I am angry today. I spent time on the phone with my medical insurance company because the ability to pay my bill online is disabled. “You’re account is not eligible for autopay.” That does not make sense. After an entire hour, they still have not fixed it. This is medical insurance I pay $590/month for that I have yet to even use because I am so mired in my Grief, adulting tasks like finding, calling and making doctor appointments are difficult. Medical insurance is a scam. I feel conflicted on principal that I pay for it because $590 could technically go to savings to pay for my medical bills out of pocket. But [insert life-altering illness, aging, and other unforeseen concerns here] could happen. So, I cannot just save the money. $590 fucking dollars a month it is. On a website that will not let me pay it.

I am angry today. I sat with a client as they detailed what is absolutely, unmistakably domestic violence. This is not an unusual event. My job requires I sit with people as they navigate power in relationships. As they navigate the ridiculous system our society set up that says women must remain compliant to have their dreams come true. Ironically the same compliance that allows women’s rights to be taken away. A society that says men do not know better than anger and sex. That they cannot help it. It is enraging. Recently, on the Armchair Expert, Dax Sheppard explained to a guest being on safari and feeling afraid of a lion approaching him. Monica Padman, his cohost, quickly chimed in “that’s how women feel in every elevator they ever go in.” A-fucking-men, Monica. Amen. That is how I feel every time I am anywhere alone with a man I do not know. The fact part of my job is navigating a balance between advocating for a woman’s absolute agency and value while also not creating shame that could scare her away from a connection of stability outside the relationship (me)… it is just too much. Except it is not too much. I am here doing it, somehow making space for the imbalances and trying to right them. Because women need it. We need guardians looking out for us, whispering that we are enough, reminding us that boundaries exist… that he is crossing them.

I am angry today. Before you died, you got stuck in fear of the election. You could not stop talking about what would happen when they got rid of Disability, Medicaid, and Medicare. The election was Tuesday, and I found you on our dining room floor on Friday. That week, I focused on the overwhelm of my job, on making space for everyone to process their anxiety about the election, their anxiety about the world. When I did see you, if you were awake and not passed out from what I now know was a lot of drinking, you were stuck on services being taken away. Psychosis? PTSD? I do not know. I will never know. “I’m never going to make it”, you kept saying. “He will destroy my ability to live”. In hindsight, the irony to your stuckness is layered. YOU destroyed your own ability to live, you did not give our government a chance to. I know you well enough to know that Part of you feels shame about how you died. Knowing your shame devastates me. Shame kept you drinking. Shame kept me thinking you would get better. Shame caused you to dysregulate and get angry for existing. Shame destroyed our dream of a life together. The second layer of irony is in watching a lot of your fears come true this week. I feel relief you are not seeing what is happening now, all the cuts to public programs. I feel relief because I know it must be nice to not have to care about this crap anymore. And, if I’m honest, instead of caring for you while you mismanage your emotions, I am sitting on my balcony in this 96-degree heat typing this anger, surrendering it to the universe. It is so hot, there is no difference between the temperature of the air and my skin. I only distinguish the two by the differing sensation of a slight breeze, Dottie’s licks, and a flutter of a gnat’s wings on my arm.

I am angry today. I told my dad tonight that it is a privilege to be concerned with the problems of the world. It is a privilege to be able to leave your home, pay your bills, and find energy to staple yourself back together every day. A privilege to post online about children in Gaza and the bullshit in our country right now. I am angry at how many people will never understand this privilege and take it for granted. I now feel like I understand how much you understood the privilege of living. I wish I could have seen you in your loneliness while you were still here. I saw loneliness, but I did not know it. I know loneliness better now. It took your death to teach me. Irony again. Anger.  

I am angry today. Last week, I talked to you out loud for the first time. I felt desperately sad as I lay in the bottom of my mud Grief hole looking 20 stories up to maybe see a glimpse of your outline. I asked you why you left me here. Why you did this to me. Between large gulping sobs, I asked you why you could not be here for me as the person who knows me best. Why you have not been talking to me. Why you are not in my dreams. As I spoke, my body convulsed, and my heart erupted in my chest. 166 bpm. I yelled out in pain, in physical pain from my loss of you. Dottie darted under the bed because the sounds scared her. In my breakups, I still feel the energy of where that person was in my life. People talk about feeling their loved ones after they die, of feeling connected to them. But with you, nothing. You died and left me here and I cannot feel you anymore. I feel totally abandoned by you. I do not know where to put that. The abandonment. When I see it, Part of me asks “How will anyone ever love all the mess you are now.” The question breaks me. I sob more. I would rather be alone forever than ever, ever do this kind of loss ever again. I was afraid when you first died of how your death would change me. And here I am, afraid of meaningful connection because it could lead to loss. What a very sad place to be.

I am angry today. I got stuck on how to write this piece and have been avoiding writing as a result. Do I keep writing to you and keep you in the room? Or do I write about Jeffrey and remove you? Do I talk to Jeffery about talking to him out loud? Or write about talking to Jeffrey out loud? I do not know right now. One keeps you here with me. The other forces a reckoning I am really struggling to understand is even a possible reality in my life. Sometimes I feel like I will be stuck here forever. Stuck between living and dying.  

I am angry today because I am so fucking devastated. By everything. Going through the loss of Jeffrey has really shown me how much unprocessed grief there is in our world. I wish we all had more space for our Grief, whatever version of it we are navigating, so mine would not feel so alone. No one ever talks about their Grief unless they have had a loss like mine. And very, very few people have. The lack of Grief in our conversations feels like a language we are missing as a society.

Grief is embodied. I have to release it and work with it somatically. It lives in everything I am doing, in every outing, in every client session, in every meal. But I live in a society that avoids the body, and therefore avoids Grief, by staying in the mind, distracted by devices, loaded with substances, and removed from nature. Surviving trauma requires severing messages from the head to the body so the brain can make decisions to help a person stay alive. This severing allows a compounding ignorance of the Grief our bodies so desperately need to process in order to expand our understanding of the universe. We ignore the Grief and continue to falsely believe we can think our way through the feelings of isolation, anxiety, and disconnection. A vicious spiral downward. I see unprocessed Grief at the root of so many problems. It is everywhere. And we need to make more space for it. The world will feel tilted and uneven until we do. It is only in Grief, that we gain intimate understanding about the value of living. Of connecting. And we are missing it.

I am angry today.