Fun Times

Stuck. Stuck, stuck, stuck. That’s what I am this week.

I know I just got through saying that when I don’t write for a while, it means that I have been happy. However, this time around, I didn’t write because I was extremely exhausted from another foray into the black hole that is grief.

Like a battered woman, I smiled my way through the days this past week, and nobody suspected a thing, partially because my bruises are invisible and partially because it’s too uncomfortable for most people to think that I might still be grieving over some guy who died nine months ago. Or maybe it's just my own fear that they think that.

I’m still grieving. It’s NOT in my past. It’s very much a part of my present and probably always will be in some capacity. That asshole was wrong.

Most of the time I feel as though I’m living on the edge of a waterfall, trying like hell to swim into it and stop the water from carrying me over, slamming me into the rapids below. I have lived in those rapids for such a long time. I’m just trying to get away and swim up, up, up to where the river is calm. But these days, my salty river of tears is the only thing that calms me.

This past few weeks, I accidentally overextended myself. I took an accelerated course, accepted a role in a play, worked full time and prepared for an orchestra audition all while doing the every day mundane activities of a forced bachelorette. I put off writing my paper and studying for my final exam until two days before the paper was due and the exam was scheduled. That’s why I stayed at work studying until 7:30 Tuesday night.

When I left the building, it was dark. I began walking up the street toward the orange line station and suddenly I was overcome with debilitating grief. Something about the cold air is really going to destroy my sanity this year. I love it, but it’s really sad to me now. I began to have rapid recall of the events leading up to Chris’ diagnosis. The buildings looked the same way they looked back then; cold, threatening, cruel structures. I began to lose my ability to take a breath in and I really had to concentrate to keep myself from crying.

I called Carol, just to hear a warm voice in my ear. Carol has a way with grounding me. The moment she answered, the fight ended for me. I cried into the phone, “I’m having a panic attack.” and she stayed with me all the way up Summer Street until it turned to Winter Street. I admitted to her that I wasn’t going into the train station, that I was on my way to the common to visit my and Chris’ trees, the ones we got married under. Sometimes I just need to go there. Carol said she was staying on the phone with me if I was going to the common because it was dark out and I probably shouldn’t have been going there alone in the dark.

Sometimes I just feel destructive.

Suddenly, I did an about-face and headed for the train station. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I realized that I had, on some level, felt as though Chris was going to be under the trees waiting for me. I wanted him to be there. I dream of a day when I see him and we embrace each other again. I’ll never let go of him, again.

I rode the orange line home, once again fighting to hold the tears back at least until I got off of the train and back into the shadows where we grievers belong.

I hyperventilated and cried the for the duration of the ten-minute walk to my apartment. Fun times.