A Natalie Observed

Tag: ptsd

  • Grief Goblins

    Tonight I finished the third season of Lincoln Lawyer. We started it when you were alive, finished the first episode but did not get further. I really enjoy this show and I so enjoyed hypothesizing the scenarios for the ending with you. I know the cases will all come together, that the cast of characters and a pug will figure out how to get the innocent person saved. But I never know how the saving will unfold and am always pleasantly surprised.

    As another intense cliff hanger ended the season, I felt the strongest urge to know what you thought about it. My brain imagined asking you. Tears started to form in my eyes as I felt the missing of you, the intense empty space where you used to sit on our couch. Then, at the exact moment I registered how much I missed you, I also felt a feeling that caused my heart to heat up and I knew immediately what it was. I felt the feeling of love and the glow of adoration for you. I have not felt that feeling in so long, I think I forgot about it. It was… everything. The brightest, softest and briefest light. I tried to sit in the feeling but as brilliant as it felt, it faded, the grief goblin taking his fill.

    Registering the warmth, I started crying in deep sobs disturbing enough for Dottie to come lay on my chest and start incessantly licking my face. She somehow knows the distraction will help me to catch my breath, to start focusing on breathing. I do what I do when she does this and start counting breaths in and out, keeping rhythm while I pet her so I can attempt to relax both of us. It works.

    Lately during my Peloton workouts, I start sobbing on the bike, mid-workout. I cannot really figure out why, although I know it makes sense that it is happening. The crying is never at the same time, during the same style workout, or triggered by something said. I’ll be climbing some hill, out of breath, sweaty, and trying to beat the fastest person even though I never do, and an overwhelming feeling of sadness consumes me. And, no, I am not describing a feeling that believes “this is so good I am crying”. My crying is a feeling whispering in a mothering voice, “this life has been so incredibly difficult for you. And that part, the part of it being so difficult is really, really sad.” I find this entire experience confusing. Why while working out, during my endorphins capture, is my body releasing the darkest of feelings? I cannot even work out without Grief saying hello? Really?

    I told my therapist today I have a very strong instinct to feel this experience I am having, that I do not want to biohack my grief. There are so many somatic therapies that could and probably eventually will help me heal the trauma living within me. But part of me just knows I need to feel all of this, to study its impact on me, to learn what my body can do to heal itself and help me through this. Sometimes I feel like that is positive side of losing you, even though that feels incredibly horrible to say. Is there a positive side of any of this? If there is, it is that I am getting to know myself in a way I never would have without you dying. It is humbling, to say the very least. I told my therapist it is ironically the least anxious I have ever felt. Go fucking figure.

  • Five Seconds

    I keep trying to remember the details of what happened when I found you on the dining room floor, but I cannot remember it all and it is frustrating. I walked in, I found you on the floor. I called emergency services. I told them you were not breathing, my name, and my address. The first person transferred me to another person. I told the new person you were not breathing, my name, and my address. It seemed like a waste of time to repeat myself, but there was no time to question it. The person on the phone talked me through how to do CPR and counted with me as I pressed as hard as I could on your chest. I remember them telling me to speed up a bit and I followed their guidance. I remember hearing the sirens. I remember Dottie’s scared, shaky body under the dining table. I remember the man standing with me in the kitchen documenting every action taken on a laptop. I remember all of our furniture strewn about the apartment, part of the coffee table in the kitchen and another part behind the couch. I remember the dining table shoved against a wall. I remember one paramedic opening our windows to let in the cool November air.  I remember them hanging an IV bag from the hook in the middle of our ceiling. The hook was used for a blanket fort, I explained to everyone in the room who could hear me because for some reason I felt I needed to explain a hook in the middle of the ceiling. Cringe.

    I remember your vomit still on the floor where I found you. I remember them calling out to each other as each round of CPR and electric stimulation to your heart completed. I remember questions about what I knew about your circumstances. I remember listing out all your medications and health conditions, your age, and family history. I remember telling them the things I knew about the timeline, that you had been depressed and anxious with the election, that you were drinking more. I remember telling them sincerely I was not aware of any drinking other than the half-empty pint bottle on our dining table when I found you. That the amount of alcohol I found did not make sense for what I was seeing. I did not know then how many bottles I would find around our home when I moved. I did not know you lied to me as much as you did.

