I cannot speak much on your experience with grief— all i can do is write about my own. Days&nights following the day you left. Nights started scaring me. I became petrified of the dark. I was in love with a boy when you left. Even more so than I let on to believe. Myself and others. But he had fears, insecurities&demons, like you, like me, which kept us from getting closer than we dreamt. So alone I would be at night. A tortured soul. And almost as if I flirted with pain, teased it, played cat&mouse , I welcomed it back time&time again… willfully. Had I become some kind of masochist over the years? Not understanding how to recognize love, letting those I love hurt me, continuously coming back time&time again. // “We forgive the ones we want in our lives.”// // “No, love. Grace. Breathe. And give yourself grace. We love&forgive those we want to remain in our lives. You are learning how to not run. Love yourself with grace.”// Grief started shadowing this love, its importance -- it started setting in & selfishness started. But, God. The nights. Did I tell you how scary the nights were? To me. Me. Feeling like a scared five year old girl longing for her mother. Who cannot call her mother. Because of pride? perhaps. Was she dead, too? No. But I had already been mourning her...See her chapter on “mourning the living.” … but the nights became bad missing you. I started drinking every night just to fall asleep. To fill the void I opened my mind to another. Another who filled the void with philosophy, who wasn’t as close to you, so he would not bring you up...sometimes...sometimes… unless he wanted to make me cry. But I let him in. I let him in my mind. &the alcohol, the philosophy, it became a comfort and new stay -- away from the grief of you. It was how I came to cope. How I would get even just a couple hours of sleep each night. I knew it was numbing, I knew it wasn’t healthy for me, but I was grateful -- thankful for it all the same. ...Those nights. God. Even sometimes now they call me. They beckon me to a bar, to find the lingering smell of cigarette smoke...and I follow it. The nights Bub were so bad. Are so bad. I craved just a body next to me. I remember talking to S in anguish about it. Anybody. Just somebody. Just having a body next to me. Like the time after the fire and I was just a moving vessel— when I was completely numb— moving in this space— but I didn’t know what was happening. As if I were seeing everything from above me, but didn’t know what was going on. I slept with my mom weeks after the fire. It was a torment. &the doctors give you those pills to help you numb further, deeper. I admit the first few nights I was screaming, making myself sick enough, throwing up in the shower— but the pills. After the pills set in, you are a walking zombie. And you go into this deep darkness, Nietzsche’s deep abyss, as if you need help being shown how to numb or how to walk through this life disconnected.
But Bub, how is it I was crying and screaming in the shower like a madman? Being in love and still not being able to have him be that person. Be that body beside me. Having someone to just hold me. As if my own demons would allow that either. Maybe not. But at night I craved it. And I told him. I did. I broke. I felt the worst guilt I could ever feel. We were not committed, but we were, and yet I told him I was on the brink of caving— just to have someone there. I felt awful. And guilty. For craving that, for wanting that. But he couldn’t be that. And why? Was our demons the same but different? // “Does that make sense?”// Where we live in a world where we have become so disconnected that we are in love with the ones we run from and sleep next to another just to fill the space. Running away from the ones we truly love because we’re afraid of that pain. The “what if” pain. The pain that hasn’t even happened yet but we know that back in our head— this feels so beautiful and timeless, surely this isn’t ‘earthly’ surely this cannot stay, be real. Surely this isn’t love, right?
And I continued to torture my soul staying in love with this imperfect creature. Who loved me. Who I felt loved me, but pushed me away. And yet I cringed when others touched me, yet craved for someone to hold me. I always knew the alternative. The feeling I felt with C right before we completely were done. When you are lying next to someone but feel so alone. When there is a body there but you feel more alone with a body than that open space. So, what then? You. Me. My demons. I am left choosing between option A or B? Nights all alone with nobody next to me. Or nights alone with a body, a disconnected vessel next to me. To compare loneliness— is it such a thing? … to finally go searching for the comfort and “home” within yourself. When the people you have loved the most in this world, the same people you have let love you— when they leave. Abandon you by choice, death, their own happiness, you finally find the courage to go searching for all that’s left— inside you.