[su-sur-rus]

If you asked me three years ago, I'd tell you i was going to die before i was thirty. I was sure of it. I made it past 25, but no way i make it to 30.

When you suffer from suicidal ideation for extended periods of time it is funny to experience optimism again.

It can take many forms. But my favorite is the moments that i am reading about current events, and i think to myself "i wonder how I'll remember this when I'm ninety".

Sometimes when i can tell that people are feeling bogged down by the weight of everything, when we're so deep in the well that the light is almost completely gone. I like to say that i sometimes think about how i will remember this when i am ninety. That i wonder how I'll feel about who i was and what was happening.

That i think about that, too, when I'm feeling sublime. When I've had a day that was so wonderful i feel like I've snorted sunshine. I wonder which of the random, inconsequential, moments of beauty in my life will prove to be a distinct snapshot of serenity. One that flashes through my mind when it drifts.

Im kinder to myself. Kinder to the person i was. Kinder to the person i am. Kinder because i know that the person i will be is kinder.

I take more photos, i write more poetry, i engage in things that interest and delight me. Because i am excited for the nostalgia i will feel when 30 years have passed, and i have all of these memories.

Why wouldn't i want to fill them with joy and love and compassion and curiosity and beauty?

[su-sur-rus]

I worry and I worry and all I can do is tell you everything I know.

[su-sur-rus]

I only know how to be adored the way i have been adored.

Left for last. Take and take and take and i am so happy for you. So. Happy. For you.

We can do lunch/breakfast/dinner/coffee whenever. I'm down for whatever. Whenever. Really, whenever. Whatever you need.

We'll talk about that show we almost saw. Or that trip we almost took. We can unpack and analyze. Get into the nitty gritty that rubs you raw when the days turn long, and life is real. Whatever, really, whatever. Whenever you need.

I am your muse. I am the muse. I am someone i am no one. I am i am i am.

Paint me pretty in your pictures, imagine me singing when you play. I am here. I am there. I exist in your mind like a prayer statue to the old gods. You'll never know me, but gods, how you'll make tribute when your blessings run dry.

[su-sur-rus]

Smoking a cigarette, listening to jazz, stretching on the small landing of my apartment stairs. I am imagining myself as a character in a Hitchcock knock off. The sun has finally peaked out from behind the foggy gray of this mid January day. It'll be cool again tonight. It will be foggy in the morning. And the morning after.

The fear of what else will come tomorrow creeps up in my throat while I make pleasantries at my desk during breakfast.

"of course I have some towels, of course I'll put you down for a full clean, of course I'll have maintenance take a look at your deadbolt"

Of course. Of course. Of course.

Dry heaving in the employee bathroom. Stepping away to contemplate the weight of the headlines between phone calls.

And when I get home I will drink and I will write. Or else, drink and stare off into space.

Sometimes I wonder about the way I'll feel about it when I'm 90.

"I'm sorry I cannot figure out how to connect you to the wifi" "I'm sorry the ac didn't cool you enough"

"I'm sorry that every nightmare you ever had came true"

Please drive safe.

It's pea soup out there.

[su-sur-rus]

Sometimes you need to sit down and shut up and take five to listen to Take Five.

[su-sur-rus]

I'm just saying, i think we'd all be a lot happier if we all took life as seriously as we took death. And treated death as beautifully as we treat life.

[su-sur-rus]

It bothers me that we talk about grief so much, but we never seem to actually talk about grieving.

Death is the single most unifying experience. It's coming. And we all know this. Yet we treat it like the boogeyman. We discuss it in polite, hushed, whispers. Or weaponize it in loud, thunderous, threats. We dramatize it. Parody it. We try to defy it with weird experimental treatments that make us look as if a terrifying wax figure of a child suddenly came to life while simultaneously aging 40 years.It's headlines and think pieces. Arguments and conspiracy. It's everywhere. It's coming. And we all know this.

I do think that when you strip it down to the bone, that grief is the death of hope.

Too many people ask me what the appropriate and proportionate response to the death of hope is. How they can stop inconveniencing and burdening the people in their life with their intense emotions regarding it. When it stops.

I know that, to an extent, these are questions without answers.

It still makes me sad that we have allowed grief to become something that sits on the back burner until it boils over into an unmanageable and sticky mess that could potentially, permanently, damage the stove.

You are going to respond how you respond. And it is likely that it will be different every, single, time. Sometimes it may take a moment to hit. Sometimes it feels more devastating than you anticipated, and you don't know why. It may take days or weeks or years to move past the worst of it. Even then, the intensity may ebb and flow until you, yourself, are dead. You will be emotional. You will need support. Maybe in ways you've never felt you've needed before. That is another unifying human experience. It comes fresh out of the womb right along with you. No one gets to an age where they can have a crisis without having already experienced the support of someone else. It is okay to burden your loved ones. It is okay to need the same way it is okay to be needed. Everyone encounters a stranger having a bad day. It is okay to sometimes be that stranger. It is not something you can do right or wrong. It just is. We will all bumble our way through the varying intensity of what it is to die, because that is what it is to live.

I understand that grief is an experience that is quantified more in terms of what it takes, over what it could give. That it is more profitable and convenient when it is treated as a leave of absence from one reality with a strict deadline for coming back to another.

But what if it could be something we embraced warmly?

We could take turns tending the burner, stepping in before the pot could even move past a simmer. It could be celebrated as an opportunity to be needed. We could rest and heal in the graceful arms of understanding. What if we talked about grieving the way we talk about grief?

[unscriptd-deactivated20260317]

Apartment Dwellers on New Year's Eve (1948) John Falter