i don't want to write about grief anymore
on november 19th… by this point, you should know how that sentence ends. the worst parts, the unbearable details, the tooth gnashing/ gut wrenching/ shattering/ eviscerating grief. i’ve done my best to make something beautiful out of it, a better story, a more fitting tribute. i’ve tried to assemble the story into something that will grab the nation by its face, turn it to the screen, and say “look at what we’ve lost.” i can’t count the number of people who have told me i’ve made them cry. i’ve probably done more for kleenex’s profit margins than any of their stop motion christmas ads.
i sleep on the floor these days. in the beginning it was because i couldn’t bear to be in the place i had been when i found the news. nor could i wear the clothes i had been wearing, listen to the songs i had listened to the night before, watch the same movie i had been watching at the same time that, states away, my friend took his last breaths. my obsessive compusive disorder took over these sentimentalities, as it does, leaving me with an unshakable fear that these things are cursed, that somehow my bed caused him to die. as it goes. i try to communicate rationally with my OCD and tell it how insane and self-centered that is, and the response is generally the same. “yeah? you think you know better? go ahead and try it, see what happens.” so, i stay in my place. i sleep on the floor. sorry, ivor cutler trio. maybe after a few years in therapy.
in those early days following the shooting, if i left the house at all, i kept my head down and could hardly speak a word. i cried until my eyes swelled nearly shut. i kept myself awake for fear of having dreams about the event. i laid in the dark, in a pile of blankets on the floor, staring at the ceiling with my heart hammering so hard that i wondered vaguely if it would stop altogether. i searched WebMD results for heart attacks spurred on by grief. it told me that typically, these cases of “dying of a broken heart” take place within the first 72 hours after experiencing a loss. the clock ticked. my heart continued to beat. i eventually fell asleep. as much as i wanted it to, time didn’t stop. the world continued around me, and life went on.
there’s no gracefulness in losing swaths of time to grief. it conjures a very romantic image in theory- laying dramatically on the floor, maybe it’s raining, maybe climate change isn’t causing rapid desertification of my part of the country and we have a true winter. all of the trees gnarled and twisting shapes into the bleak gray sky. standing out in the cold just to feel something. beautifully smeared eyeliner formed into perfect tear tracks down a poreless face. the reality can’t possibly measure up.
you look up and it’s been a month. but it was just monday, wasn’t it? no, it’s thursday. if it’s thursday, then it’s been, let me count… three weeks, no, wait, it’s december now- no, it’s january. the world is going on outside of this room, probably. every day inside is groundhog’s day. wake up. eat something, i guess. wash my face, i guess. brush my teeth, i guess. in between moments consisting of a blank question mark. refresh social media. burn through every season of the show you’ve seen a hundred times. fall asleep at 9am. lose all ability to feel tired. sleep when you sleep and wake when you wake. in between moments consisting of a blank question mark. it’s thursday again, no wait, it’s monday. if it’s monday, then it’s been a month. i haven’t left my house except to go to the grocery store since the funeral. i still catch myself thinking that thanksgiving is coming up in a few days. time falls away altogether until a month feels like one long night.
all of the search results for “please help, i’m stuck in time following grief and my body and mind still think it’s the same week the shooting happened and i can’t seem to move on, but really what is moving on, like, is it actually possible or am i just kidding myself? asking for a friend btw” all say the same thing- good luck. this is your life now. this is your stupid, unbearable life. you will never feel okay again, but god, what a gift it is to be here feeling terrible instead of being vermicompost. also, here’s a hotline number, just in case you want to feel worse. your friends are annoyed with you and think you’re a burden and a sad sack. this will show you who your true friends really are. the pain will never subside. you’ll likely feel stuck forever, everything will feel wrong forever, this is absolutely permanent, and you’ll just have to live with it. but it’s a gift, really. it’s the most beautiful gift of all.
