I am overflowing and suffocating. I have felt so stuck, so unable to write. The depression is palpable, the negative bitterness spilling over from what I now see is the deep, crimson and leaded impression of pure rage. I wish I were touching the heat of a brick wall. I could dismantle the structure, feel dirt under my nails and my nails break off as I carved out the chalky and dry mortar to finally throw the bricks. I fantasize about doing this destruction often, of hearing the sound of my Rage as it reverberates off of every horrible, intrusive, and debilitating betrayal I have experienced in my life. It sounds like the heaviest xylophone falling the longest distance. An echo into forever. There is not enough cardio or weightlifting for this. Not enough words. Not enough paint. Not enough weed or alcohol. Not enough walks with Dottie or days by the pool. I am trying to climb the brick wall and the heat is singeing off my flesh, peeling away layers of my hope for the healing here. I can see parts of me stuck to the wall, remnants of my skin left to wither and die unsupported. I go places to get coffee or lunch and wonder: Can everyone here feel my seething? Rage.
Your father wrote a poem about your mother, about his connection to her even since her passing. It was beautiful because your father is a brilliant writer and understands how to articulate longing. I read the poem and, as if reaching through time to put your hand on my shoulder, I felt you. I felt your grief. I felt the way you avoided talking about the loss of your mother. I saw you in her picture and instantly felt every piece of sadness you carried without being able to express it. And I felt your rage. For a vibrant, brief moment, my rage had someone else’s to sit next to. My rage found company. I feel rage thinking about it now. I finally understand this piece of you and you are not here to hold my hand and witness me. You died and I lost my witness. We are two shadows locked in aspects of time some fantasy novel tried to solve before. But love is still not enough in this memoir. I am exhausted having to keep learning this lesson. You died because you drank yourself to death and I cannot write you love poems. The words that come forward are so full of rage. I am scared the Rage will and is changing who I am. It’s like looking at Pandora’s Box and I know I have to open it. What will happen if someone actually sees who I become when I let the Rage come out? Will they still love me? Will I always be the parentified child who is too afraid to trust that people around me can hold all of me? Rage.
I sobbed by the pool as I realized what you must have felt with the loss of your mother. I also sobbed as I simultaneously confronted the jealousy I have of those who can write such poems. I cannot write that poem for you. Not right now. I’m mired in fear that I might never trust anyone again. I am terrified I will be alone forever because not only do I not trust anyone, I do not trust myself. I never have and you did not help me learn how. There is history here. I picked a marriage that failed because the person did not know who they were when they married me. Before that I dated a drug addict in active heroin addiction during our relationship, a fact I did not learn until a decade later. And now you, an addict so steeped in their mental health trauma that you drank yourself to death. You said all the beautiful and correct things I needed to hear so I felt loved and trusted and adored. I wanted to believe your words, but the words of an addict leave an impression and a blank page, disappearing ink. This new version of me is exponentially more skeptical because I did not listen to myself with you. Again. Rage.
I was telling Randy about the Rage, about finding Rage while doing art therapy in my grief support group and about how I feel like I cannot show it to anyone. Randy then told me about the quiet his brain feels since taking an ADHD med. His description of the quiet reminded me of how it was when you started Adderall. It took forever to get the care, but you finally got prescribed last summer after being diagnosed AuDHD. The med made you so clear and you regulated your emotions with ease. You did not drink in secret. There you are, I thought. It felt like I finally had a clear picture of you, of the version of you I created my future with. As I remembered that feeling, I connected to the part of me, the Storyteller, who still feels madly in love with the man I knew was inside you. The man of my dreams. The man who was calm, intelligent, and thoughtful. The man who knew and had pain, but understood how to manage it. Who encouraged me and cheered me on. Who planned their life with me. Who wanted children with me. I feel grateful for this part, for the part of me who reminds me why I stayed. We told a beautiful story together. Until you could not get a renewed prescription because the pharmacies were out of stock. Until you died from the drinking attempting to quiet your overflowing mind. Rage.
If my life were on film, I envision a 5 second clip that shows every warm feeling of us followed by a sprawling image of a deep, dark, cavernous Pit filled with Despair. It’s a horror movie. Aubrey Plaza is right, grief is like trying to navigate The Gorge. How can both versions of us, the good and the bad, exist in my relationship to you? I keep trying to see the depth of the gap, but there is no amount of squinting to make this clearer. I feel crazy when I try to see it all. It is with this thought I remind myself of what I tell clients all the time: “if you’re wondering if you’re crazy, the relationship is probably crazy.” Therapist Me is right.
