Hangin' Out With Grief

The adventures of me and my new companion

[hanginoutwithgrief]

A Letter to Grief

Do you remember the day we met? You were a bank of grey clouds, rolling forward, swallowing everything in your path. I was running home, running from you, and I felt the pressure of you at my back. You pushed against me, so hard that all of me broke into a million tiny jagged pieces. Your clouds swirled and danced around the pieces of me, caught the biggest one, and embedded me into the center. You wrapped me up in a rainbow and I held it to my eyes until I cried myself to sleep and woke up lost inside your clouds, far away from where I was Before. I tried to find my way back, but you just stood there, swirling around me, and there was no way out. I think you knew I needed you.

Do you remember April? You were a hurricane, wild and frantic and so heavy. We were at a long marble table speckled with birthday balloons and a flock of people coming and going around our thick blanket of black clouds. I smiled and you screamed, I laughed and your raging wind stung my eyes and made me cry. It was too bright, you cried, too bright against our stormy backdrop and you said if I took you home, we could turn the lights off and if I lied on my side you’d tuck me into the sheets, you’d fold yourself over me and keep me safe and we could dream of Before for as long as we wanted. That day still sits on the crown of my head, and I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive you for it.

Do you remember July? You were a roaring wave, sometimes mighty and terrified and you’d push me down into wet gravely sand, but you always let me go and pulled me back up. Sometimes you broke before you hit the shore and you’d gently lap at my feet. We were free falling, free from the pressure of time and we ran down an endless path, invincible to the mysteries it held, just you and me in a watercolor sunset and we’d run for miles until we were lost in the jungle. We met a princess with golden locks and she drove us home with the top down and the wind in our hair and she came inside with us and danced with us in the kitchen. I asked her if she was afraid of you and she wrapped us both in a quilt and gave us a kiss on the forehead and one of her t-shirts before she flew away. I took you to the beach and I tossed you into the ocean and you drifted away with the other waves like you’d been there the whole time. We strolled through drifting storms and collected brightly colored drinks and someone painted me black and gold and green and we paraded through the streets wearing nothing but paint and confidence. You ask me if I'll plant you back there, amongst the other waves, and I tell you, yes, one day; just hold on a little longer.

Do you remember August? You were a dark storm, pouring rain with loud claps of thunder. It was hot and bright and we were on a boat and the music was pulling everyone in but you. I sat in the sun under your cloud, begging you to stop bleeding all over everything. Finally, I made you a bandage out of tequila and lime juice and I breathed you out in a sigh of relief, and for the first time in the After, I was light enough to dance on my bare feet. You brewed in the corner watching me, until the boat rocked you to sleep. The day ended, I gathered your sleeping form in my sunburnt arms and we walked under a velvety black summer sky. There was a joke made at my expense and I pretended to be insulted but I couldn’t help the laugh that escaped me, an arm went over my shoulder into a sweet hug, a playful touch on my abdomen and you swelled with contentment. You remind me of that day often. “Will I ever sleep like that again?” you ask me. I tell you I hope so.

Do you remember October? You were a steady downpour, fast, fat droplets, but we found a magic crystal, rosy pink with flecks of silver, and it smelled like sage and cardamom and when I held it, the rain would roll like velvet down my skin. You begged me for a cold cheap beer to drown you in but instead I strapped you to my wrist and I pulled you into my bubble on roller skates clutching my magic crystal so I wouldn't fall. I fell anyway, and I heard you laugh, a real laugh. I felt you let me go for the first time and you danced around me. You collected that day like a trophy.

Do you know where we are now? You're a grey whisp of a cloud, a glittering fog overhead. We're in a big bright bubble. The light doesn't hurt you anymore.

You have an opinion on everything. I can’t pick out a pair of socks without you telling me what you think. You seep into my joy and my fear. Roads that were once downhill slopes climb up steeply, where they were once empty and free of obstacles you've pushed large rotting trees into the path. But out of the rot, you still bloom flowers for me. You push the branches aside and you swim right under me. Your current formed and shaped me into a sturdy mountain.

You marvel at every detail. I appreciate your wonder. You study every bead of rain, every streak of light in the sky, every shape the moon makes. Because of you, the grass sings to me. The wind tells me its secrets. Sometimes I wonder if you came from heaven.

If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell anyone? I don’t want you to disappear. I don’t want to lose you. I want to run with you in the sun until you melt down into a silver puddle, and then I want to bottle you up and embed you right in the middle of me. I think you might need me now.

[hanginoutwithgrief]

What’s it like hanging out with grief?