    I remember texting my mom, dad, Heather, and Randy that I found you not breathing. I remember one paramedic yelling down to someone in one of the two fire trucks that they had recovered a heartbeat, that they needed a gurney. I remember my mom calling as I told a different paramedic which medications you were taking, that I was sure you took them because I checked the pill sorter and Friday Morning was gone. I remember sending my mom to voicemail and texting her that I could not talk. I remember seeing Scott, our apartment manager, standing in the hallway and him mouthing to me “is everything okay?”. I remember telling him things were not okay. I remember a paramedic telling me they would need to take you to the emergency room, that I could ride in the ambulance. I remember debating whether I needed to grab my backpack or not and deciding to take it with me.

    I remember so many things. So many. But I do not remember how emergency services got inside our home. Did I let them in? If I let them in, that means I stopped CPR on you. Would that have happened? Did I stop trying to save you to let other people try to save you? Did I leave the door unlocked? It does not shut without the deadbolt, and I cannot imagine a habit I formed after eight years of locking that door did not happen on this day. But then again, I do not remember letting anyone in. So maybe I intuitively left it unlocked. Maybe they let themselves in through magic EMTness? I do not remember the seconds after I stopped CPR and someone took over. I remember them bringing you from the dining room to the living room, but not how they got to you. It bothers me. I wake up in the middle of the night and think about it. How did the emergency response team get inside? It could not be more than five seconds of time. Five seconds that continue to haunt me alongside everything else.

    Recently during a session with a client, they processed how nice it was to sleep separately from their partner. As they detailed the deepness of their sleep, the ability to read instead of watch television, I asked questions to help them develop more insight into the benefits of sleeping solo. Then, with the sharpness of a shard of glass, a flashback of you reaching across the bed to touch my shoulder as I tossed and turned interrupted my focus. The heat of tears filled my eyes. I pinched my arm with my fingernails, attempting to refocus on my client. I took deep, intentional, counting breaths. I could not feel the depth of how much I missed you while in session with a client. I could not start crying. I am a therapist, and this moment with my client was not in any way about me. I recovered, and nothing gave away my human, grieving, unideal moment. I did not miss a beat in my questions, in my reflections, in my mirroring. But it happened. I felt you right there in the room with me. And I missed you. I missed us. The way we knew the other was not sleeping well. The way we reassured each other we were not alone by touching the shoulder. A comfort in the night. I miss it.

    My last touch with you is touch you were not alive for. I do not know how to rectify that with my present reality. I run through what happened in an attempt to grasp it, like capturing pathetic fireflies in a jar, but my jar has holes. I keep hoping your death will settle in so I can feel anything else, but then I get stuck in five seconds I cannot remember about the last time we touched. They are five seconds I may never remember and it feels unfair. I want a rewind and replay option. Instead, I sit here as a cool breeze brings relief to warm temperatures to which I am not yet acclimated, wearing a Sierra Nevada t-shirt you got me from a delivery driver while at The Duchess. How am I here, and you are this entity that only exists in my memory? My memory minus five seconds. It is maddening.

  • In the Mud

    My therapy has turned into trying to make sense of the fact that our relationship was an abusive one. Abuse is black or white, yes or no, binary. You do not feel binary to me. I see nuance in the shape of us, in the color changes of our shadows. I held on so tightly to the idea that things were not as bad as they were because I loved you and our version of the future. We drew a life for us that was so magical and alluring and clung to it. We hid in the fantasy because the world of us was too toxic to confront. The image of us burrowing into a mud hole keeps coming up for me. We might be buried and unable to move, but we can still see the sun, right? You drank to not feel the cold, damp, discomfort of the mud. I did what I have always done since childhood. I overanalyzed and stayed in my brain so I did not have to feel what was in my body. When I do this severance, Depression enters my soul. You could see Depression in how messy the house was, in how behind I was on laundry, in my use of weed to avoid the body even more. I was embarrassed to have my parents see it, to see how poorly I was doing. But I needed them when you died. They had to come in. I finally could let someone else in to see I was that broken. I was embarrassed and also relieved. I needed someone else to know.

