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.

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.