When my grief first showed up, it was like I suddenly had this companion I didn’t ask for, who never leaves and never stops talking. So I personified it and wrote about what it’s been like hanging out with her, with grief, and how she’s changed as the time goes on.

8 days

It’s dark because I can’t keep my eyes open, but I’m sure that there’s someone else here. She is a wild raging storm, each wave bigger than the last, and she feels like sorrow and fear and shame and comfort all layered together. She says she wants to look at photos of me before she got here, she likes looking at maps of all the places I visited without her. She seems to especially like the small beach town and the squatty building with the green roof where there was fresh fish and frosty mugs of beer. I show her pictures and read her letters for hours and then I sleep just to make her shut up but waking means she’s there to shake me as soon as the lights come on, hysterically crying that we’re in a car that’s about to crash and I tell her it was just a bad dream but I feel it too and I’m trapped there in the car screeching forward with the threat of slamming into a brick wall but it never happens and somehow that’s scarier.

47 days

She’ll talk to anyone, she’ll talk about anything. It’s like a drug to her, like she’s gasping for breath and the first sound of another voice is sweet fresh air. But amongst the debris of small talk and work chit chat and passers by who want to look at my tattoos, she grabs hold of the pieces that stick, the reminders that we’re still alive, like my sisters and I running on the beach and shrieking in delight as the waves knock us about, relishing the few minutes we have in every bubble of humanness before it’s just us again.

54 days

I find something that looks like joy; there are people and food and people throwing food and it feels like a party. It smells of sugar and honey and fake chocolate and sweat. I watch a spoonful of silky white vanilla pudding sail past my head, landing on someone’s face with a satisfying plop. Laughter escapes me; she gently tugs my hand. I ignore her and grab a fistful of bright pink cake and squishing it in my hands before smashing it onto a pair of sunburnt shoulders. The owner of the shoulders laughs, I laugh, I cackle. I feel her let go of my hand and leap swiftly into the air and settle into the middle of my chest like a boulder. I laugh again but it’s harder this time.

79 days

She slept for the first time today, tucked away in my pocket while I ran down a sloping hill, the wind picking up my hair behind my head, cool and soft and real. The wind on my face and the concrete under my new stiff running shoes are the realest things I have felt since she first got here. I can’t wait until tomorrow when I can bound along the hills again like a baby gazelle and lull her to sleep. I take myself to the store and I even manage to hum along to the song playing overhead and then I turn the corner and there’s a wall of stacked yogurt cups and in my pocket she snaps her eyes open and flies out and she wails the loudest she’s wailed all day and I wail with her until I am soaked with tears and I say “yogurt? really? why?” and she says does it matter? It doesn’t.

105 days

She is wild. She is like a feral teenager, rebelling for the sake of rebellion, dashing out into the world in front of moving traffic just to see what happens.

We leave in the middle of the night to meet strangers. We dance with them, shirtless, sweaty, in leather harnesses and spiked collars, under flashing lights and forming tight circles together so we can dance into each other and hold each other tight until there’s barely room for air between us.

She says we’ve never been to church. Let’s try that. We go to church. Someone wants to pray for me and I agree mostly so she can hear another voice and feel the hand on my shoulder and get her fix, but in the end it’s like everything else, a small bandage over an endless black hole and I worry if they get too close they’ll find her and they’ll never pray for me again.

118 days

I slip her into my pocket to sleep like I did when I ran and I go outside with friends and the grass is soft and there’s sweet frozen margaritas and loud laughter and some of it is mine and today it doesn’t hurt to laugh until someone points to the tuft of grey clouds peeking out of my pocket and they ask what’s that? I reach in slowly and pull her out and I cry and apologize for bringing her there and my shame and guilt and embarrassment cover me, and with soft words and downcast eyes they reach into their own pockets and they pull out their own storms, their broken hearts, and they hand them to me and for once she and I are not alone.

140 days

Each place I visit she tells me she can see a still silhouette frozen in time, two shadows hung over that table in the corner, clasping hands and sitting nose to nose, and the shadows reach out and grasp her until she can’t breathe. I watch her pack my life up, frantically half filling bent up cardboard boxes and preparing to take me somewhere where it will just be me and her and a city full of palm trees and faces who don’t know who I am and can’t see my shame or the storm that follows in step beside me.

She puts me on a long stretch of road, I don’t know what’s on the path but I know at the end of it, the air is salty and the sun is unbearable and the water always smells faintly of sewage, the roads are flat and the summers are forever and there are no frozen shadows, the car veers back on track and isn’t doomed to crash anymore and she shrinks, from a swirling hurricane to a slow rolling wave, breaking on the shore, lapping at my feet instead of pulling me into the storm.