on with me, actually? Let's have that conversation, please. Let's have the conversation that you have so little idea of what is going on with me, you couldn't define it if it was happening to you. I am an asshole tonight. You all reading this sputter, but maybe they were concerned, possibly caring, possibly trying to help. Possibly some bullshit I won't buy. Tell me when you are eggshells and krazy glue and misery, and you still show up. Tell me when you are still there when by all rights, you should be anywhere else. Fuck it all. Tonight is so angry, friends. Days are angry too, but good sunlight and better company tempers that. I just can't stand that kind of judgement, that kind of false help. It's already hard, it already takes so much trying.

I hope you understand that sometimes it's best just to get it out. It's some kind of tapeworm, this anger, breaking up into little pieces and retreating back parasitic from prying and digging, from the impending excavation. I cannot wait for Somehow. I cannot wait to be myself again, whoever that person becomes. The road is long and uncertain, but I walk, and walk. I love to walk these days.

So much anger put out here, but mixed in to the way I love you for the support, the comments, the reaching out to connect. I am still the Sara you know, I promise (as much to myself as to you).

Order of Operations

I think lately I've been trying to find my voice again. My poetry, my cadence, my prose. Everyone who has read my blog and has said I should write a book, thank you. I appreciate that. This post though, it isn't like that. It's not trying to describe my feelings. It's memories. And memories are often ugly. No apologies, just facts. So let me give you the first memory from After:

8am, give or take. Cold, although the heat's always on too high in my apartment. There is fuzziness, confusion. Everything wavy and slightly surreal. It's too early; I haven't slept much and my head is pounding like it knows we're not sleeping again for months. Maybe ever. I try to put my contacts in, manage one, and leave the other on the sink where it will remain, dried out and sad when I come back to my apartment hours (days? weeks?) later. Take out the other, toss it in the trash. Put my glasses back on. Pace, pace, pace. Talk to my cats, try to explain to the them with no words. Cry a little. Sit. Stand. You see, I am waiting for the police to come and take me to K's parent's house, because this is the morning that K has died. His brother's voice is echoing in my ear. My voice is echoing in my chest from having just gotten off the phone with my parents. Echoes all around. I am remembering this for you because it recently came flooding back to me.

Over the past year or so, K and I were fortunate to make two very good friends. A couple out of Chicago, who went to college with us. I'll call them the Travelers, because they've managed to see the world in a way most people in their late 20s/early 30s don't. We didn't know them so well in school, though K played basketball on occasion with Mr. Traveler. On the day of K's death, one of the first phone calls I made was to this couple. I'm not sure why, but it felt right. And that has pretty much been the name of the game ever since. So just recently I received a save the date from the Travelers, who will be married in a few months. And I was absolutely elated. But as I read the email, I teared up. And my high started to drift towards a low. You see, K and I would have attended together. And even more so, our friends are so very similar to us. Met at college, dated for many years afterwards, made a life together, finally getting married. Echoes all around. After the funeral, Mrs. Traveler sent me a message that relayed a similar idea. All our parallels. So my joy for them is the joy I would have had for myself, and my sorrow is the sorrow she could have had, in a different version of this life.

Another memory now: Dropped off at K's parent's house, there is an ambulance outside, and four or five police. The officer who dropped me, he says if I can be strong for the family, that would be best. He tells me K's mom is having a hard time. The ambulance is there for her, just in case, and regardless of that, I don't doubt the scene I will find inside. This is a mother who has lost her first born, after all. A hard time would be a massive understatement. But this officer, he doesn't know our history. He doesn't know that this is my husband who has died, that we were boyfriend and girlfriend in title only, but the heart is different. Time is different. But I have always had a strange sense of duty, a way of doing what's asked of me, somehow.

And so a few hours later, I find myself in K's parent's kitchen, surrounded by aunts, uncles, cousins. Sitting on a wooden chair, trying to stay warm. It's cold and clear this day, but the cold is the kind that wraps around your heart and pulls on your organs, the clarity reminding you that you're still here. That I'm still here, when K is not. On any other day, had we been up early, I would have inhaled deeply and told K it was the kind of morning that made you feel life. But on this day, I cannot feel life with K; instead there is only the continuity from one moment to the next, each tip toeing further away from the last time I saw the love of my life alive.

And I'm sitting there, stoic. Strong for the family echoes in my short term memory. I've been carrying that particular echo for a while now, I think, these past few months. But that day especially, I held it well, that strength for the family. Phone calls and all that. And then suddenly, I am crying, because it just occurs to me how backwards all this is. And I'm telling his uncle and aunt how we were supposed to grow old together. I say that over and over, because that was my reality. I was never the kind of girl to plan her ideal wedding or any of that. But this was my life partner, my love, my spouse in my heart before God and the universe and all else, regardless of rings or papers or promises. And all of that is lost to me now.