the questions never stop coming. how are you feeling? what do you need? i know i asked yesterday but how are you feeling today? are you feeling different? are you feeling better? how do you feel now? better? over it? moving on? no? do you feel numb? do you feel angry? which of the five stages of grief would you say you’re exhibiting today? can you rate today’s emotional agony on a scale of 1-10? do you feel better yet? why not? you wrote about it, didn’t you? a few times, right? and that didn’t help? you don’t feel better? i mean, you know you can’t just stay here forever, right? you know you have to move on at some point, right? don’t you know he wouldn’t want you to be stopped in time, stuck in place, sleepwalking through life? don’t you think you should be putting yourself out there and living for him? don’t you think you should feel better by now? why isn’t it helping? are you depressed? are you okay? just okay? why not better than okay? why don’t you feel proud of yourself for what you’ve accomplished out of the wreckage of losing someone so close to you? why don’t you feel better?
i don’t know. i don’t know what the end of this process looks like. i draw my tarot cards and jot down my notes. allegedly, this year will be better. i read my horoscope. allegedly, this year will be better. like the condolences, i think these are only telling me what they think i want to hear. the horoscope for aquarius, november 19th, 2022 reads “today offers a cosmic catalyst for growth” which is a bizarre way to say “your friend will die and the world will cry with you for a few weeks, but you might get a career out of it as long as you can scrape your ass off the floor and put hands to a keyboard and keep writing about how fucking sad you are.”
in the general sense, i don’t know if i am sad. i’m not sure where i fall on the five stages. after daniel’s funeral i explained in my uniquely annoying “as it turns out” kind of way that as it turns out, the five stages were for the individual dying, to come to terms with their impending doom, and not for loved ones experiencing the loss. makes sense. there are no well defined stages. there is no road map. there’s the anger, uncontrollable rage and irritation that i channel into being a terrible friend, as if i needed any help pushing people away at the moment. there’s the periods of manic certainty that i’m better, i’m over it, i’m actually fine with it and everything is okay and i’m going to start a whole new life and get my shit together and start working out and maybe i’ll go on a juice cleanse and i’m totally going to write an entire screenplay in 36 hours because that’s what he would want, you know, he would want me to be living my best life and i totally will. there’s the numbness, a dense fog that settles over everything and makes the world feel like a strange dream, days falling away, and somehow it’s always 4am. there’s the crying, hours at a time of violent, wracking sobs that bruise my knees against the floor and have me shaking and inconsolable and looking anaphylactic. but there’s no pattern or predictability. these phases come and go as they please. i ride out the waves the best i can.
i’ve decided that i don’t want to write about grief anymore, but i don’t know if that’s really up to me. my grief rearranged me in a way that cannot be undone. i can’t stop myself from talking about it, or about him. all roads lead back to him, all threads tied to him, everything forming a spiral with him at the center. i find him in every moment, every sunny day, every cloud, the overheard laugh of a stranger, the profile pictures in my mentions, every 80s song, everything beautiful, everything eviscerating, everything around me.
what do i have left to say, before i dissolve into a scab picking kind of obsession with my own grieving? do i have any stories that need to be told? anything at all left to say that’s worth hearing about? i have one story. it’s not much, but it’ll have to be enough-
i met daniel when i was fifteen years old. i loved him for eleven years. i lost him in two minutes. i didn’t get to say everything i wanted to say to him. i have to live with that.
in a dream, i was walking with him through the streets of a city i couldn’t recognize, arm in arm, smiling and laughing as though nothing had changed. we sat on the ledge overlooking the cityscape, watching the day shift into night and the lights twinkling against the hazy deep blue of the night. we knew it was over. he told me that he had to leave, and i knew i couldn’t stop him. i offered him a book, anne carson’s translation of “an oresteia” most famous for its version of an exchange between plyades and orestes-
P: i’ll take care of you.
O: it’s rotten work.
P: not to me. not if it’s you.
he looked down at the book, a smile warming his face. he shook his head and gave it back to me. “no, i think you’ll need it.” when he gave it back to me, it was a different book- anne carson’s translation of euripedes, titled “grief lessons.”
little shit.