I keep looking for the words to explain the fragility of all of this, but they elude me. I write something, I read it, I edit, I delete it.
I resided myself to participating in the things I want to, even if I have to go alone. Somewhere inside of me, I know I need to leave my house. I am so bored. I am bored of having edibles and watching tv and reading. I am bored of talking to Dottie, of sending Marco Polos to humans who care about me far away, of feeling like this. I posted recently on r/Widowers about boredom and received the most traffic on a post I ever have. Boredom was not an aspect of Grief I would think to detail, but it’s there. An unofficial stage. We should add it.
The air is thick which feels unique to Chico. At 7:53pm it is still ninety degrees, but it feels warmer because the air is applying pressure to my skin. Humidity 41%. Not as high as in the Southern United States, but high for Chico. We are also on the overcast side of sunny which makes ninety degrees feel softer. The street is quiet. It is a Monday. The students are gone. There is very little wind. And, as I mentioned, the air is thicker than we are used to. No one likes to be outside in thick air. Except me. I am sitting on the balcony while I type this so I can feel the air awaken the cells that alert me to the feeling of density. I have missed moisture and, while different than Seattle’s, this feels comforting. It is a feeling on the outside of me aiding in the distraction from the Maelstrom happening inside of me. I have not felt this disorganized since the weeks after Jeffrey died and I am scared of it. It is consuming. I cannot focus on what I am watching and keep having to rewind things. I cannot read a sentence without rereading it. I drove around my block twice yesterday on accident.
I am trying to live my life outside this apartment, but it is really soul shattering to carry this Grief into spaces and pretend like it is not the entirety of what I am thinking about. I have little to contribute to conversations when meeting new people because the third question after “what is your name?” and “where do you live?” is some version of “what brought you to Chico?”. I am avoiding investment in conversations with strangers because I do not have the capacity to answer this question and hold space for the responses. Do I be honest and tell them my partner died? That answer yields so much variability in responses. It stops conversations. It creates a depth of connection and intimacy with a stranger that is too overwhelming. So, do I lie? Avoid the thing I cannot avoid? This period of my life is the most socially inept I have ever felt and there are very few chapters in my life that do not include a large insecurity of social ineptitude. I run through conversations in my mind, play out the various scenarios and imagine my responses. I imagine how I will feel with each potential answer and then I am so exhausted after casting the entire skit of possibilities, I do not want to leave the house. But I leave the house anyway. I want something, anything in my life to not be about Grief. I keep looking for it. But your absence is in every fucking thing I do. The thickness of this damn air is you.
I cried on my way to Pride. I almost did not attend because I was tired and mired in feeling the loss of you. But I went because I need to live my life and find ways to cope with this. I will keep looking for relief until I exhaust all possible solutions. As I drove to Pride, I Marco Polo’d with my sister and admitted that I was struggling with going because you are not here. I needed someone to know. I am attending this event because you died, and I have to figure out how to live my life now without you. I really cannot adequately explain how absolutely fucked that is.
Chico is small as towns go, so you have to look harder for queer joy than you do in Seattle. Chico Pride was everything I could want it to be. I was so happy to be amongst drag queens, leather daddies, trans joy, and queer love. I wanted to attend because I miss this community. While I identify as cisgender and heterosexual, the LGBT community has always felt like family. Plus, I was married to a woman even if I did not know she was a woman the whole time. There still is not a letter for those of us with that relationship experience. A gap in our language.
I also attended Pride with two objectives: 1) to see if I could find volunteer information with a queer organization and 2) to see if there was a queer therapist collective and introduce myself. I give myself homework when I attend things alone. I have to talk to at least one person I do not know and introduce myself to at least one other person. Two points of contact. These tasks help me mark time and give me something outside of Grief to focus on. I found the therapists first, but I feel like I botched my introduction. I had not practiced what I would say to them and the dysregulation from crying in the car translated into an awkward answer to Question Three. Hopefully they forget I exist by January 2027. That is when I can finally licensed to practice with people in California. I’ll reintroduce myself as a cool potential colleague they should definitely know/work with… I digress. I also got contact information for volunteering, whenever I decide I can do that. I left Pride after an hour, after feeling the fourth drip of sweat fall from my thighs and onto the concrete. I am not acclimated to ninety-six degrees and direct sunlight. I completed my objectives. I was done. I needed to rest before Shakespeare in the Park. I needed to ground.
