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. 

The Scratchiest Broken Record Alive

An apology for last night: I couldn't find my words, couldn't get my feet back under me. I wrote it after walking home from a good weekend with a friend, after talking to K's parents because it was Easter and it's been longer than it should be since I called them last, after passing under the Williamsburg Bridge with tears streaming down behind my new sunglasses, after sharing with K's mom the fact that I have his voice on a voicemail in my phone, after thinking about how sad it makes me that I have so much of the man he was and they only have memories of the child. So much After.

And I felt lost again friends, in this new place and new world I am in. I felt dizzyed up in confusion and eagerly afraid all together at once. I felt my heart and lungs and stomach contracting into themselves, dehydrating from this pain that I can hardly describe let alone touch or treat or heal. And I was thinking about how these themes are so damn reoccurring. The lost and lonely. The isolation. The confusion about how I am here and why and what to do. Always what to do with nothing to do at all. I feel like a broken record. I feel like the scratchiest fucking broken record in the world. Sometimes I wonder if these words are nails on a chalkboard to you. It's so easy for friends to forget the place I am in. It's so easy for them to treat me like the Sara they used to know. And I feel bad for them but worse for me, because I can't just remind them all the time, and sometimes I have to play along and it hurts. It fucking hurts to pretend that hard. Who knew Grief had so many kinds of pain? Who knew there were this many ways to feel sick?

I'm feeling vintage tonight. I feel older than I should again, like I'm posted up on someone's shelf, once loved now left behind. I feel dusty and dry, bitterish like tannins and tightened up like a short finish. It's important to write this all down I think, how I feel when I'm feeling at all. I don't think people really get what it's like not to feel because who does that, truly? Psychos and Socios who are out torturing animals before they work up the nerve to try it on a human? That's not me. But truly, I feel nothing. People say they're dead inside, but I wonder if that's just the numbness talking. My nothing is more like absent, some indeterminate hiatus from this plane of being. I guess the fact that I don't know how to get anyone to understand is why I keep trying. And that fact that people say all this is helping them. I can't begin to guess why or how me rambling on about how angry or sad or frustrated I am is helpful to anyone else, but so be it. I don't question anything anymore.

So let's see...how about some lessons making themselves recursive as of recent? I learn so much these days, like not seeking action where there is none. Like letting us be as still as we want without telling us to be gentle with ourselves (that's a repeat from last night, but it's my current source of irksomeness) or to feel the feelings we are trying to find again. It doesn't matter if it's anger or depression or joy, anything that will make us something like tangible and here and accounted for is welcomed. And knowing the only wrong thing to say is to say nothing at all, because then we don't know if you're uncomfortable or uncaring due to the equilibrium of our social queues being off, understandably. That just being with us is so important, that no matter how okay or normal we seem, or how little or much we cry we are still going through something horrible. How important it is to know and remember and do the best as best can be with any of us at all, the way we are so tiresome in our sadness. And the thing is, we know this. But it is not to be helped for some time. And that just sucks.

And realizing the converse of all that is all the people who want us to listen. Maybe because we've become so still, we seem like a receptacle for other people's stories/problems/existence? Maybe because we are empty, others desire to fill us up, selfishly or not, I don't know. And no matter how we react or don't, we are not ungrateful. We are incapable. It's different, you see, because it is surviving, or maybe living once in a while if the day is especially bright. So here I am, your favorite broken record played on repeat. But it bears repeating. It bears trying to fill in our gaps and blanks, understanding and compassion that cannot be returned just now, and so many other things. Just being with us in time and space, grounding us back to this earth and this reality. Keeping us here because the locale we desire is (must be, so important) unobtainable to us. Because holy fuck we just can't believe this our life, and how are we still breathing or existing at all? Don't talk about strength or anything else. We aren't strong, we are just here. We just exist and that is not strength but a bar set low for living, and that is okay. It's okay to not be encouraged or uplifted. It's okay to just be.

I spend a lot of time figuring out what is okay. I hope you haven't minded so much that I decided to share.

Love.

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).

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.