    I recently had a client-related reason to review the criteria for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and as I read the criteria aloud, I realized you checked every single box. I feel stupid for not seeing it until after you died. I feel stupid for ignoring the signs of the abuse. I feel stupid for wanting the story to be different, for not wanting to be the person who was stuck in a cycle with you. I feel stupid. Admitting our relationship was abusive means admitting that I am the fool who was educated enough to know she was being abused as it was happening, but stayed anyway. Hoped for better despite all the logic. I stayed and would have continued to stay because I loved you and wanted to believe in the version of reality where things were not what they were, but you died. That reality never happened and now it never will. One thing that is the same now as it was before you died: I will never know if you would have gotten better, if the therapy would have worked, if you would have healed and stopped drinking. I wanted that for you. For us. You deserved it. You deserved to live a life out of the mud. But I was the only one who believed that and it takes two people to know things can be different for change to occur.

    I am trying to find support groups for people like me, people who realized they were in an abusive relationship and need other people like them to talk to about it, but it’s been difficult. Small towns have smaller resources. Part of me regrets moving because the things I need for healing absolutely are in Seattle. There was recently a support group that met in person in Seattle for Young Widows. Hi! I know of several grief support groups and retreats in Seattle and I even know the people who run them. Yes, please! I know in Seattle I could find the domestic violence support groups for women like me. I am lonely in this. I am lonely trying to make sense of what my life is now, in my despair that I have to be here trying to heal from not only your loss, but your rapture.

    Because I am lonely, I thought about volunteering with kids, with the humans who can still be saved from the harm adults cause. On a preliminary search, several organizations came up who help children with disabilities get outside. I thought of you. I thought of your work with Richie, of the amazing heart you have for kids who, like you, needed someone to see them. We could have had an amazing life here in Chico if you had healed. If you could come out of the mud with me. You had so much to give and gave whatever you could. The worst of you made the best lessons for all of us. The best of you made the most beautiful and long-lasting impressions. I still see you everywhere and feel warmth. Even in the mud we were warm and there was love. Nothing and everything is black or white about that. It’s both.

  • In the Shadow of Your Cypress

    I have been avoiding you. I do not want to write. I unpinned your text conversation so I do not see your face every time I open my messages. I removed the rotating photo widget on my home screen. I want to share pictures of Dottie on Instagram so you are not immediately visible in my feed. I started watching Southern Cham from the very beginning. I would rather watch overprivileged adults from Charleston fight with each other than be confronted with how much I do not want this to be my life. I am analyzing who has what personality disorder (most/many), who has a substance use disorder (most), who would have gone to FYRE festival (Craig and Shep), and who comes from families that owned slaves (several). I would rather waste my brain on reality tv than remember I cannot discern if I lost my way because of you, or if I have actually been lost my entire life.

    Losing you has allowed me to connect with a part of myself that I am confident has always been broken. There is a part of me who comfortably and whole-heartedly gaslights myself into believing things will improve. This part fights with another part of me who knows things absolutely will not. Sometimes I wonder if you died so I could finally admit that I really have no confidence in my ability to make decisions for myself, that I worry I wasted my life hoping I could have the fairytale despite never actually having the skills to obtain it. I keep trying to learn, to apply what I gained from last time, and yet I consistently return to the same pattern. I see it. I repeat it. I break. I try not to repeat it. I see it. I repeat it. I break. It is crazy-making.

    I know all the things to say to myself for comfort. Natalie, you did the best you could, and you are doing the best you can. You are getting help. You are smart. You are a good therapist. You have a big heart that believes what people say. You also struggle to understand when behavior does not match someone’s word becuase you were not taught that skill. It is okay it feels like attempting to learn a foreign language to learn how to discern a liar. You were gaslit and chaos created isolation and confusion. Mental illness and alcoholism were not your fault. Falling in love with someone who hurt you does not make you incompetent. It is okay to feel shame. This is all normal. You are normal.

    I talk to myself the way I would a client. I do not understand why my ability to have compassion for others is stunted when it comes to the compassion I have for myself. I say the things and even know the things, but I never believe them. Trauma is the splitting of an experience and sometimes, as a result, of identity and emotions. I know the dichotomy of what I am experiencing is trauma. But which trauma? My parents divorce? The boyfriend who became a heroin addict? The spouse who came out trans? The partner with a mental illness who lied about his alcoholism and then died? None of these situations were things I asked for. And yet Part of Me assesses that I am the common denominator. It is very hard to not feel like I am doing this (motions to life) all wrong. That I missed a turn somewhere. Sitting in that feeling, the one that feels responsible, shatters me.