And that's really what gets me down a lot of the time. Things are all out of order now. We had nine years together before K got snatched out of my life. Who knew old meant a few grey hairs as I entered my 30s, or that forever had a time limit? I am so excited to celebrate with The Travelers later this year, but when I dance, it won't be the way I would have danced with K. There is a certain joy in being that way you know, a natural rhythm that you have moving through space next to someone who fills your heart. I've thought a lot about the fairness of things, why some people get their partners and I do not get mine. I am intrinsically happy for anyone who finds love that way, but there are elements of jealousy too. I wouldn't be honest if I pretended I never felt it, and if there is one thing I won't do it is lie here in this place. Enough of those go on on to get us through the day, the lies we tell to keep us going, so let's have some truth, yeah?

Phonies & Facades

Here is today, here is tonight: all good vacation memories and optimisms this morning, now come crashing down around me with the darkness and rejection from a good friend tonight after requesting their company. We all fear the night at least a little: the unknown, the careless hours until certainty rises, but here I fear it more than most. Tonight, the tears were torrents, unexpected, unwanted. Listening to music K brought to me, "the kind of music you like" he said one evening, with that funny smile I loved: a tooth chipped and space between the two fronts as big as promises. And it was the kind I like, the music he brought. If you are curious or careless, you may wish to listen and read: Cold Specks – I Predict A Graceful Expulsion.

Tonight these songs pulled out my memories: our first slow dance, kisses everywhere more important than lips, and the way that smell of someone you really love brings more comfort than anything else. These songs, they were every time I felt adoration, and important, and wanted. They were the constant company of having a partner to come home to. They were the lack of loneliness, the absence of wanting. And so I balled myself up in the three things I keep of K's, and bawled and begged him to come back to me. Crumpled in a pile on my air mattress, the emptiness magnified like quick sand all around me and I let myself sink. Head down, I sobbed and asked to feel everything. Bring me all the pain, the emptiness and fear and anger radiating around me all the time. I pulled off every bit of protection I build up for myself each morning and just. fucking. cried. Until the tears drained out and I felt nothing again. And then I cried some more. Because no matter how hollow, sadness laps at my raw edges, never too far away if I let it in.

And I asked as I have asked many nights, how is this my life? How is that my partner was stolen away, that I belong to no one? I want to belong to someone again. Tell me I belong to myself if you'd like, and that is fine and well. But I don't want to be this person. I want to be K's person. I want to be the woman he was proud of, who fought him over stupidness, who he picked up at the bus stop after work and listened to until I was spent of talking about my day--no matter how long--, the person who loved him. I just want to be the person who knew a love like that, all the hardness and comfort of being about and of another human being. Who knew how to be present in the ease of certainty. Not this person now, who is adrift and confused and small. So tiny and invisible. And you know? Freezing. I'm freezing always, with only sparks of anger to stay warm.

And so. What to do, what to do, when my will just isn't anything at all. And so. I give you my smile, and my heart, my careful cautious abandon, that you might keep them until my feet find ground again. I give you my rejection and hurt, that they might be less sharp in your care. I give you my capability and charisma, my dreams and goals, that they will grow less useless under your gaze. I am listening to Cold Specks, and not exploding gracefully. I am exploding messy and human, boney fragmented blood and sinewed emotions all over these digital pages. I am this person who is me, and is not me. Who has fought so fucking hard to not make death bigger than life, but is losing today.

Tonight, tonight, I crack my facade and feel phony underneath. Because there is no strength to be found here. The motivation is plastic locomotive, a very nice replica of someone who moves forward, truth be told. I feel invisible and forgotten, I feel indifferent and cold. My heart wants to love because it was made to, because not loving feels unnatural, and so it grasps and reaches and finds empty air where K used to be. And it retreats back, scared. I am 30 years old and I feel 500. Ancient and slow and hideous. I feel so ugly, all these feelings all wrapped up and ignored because of my ability to paint a smile. How ugly can a person be, I wonder, can they be uglier than I am right now?

I was asked the other day how I do it, keep this up. I don't. I try very very hard to seem okay, but I am not okay. Worry if you'd like, I can't stop you. I'd tell you not to, but the word pointless comes to mind. Tell me not to swear (someone did recently, don't read this then), question how I am still here and then remember it has been 2 months and 16 days since my world broke open. Know that After still consumes me, and feels like the kind of forever nightmares are made of.

