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I feel fake.

I just e-mailed with a friend of mine from Los Angeles. She asked me to look at her portfolio and give her my critique on her work. I did it.

There are a few pieces I found particularly moving so I e-mailed her my excited commentary on her work.

Her husband fought on the front lines in Iraq. He just returned home a short while ago after watching young men, like himself, get shot and killed right next to him.

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I have suddenly become angry and I’m not entirely sure why.

Maybe I’m angry because he came back to her. Maybe I’m angry because she used to complain about him all of the time and she still got to get him back. Maybe I’m still angry at Los Angeles. Actually, there is no maybe about it. I still hate L.A. and I’m still very much in pain over the fact that the last few years of my and Chris’ life together were tarnished by misery, the misery of living in a city we both hated, the misery of being diagnosed with cancer, the misery of chemo therapy and of the loss of control and of the loneliness of coping with a disease that was growing inside of him, eating him alive and stripping him of his right to have choices.

I’m still not touching upon why I am angry . Have I so successfully suppressed my grief that even I cannot find it? I like suppression. It works. It’s helping me. I have heard it said that suppression is a way of coping, but I don’t think so. I think it spares me from having to cope at all. I don’t have to deal now. I like this. I’m scared of it, but I like it. It’s better than crying all of the time.

Today, I took a really long walk after work, through Boston Common, The Public Garden and the Esplanade. On my way through the common, my eyes fixed on the grass, I saw a shadow on the ground coming toward me. In a millisecond, I came to believe that Chris was walking toward me. My heart jumped and my entire chest cavity filled with excitement and so much love and I felt seconds away from running toward him and embracing him. I felt the love I would feel if that really happened. My entire soul collapsed the way it did in the hospital when his doctor told us the surgery went well and that they got all of the cancer out of him. Joy is what I felt and abandonment of fear and sadness.

I didn’t realize that I was the least bit moved by that little jaunt into my own wishful fantasy until right this minute, four hours afterwards.

I feel encased. Safe but not satisfied, like something is unfinished.

I’ll have to remember to ask Clay if he thinks it’s possible to toggle between suppression and emotion at will.