    The mental gymnastics I am doing to get through every single moment of every single day are completely exhausting. I am so tired of feeling tired. Of wanting an escape but never finding one. Right now, I wish I could completely delete you so that I do not have to constantly talk myself into the narrative that believes my life will improve, that it will not always be this way. I want to plan my entire life so I know there is something to look forward to, but I am scared if I keep not thinking about you, you will haunt me. I feel haunted enough. I am stuck. Who wants to write and reflect when they are stuck. I am avoiding you.

    A few weeks ago, Dad and I went to watch the Oscar-nominated short films at The Pageant. You would have loved The Pageant. It is cash-only, no reservations, and just about as Chico an activity as you can get. You would love the weird, indie movies they show, the way the audience interacts with each other, the Godzilla mural, and that you always see one person you know. The second short film by an Iranian director brought me to tears. It depicted a couple who spotted a whale on the beach. She starts to take a bucket of water to try and save the whale, but he returns to the ship offshore, leaving her. We then alternate between her and him as he proceeds to go in and out of PTSD flashbacks from the Iranian war. We see her struggle to keep the whale healthy while worrying about him. You see him feel shame and embarrassment at not being able to help her. I felt like I was watching a movie about us, a story about two people so lost in his trauma, she almost drowned.

    Watching In the Shadow of the Cypress is the first time I experienced with what it felt like to be in a relationship with you since you died. I am so curious what you would have thought of it. I think you would have liked it as much as I did because it showed how I imagine things felt for you. I think you would have liked the artwork. I learned later it depicts a father/daughter, not a couple and I feel a bit silly for not realizing. Also, I cannot find it to watch online so I am confident I misremembered the plot. It won best Animated Short and I whole-heartedly agree with that choice, as magical as the other films were.

    There. I did it. I faced the reality of you dying again. I am going to go back to avoiding you now and watch who does not get married on Love is Blind. I have been in the shadow of your cypress long enough.

  • Party Tricks and a Birthday

    My latest party trick is having a panic attack when I am surprised by the sound of sirens or see a gurney. I have you to thank for that. Last week, I was in the nail salon when a patron lost consciousness and hit their head. I did not see what happened but heard the thud of an untethered head hit the floor. Fifteen minutes later, an ambulance came. No sirens alerted me to anything going on, so it was business as usual for me as the technician buffed and shined my destroyed nail beds. Then I watched them roll the gurney in and I felt my chest tighten as images of you on a gurney flashed into my mind. Do I take my backpack with me? When do I call your dad? Who is going to clean up all the medical supplies strewn all over our apartment? Your vomit is still on the floor by the dining room chair where I found you. They said they got a heartbeat, which is good, right? The image of the banana bag hanging from the hook in our living room ceiling flashed in my brain as I watched two EMTs help a young woman onto the gurney. Tears welled, pooled, and fell down my face.  I just need to make it through this appointment. Box breath, Natalie. You cannot hyperventilate and have a visible panic attack in public. Is this really happening? Fuck. I did not know I would have PTSD flashbacks like this.  I called my mom afterwards because I needed someone to know I had a panic attack when a woman needed medical attention at the nail salon.

    The next day, I explained to my dad what happened over lunch at Burger’s and Brews. We sat outside as the temperature hovered around 64 degrees Fahrenheit making Spring feel touchable. Not five minutes after I explained the panic attack, do I hear the sound of sirens coming from behind me. Chest tightened, heart raced, tears poured out of my eyes. The image of me talking to the ambulance driver as I sat in the front seat about how strange this all was. People really do pull over when the lights and sounds are on. I have always wondered. I said that to the ambulance driver and explained to him that I am a therapist, that I understand what I am going through would come back to haunt me. Dad held my hand as I closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath. Picture the box, Natalie. Out, …2…3…4… Hold, … 2… 3… 4… Inhale… 2… 3… 4… and so on. I think it lasted five minutes. Part of me feels validated that my dad witnessed it. I am not being dramatic or making my situation worse through a story. I hear sirens from behind me and have a panic attack. That happened. It happened a couple weeks ago while on a walk with mom and was happening again at lunch. I have data to validate an experience. I am not crazy.