Today was a good day turned bad.  There will be many more. I do not apologize. If you are here with me, you shouldn't either. Cry with me. Be consumed by your anger and hopelessness. Wake up tomorrow and paint your face back on, it's another day and who knows if it will be bad-good, or good-bad, or something else unpredictable and uglier than the day before, or more beautiful and the kind of safe we hope will last. Who ever knows...not I, not I.

The Emptiness of Survival

In the week between the accident and the funeral, I experienced a profound shift in self. This is probably not a surprise; frankly I was in shock. I probably still am, to some extent. I hardly ate or slept that week. I was surviving, and in many ways not very well. I think you have no choice, in this place where you have become unrecognizable to yourself.

I was surprised by the weeks spent unable to look at myself in the mirror. In Judaism we cover mirrors for a period of time in mourning; I asked my dad why, but he didn't remember and I never got around to looking it up. I didn't cover any mirrors, but I wondered if perhaps that had something to do with it. I should probably just Google it. I do know that every time I would look at my reflection, I would start to cry. I think it was because I recognized I wasn't really there, and there is something intrinsically horrifying about seeing the absence of yourself. I've written about the experience of emptiness and I suppose that's what I mean. My body is present, my mind is on autopilot and capable but my heart and soul have dug deep and buried themselves. I would like to say they are protecting me from this, but I think they have abandoned me. They are cowards, hiding away so far from the surface. We are, I think, tumbling through life a ball of confused emotions unified by heart and purpose. So when heart and purpose are missing, what are we then? I'd rather like to know.

So I believe in zombies. You might laugh at me for that, but honestly, how else can I describe myself during this time? A human robot, serving base needs. Surviving. How is that different than a zombie? Next time you see someone in Grief, look closely. Look for the plateau in our eyes, the dull sheen of exhaustion and profound weariness brought by having to exist another day, broken. I think there is a certain mutedness, a stillness that floats about us like a cloud. So the question then, how to go from surviving to living?

I think I currently bounce between surviving and living, but more on the living side of the line. From my experience, these are the things I know to be true:

Those who are Grieving lack nourishment. We need to eat richly, we need the sustenance of companionship and caring that comes from a real meal. The kind where you sit and lose hours in conversation and memories, where you start thinking, it doesn't feel like it takes a village, more like a whole fucking army to push us the tiniest bit back towards ourselves. If you find us, the Grieving, know our selves are gangly and sprawled, so gather us up and hold us in your presence, feed us as much or as little as we can eat, but do it over and over again. We cannot take care, and so you must, if you hope to help us heal.

Those who are Grieving do not sleep. We may lay down and close our eyes, but it is only hours in which we can retreat from the world and further into ourselves. We need to sleep deeply, and remember how to dream. When K died, I lost my dreams and that is how I knew I was truly lost. I think I dream maybe 45% of the time now, just over 2 months later. Before, I used to remember every dream I had. Every single one. I used to dream lucidly, controlling my subconscious state and moving from one dream to the next. It was pretty cool, and provided a source of inspiration. So the cutting off of my dreams has been like cutting off my oxygen, and I am left breathing shallow. And to be honest, I don't think I know how to really sleep anymore. And for those of us who are not sleeping, well,  I don't know how to tell you how to help. I hope that one day I will find true rest again, and that I will dream. 

And then there are the things you may do that we cannot: listen to music, watch TV or movies, lose yourself in the ease of conversation and the carelessness of good humor. K had a deep relationship with music, and many of the musicians I came to know and love were introduced to me by him. So these days I listen to artists he would not have, or music that speaks to where I find myself. It's the same things on repeat, over and over. There's a kind of the routine to listening to the same songs on repeat and it gives me one thing I can rely on, unlike my arc of emotions.  K and I watched a lot of TV, so I don't really watch much anymore. It just doesn't matter to me. So many things just do not matter.

To the Grieving: there is a way to stop surviving and start living again. This is a truth because it has to be, because we remain and because we owe it to those we have lost to do what they cannot. And more so, we owe it to ourselves and those who stand by us in this most difficult of times. And mostly, because the other choice, the choice to merely survive, is no choice at all.

To those trying to help: I say what I have said before and will continue to say. Forgive my repetition, but I have heard of people being cruel and impatient (not to me, but to friends who have lost loved ones). And maybe you don't even realize you are, but things are hard enough. So, please be present for us because it is likely we are truly absent. And if we choose to share, listen. Do not lecture, do not judge, and perhaps do not even offer advice. Know that we try, as much as we can, and that each day will be a different kind of hard or easy. 

But mostly, love us. Love us in all ways minor and obvious, in ways that are familiar and new and maybe a little uncomfortable at times. Love us more than we are currently capable of loving ourselves. 