On Sunday, I attended Bonfire Storytelling, and it destroyed me. On the heels of the day before, I woke up Sunday more mired in my aloneness. I wanted to tell you about Shakespeare in the Park and ask how old you thought the sycamore tree was behind the stage. I wanted to know if you noticed we were sitting under the Big Dipper. I wanted to know if you knew Shakespeare was clearly a feminist based on Beatrice’s Monologue in Act 4, Scene 1. I wanted to know if you felt like Chico was Stars Hallow. We never got to talk about that. But, you were not there on Sunday morning because exactly 7 months before Sunday, I found you on our dining room floor not breathing. You drank yourself to death. At Pride, a woman with resources for suicide awareness told me her husband completed suicide eleven years ago. I answered her “my partner died because of drinking seven months ago and while not the same…” she cut me off and informed me “it’s the same.” I did not and do not disagree although I did not love her telling me what happened to you when I am struggling with it.
I can feel the Maelstrom in what I am writing. This story feels all over the place. There is not a flow to it. And I keep trying to fix that, but I cannot. This story is much like what is happening to me. A choppy series of events with the only common entity being my disoriented and traumatized brain trying to see it all and remember.
While I sat amidst my Sunday Morning Maelstrom attempting to take inventory of which thing to pay attention to, I remembered I spent money on a ticket, that I promised myself to experience my life, that I would regret not going Bonfire. So I went. I cried in the car on the way there. I stood at the edge of the room for a while before deciding to get a glass of wine and find a place to sit. I paid for the wine with cash, not realizing one of the one dollar bills had a “In Trump We Trust” stamp before handing it to the bar tender and feeling like an idiot for having such a ridiculous bill at an event that could not be less interested or less protected by our president. I found an empty seat next to two chairs with fuscia Post-Its that said Marie and Anne. “I bet they are safe”, I said to myself, “those are safe-people names”. Two women with more experience than me took Anne and Marie’s seats. We introduced ourselves. Neither Anne or Marie got to Question Three. I was right. They were safe.
Bonfire Storytelling is structured such that one storyteller represents each decade and tells a story on theme. For this month, a person in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and so on stood on stage to tell a Pride related story to Kiss and Tell. I cried listening to young, new love blossom, to the hopefulness of those who just got married after finding themselves and their person. To the joy of finding gender, sex, and sexuality when so many systems continue to tell them not to do so. I connected to what it felt like to feel hopefulness with you and I cried for everything we will never ever be. For the kids we will never ever have. For the questions I will never ever get to ask you. For all the stories you will never ever tell me. I masked the crying well, wiping tears from my eyes before they fell down my face. I splashed cold water on my face at intermission. I took breaths of fresh, ninety-five degree air.
The final storyteller, Decade 60s, took us through the journey of his life. He described the men he met and was not ready for, the love he looked at, grabbed, and lost. Decade 60s lost his soul mate to AIDS. As he explained grief as being like wearing gloves for protection but missing the feeling of a cold door handle, I audibly lost my breath. Anne (or Marie?) gave me a tissue. It soaked up every tear as I listened to Decade 60s explain what it is like to feel what I am feeling. To feel emptiness and weight as you move about the world. To miss Before and resent After. Then, he explained the part I do not have experience with yet, the one I keep wondering about, and am scared of. He explained what it is like to find love again but still have a hole limiting the ability to truly experience lightness as you did Before. This was the part that broke me the most. This man was so much further along in his grief journey, but still so present with its atrocity. This [motions to the space around her] is really never going away. This is forever. You died. And I am never going to be in a life without you. In fact, if I do this right, I will live more of my life without you, than I did with you. I am not getting happily ever after. I am getting [motions all around her more frantically] this. His story ended and I took inventory of how many others were crying. Quite a few, but not in the way I was. They were crying in a fear of that loss, in an extrapolation, not in the reality of it’s tessellation. There is a very big difference.