    Tomorrow you would have turned 42. 42. I always felt a tremendous responsibility and honor in making your birthdays a big deal. We took trips or had nice dinners because I think it mattered that you knew how much I loved that you were born. That you came into my life. That you existed. And then there is this year, the first time I mark your birthday after you died. I do not know what to do. It feels too soon to have composed some poetic idea for how to mark the day.  I researched beach vacations because we loved the beach together and I would love to have an experience of my anxiety melting into the rhythm of ocean waves. I pondered Disneyland because you would have wanted me to experience that kind of adrenaline joy. Financially none of that made sense. I cannot afford the time off given the six weeks I have missed since you died. I ordered a carrot cake from Mim’s Bakery. I Googled “what to put on a dead person’s cake” because I do not know what to say. Heather suggested a quote from your favorite author, so I looked up Gabriel García Márquez quotes as I know he was one of your favorites. There is always something left to love. I feel like a fraud because I have not read the book. I am terrified of discovering it has some meaning that is not what I am making of it. Also, only having the wherewithal for a cake feels substandard. This is not representative of how I feel about you, but then again, nothing right now feels adequate. You are having panic attacks multiple days in a row, Natalie. A Cake is enough. He would have loved a cake.

    That said, for you there is always something left to love. Even in the darkest moments of this experience, there is something left. Parts of you are here with me still as I wrestle with how to be a human in the wake of your absence. I know it is because of you I will learn the depths of what I am capable. What a gift you were and are to me. For all the complications of this story, at least that piece I know is real and true. I am not crazy. You existed and mattered. 42 years later and you still matter a great deal. I wish you were here so I could tell you all this, but you are not because you died. Tomorrow is your birthday, and we are not going to dinner or having a celebration because you died.

    What the fuck?

  • A Bird Without Song

    I wore your shirt today. The one I bought you before you died. We were in University Village and decided to treat ourselves to a nice article of clothing as part of our effort to look toward a different future. I received several compliments from strangers, from a client, and from my mother on this shirt, the shirt I bought you, the shirt that is yours. I cannot stop crying because you should be the one wearing it. But you are not here. You died. You will never wear any of your clothes again. I am not borrowing them. You do not get to see what I look like wearing them. They are remnants of you I claimed. I feel like I stole them but there is no one to steal them from. You died.

    You wore this shirt the weekend before you died. We went to Pacific Science Center on a date to celebrate our 4-year anniversary. We completely enjoyed ourselves, navigating from dinosaur fact to funhouse mirrors to science experiments to butterfly exhibit to the movie about blue whales. I agreed to go into the butterfly exhibit despite my strong aversion to the idea of bugs landing on me. I knew you would want to go inside and that you would hold my hand if I got anxious. You explained the different kinds of butterflies and where they were from. You told me how many days they spend in a cocoon and stood in awe next to me as we admired the largest butterfly in the world. At one point, something touched my head and I looked to you for reassurance that a butterfly had not landed. You assured me one had not, that it was the tree branch just above. I let out a sigh of relief and we quickly exited. Later in the evening when we were home you confessed that a butterfly did indeed land on my head, that you felt it best to lie to protect me from being scared. I kissed you. It was exactly the right thing to do. Four years of looking out for each other.

    Five days later, you died. A fact I still feel so stunned by 104 days later.

    In the month after you died, I dreamt about butterflies landing on me. I could not control it. They kept landing on me over and over and it was so stressful. I woke up in a panic, crying, not able to catch my breath. The following morning, when I went to get in the shower, a moth the size of my hand flew towards my face. I had to ask Phil to get rid of it because I could not.

    So I guess you are in the butterflies now. In the eery, uncomfortable feeling of wings against my skin. I am not sure it is cruel or poetic. Either way, you are not here to tell me the tiny lie that will make me feel safe enough to keep going. And I am trying so hard to hold on long enough to find a reason on my own.

  • Muscle Memory

    Last night, something funny and endearing happened on Big Bang Theory. I’m watching the series through because I have never seen it and I need dumb, low-stakes television. I turned to see if you also thought it was funny, my brain tricking me for a split second into thinking you were seated in your usual seat on the couch, but you were not there. You died. I lost language as I gasped for air between tears, attempting to recover from the impact of Grief Whiplash punching me in the gut. It took 93 days for me to look for you in the same room, a sadistic muscle memory and a refreshing reminder that I was not always devastated by you.

  • Message Sent to Both Heather and Randy Separately on Wednesday:

    When Jeffrey and I first started dating, we got into a debate about the word ‘irregardless’. Jeffrey insisted it was not a word, that its meaning is duplicative of ‘regardless’ and that it’s grammatically incorrect to say ‘irregardless’. I googled it and found ‘irregardless’ in the Oxford English dictionary, among others. It does look like the word was added to the dictionary more recently because people say it so much. It’s considered a word even though irregardless and regardless have the same meaning. I loved that conversation so much. It was debate and learning and everything I love so much about what would become our relationship.