Fuck 2014

I'm done with this year ya'll. I'm done with the universe picking off all our loved ones. People keep telling me it's the dying season. Fuck the dying season. Fuck reading a new status message every few days about yet another young person dying. Or someone's parent. Or someone's partner. I just...I can't.

Yesterday was the 2nd month anniversary of K's death. I still have a hard time typing that. Because every time I do, it makes it real. I don't know when I'll be able to type that, or say it, without feeling like if only I didn't say it, it wouldn't be true. I remember when we first started dating, I made us celebrate all of our month anniversaries. We'd been dating for a few weeks at the time, but made things official Nov 30th, 2004. So it was always the 30th of the month, until we hit one year. Now I wonder if I'm going to keep counting the months, until they become years. The 18th. The fucking 18th of every month for the next year. And then January 18th. November 30th. October 16th, his birthday. Those are the days that matter. Birth, love, death. All it boils down to in the end, made up out of 3 days each year my heart will catch a little.

I spend a lot of time wandering between remembering and forgetting. Forgetting the why and the how, but trying not to lose this beautiful person who I made so many memories with. For some reason, I remembered the first time K took me around people he knew as his girlfriend. It was this dance in his dorm, and he invited me. He wore a blue checked flannel shirt, black slacks and shiny black shoes. I remember how shiny his shoes were because of how well he danced. He was a great dancer. And I wore this spanish influenced black dress with red roses. And I remember at one point, he was spinning me, and salsa dancing, and all this other stuff while everyone else did the awkward two step with stiff arms on hips and shoulders. It was like a middle school dance where everyone was a little taller. K and I never two-stepped though, we always dance danced. And at one point, the Destiny's Child song Solider came on. And the whole room made a circle around us, dancing as we were. And every time the chorus would come on, they'd point at K. He was a little embarrassed, but also proud I think. It wasn't far into our relationship, but after that, I knew I loved him.

Through our relationship, I always felt that way, like he was my solider. Always there to protect me. And somehow, I couldn't return it. The only time it every actually mattered, I couldn't protect him.

Here's a poem I wrote, about how I've been feeling. About time and some other things. I'm trying to document these a little better, because sometimes poetry just feels so right.

I've been wondering about how time passes,
about long lines of possibility,
and the choices we make.
And how months feel like years and seconds
all at once somehow blurring by, 
tenuously. Everything so damn tenuous. 

I can't stop remembering the last time I saw you,
every second larger than
the life you left,
all in perfectly painted detail on my memory,
because time stopped then
--and my heart started beating broken--
and here I am,
monthssecondsyears passing me by,
still trying to understand how this is truth,
and what kind of cruelty exists that
our world takes you and leaves me, empty
and searching.

I'd be alright, if I could just see you.
I'll be alright, when time stops passing
lonely and broken like this.


Because I'm so over  2014, I've decided to publish this blog. I've had it secret for a little while, not sure what I wanted to do with it. I wanted to add some more entries maybe, make it feel more complete before I offered it up to the world. Opened myself up to everyone. But how can I sit on everything I'm going through, when so many people are sharing my experience? I want us all to heal by the commonality of the human experiences of Grief and Sorrow, not sit seemingly placid and quiet to the world while we break down inside. And lord knows I've been breaking down inside more and more. The outside though, that porcelain facade is on lock. Don't worry about me though, it's not a bad thing. I don't know how else I would get through my day. 

Love.

The Necessity of going to New Jersey

Tomorrow, I am going back to New Jersey for the first time in nearly a month. I went back immediately following my return from my parent's house, for a weekend. And since then, I haven't given much thought to going there. In fact, I could probably never go there again for the rest of my life. The whole state. I could just forget it exists...how many states? Not 49? Oh.

I'm going for work...I probably could have said I didn't want to go. I could have explained it, and they might have understood. I could be spending tomorrow safely in my little bubble, where people use subways and not cars, where K might still be alive if only he'd been willing to move out of NJ. I'm in danger of a panic attack. I'm in danger of breaking down into tears. I'm in danger of under performing due to the stress and anxiety of being only one small town away from the place I spent the past 5+ years of my life. But tomorrow, I'm going. I may not say anything until I have to. I may be as withdrawn as I can be without raising too many questions. But, I'm going.

I'm going because it's my job. Because life has to go on, has to function in a new normal. Because I'm stronger than my Grief, or my fear, or my heartache. Because I have to be. I don't think this will be good for me. I don't think it will be easy or okay, or that I will be able to start breathing again until I am safely back in the city, away from all the reminders. But I do think it's necessary. And that it why I'm going. Or at least what I keep telling myself, as I try to get to sleep tonight.

The Many Faces of Guilt

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.