The musical guests, vocalist Andrew Kinley and pianist Vianna Boring, performed two songs for us to complete the show. The first song was Rise Up by Andra Day. And no, I cannot make this shit up. For those who do not know the lyrics to this song, I included them below. Listening to the liquid nature of Andrew’s voice as these words wrapped around me was once in a lifetime. I feel like all I need is hope, but I am struggling to find it. I am supposed to be rising up, and I am, but I do not feel lighter or better for it. I feel emptiness all the time, even while sitting in a room full of people who probably know this feeling better than anyone. For as much as there is Queer Joy, there is Queer Grief. In some ways, the grief is what makes the joy so much more palpable.
The final song was Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Again, I really cannot make this up. Where is the proverbial knife twisting inside my body? Why, or why, can’t I?
I cried the entire drive home. I cried as I parked and sent Heather a Marco Polo of me crying, of how horrible I was feeling. I cried as I thought about how many people I will inevitably to have to help and guide to understand this feeling because I am learning a lesson at 36 most people my age will not learn until they are much older than we are now. I cried because this is so unfair.
I got it together enough to walk Dottie around the block for her final outing. We took our time. She has become very leash reactive and does not seem to trust me while on a walk. I am really working on retraining with her because I know I can do better. And while I feel like an utter failure of a pet parent, I think I can be a good dog mom. As we rounded a corner toward the backside of the block, a rainbow hovered above Bidwell Park. Because the air was thick and the sun was setting, light beams refracted color. I laughed before I started crying again. I wondered if I was bleeding out from that proverbial knife. There was nothing about yesterday that would let me escape your loss. It was everywhere I went. As if I could forget about it. As if I have a choice in the matter.
I am starting to understand more deeply why people become addicts. Anything but this constant barrage is starting to seem appealing. And when I imagine a lifetime of you not being here, I start to wonder what I am doing this for. Then I have the first edible I have had in a couple weeks, watch an episode of Love Island, and go to bed at 9pm to start over again the next day. Maybe tomorrow will be different.
Rise Up by Andra Day
You’re broken down and tired Of living life on a merry go round And you can’t find the fighter But I see it in you so we gonna walk it out And move mountains We gonna walk it out And move mountains
And I’ll rise up I’ll rise like the day I’ll rise up I’ll rise unafraid I’ll rise up And I’ll do it a thousand times again And I’ll rise up High like the waves I’ll rise up In spite of the ache I’ll rise up And I’ll do it a thousand times again
For you For you For you For you
When the silence isn’t quiet And it feels like it’s getting hard to breathe And I know you feel like dying But I promise we’ll take the world to its feet And move mountains Bring it to its feet And move mountains
And I’ll rise up I’ll rise like the day I’ll rise up I’ll rise unafraid I’ll rise up And I’ll do it a thousand times again
For you For you For you For you
All we need, all we need is hope And for that we have each other And for that we have each other And we will rise We will rise We’ll rise, oh, oh We’ll rise
I’ll rise up Rise like the day I’ll rise up In spite of the ache I will rise a thousand times again And we’ll rise up High like the waves We’ll rise up In spite of the ache We’ll rise up And we’ll do it a thousand times again
I keep seeing posts shared by people I know (or follow) about how horrible their 2024 has been. Every time I see them, I feel a sense of relief and think “Oh, wow! Someone else who also had a horrible year.” I have this brief moment of allyship with a person online who also feels about 2024 the way I do. It has been a horrible year.
Then, in the same instant of recognizing the feeling of relief that anyone knows my pain, I remember the people I know (or follow) are no longer in the same universe as me. These posts about Horrible 2024 are from people still in a world of “Before the Worst Possilble Moment” in their life. I am 42 days into the underworld of “After the Worst Moment” of my life. I trust they definitely did have a horrible year, but mine has not been just horrible, it has been the worst. I used to think I knew the worst possible thing that could happen to me, and then I found Jeffrey not breathing on my dining room floor.
Every time these moments transpire, I catch myself taking a deep inhale because I stopped breathing. The realization of my otherness literally takes my breath away. I have read about this in so many stories and I have so much training in trauma’s impact on the body. Yet this experience is surreal and out of body in a way I have never known. I feel like a scratched CD repeating myself as I attempt to understand what the fuck is happening to me. There are so few words that can explain the confrontation of loss and I desperately want to find them. I wish I could scream into an abyss so I could feel the echo of this pain reverberate throughout my body. Maybe a sound bath of my pain could give me a sense of the dimension and scale of it. Instead, I am laying here buried by grief, many feet under a mountain I cannot see around or across, searching for a wisdom I never wanted to know.
A Natalie Observed 