    My therapist said ‘irregardless’ during our session yesterday and I immediately thought of that memory. I couldn’t tell them because you look like an asshole if you point out something like a grammar error to another person Jeffrey worried he looked like an asshole when he pointed it out to me. But he didn’t. I like learning and I want to do things correctly. I asked Jeffrey what words meant all the time because I knew he would know and I could validate “that word means what I think it means”.

    I really feel like I’m never going to have that ever again. And it is suffocating.

  • Grief Makes New Sounds

    Yesterday during therapy I sobbed so intensely I heard a sound I never heard come out of my body. It was somewhere between the pitch a hiccup and hyperventilating. I do not know how to describe it. 

    Mom said I need to talk in therapy about what is going to happen next week, about walking into the home we shared, the home where I found you not breathing on our dining room floor. “It’s too soon in the grief process for you to have to be doing this”. As if I did not know. I knew my mom was right because the thought I had the two times she brought it up was, “why are you focusing on this? I don’t have a choice but to go there and pack up our things and pointing out what’s hard about it isn’t going to get all this stuff done.” Defensiveness is always holding up a mirror. 

    I am overwhelmed. There really is so much to do. I need to sort through your shirts and select the ones I want to keep so someone can help me make a quilt. I need to donate your wheel chair and other medical supplies to the organization who helped you get a wheel chair at no cost after your injury. I need to donate your Trike to the organization that helps folks with disabilities get outside, that helped you test ride different bikes to figure out which one was best for your accessibility needs. I could sell the Trike, it’s worth a lot of money, but that feels wrong when a grant helped you buy it. I need to give your dad space and time to identify what he wants from your things. I need to figure out what I can sell or give away as quickly as possible so I do not have to pack more than necessary. I need to coordinate for a junk person to take the things we cannot haul or donate ourselves. I need to clean and remove my existence from the home I lived in for 8 years, 1 spouse’s gender transition, 1 divorce, 1 pandemic, 1 graduate school degree, 1 engagement, 1 career ending and another starting, and 1 fiancé death. I need to decide what of your things I am not sure I will regret giving away. I plan to box them and write your name on the boxes with a Sharpie. Do I store those boxes in the new apartment or a storage unit? Do I want reminders of this confronting me daily or do I need to put them somewhere? 

    These questions feel impossible to answer. My mom is right, it is too soon. But I am not getting a choice in making decisions about my timeline for grief. I have to do all of this next week. I did not ask to or sign up for it, but this is happening. When I let in what I feel about being in our home, new noises reverberate through and out of my body. You died when I was not ready and now I have to participate in the next chapter of the trauma triggered by the worst day of my life, the day you died. I am not ready. It is too soon.

    I cannot decide if I want to sleep in the apartment or even be in there alone. My parents got a hotel room because eventually there will not be a bed in the place I am trying to remove my existence from. I cannot decide if I will regret not giving myself the time to be in our home, my home, the home the holds so much of my life, of who I am. The apartment holds every painful moment of my life and there are so many of them. It holds my survival and my accomplishments. How do I decide if I can handle being in there? How do I look at your jackets, fold them, and give them away? Will I miss the dumb dice you bought too many of? The coffee mug with yours and your uncle’s name on it? The duvets and bedding we picked out together. You used to sit in the green chair in the office and read a book while I worked. But I do not need the chair. The blankets hold your smell. They hold us. All of these things hold us. Hold a lifetime no longer happening. A dream that is a nightmare I cannot and will not ever wake up from.

    I told Heather I keep waiting for my life to get bigger than this grief, but that is not happening. The grief is everywhere I go. It is reflected on the face of everyone who sees me. Everything I do, I’m doing while Grief is sitting on my chest, punching me in the throat, mocking me.

    We leave on Friday morning. An 11 hour drive to the guillotine. I feel like I am preparing to stare down the sun. I know I will lose eyesight, but there is nothing I can do to stop it. I need to get used to looking at this duller version of the world, but its sepia tones are so muted and dystopian.

    What the fuck?

  • A Real Pain

    Last night I had my first night alone since you died. I walked all three dogs and did not trip on or lose any of them. I readied their dinner. I reheated leftovers for myself and watched the latest episode Traitors. I ate a small white chocolate cheesecake from Savor Ice Cream. I can confirm it is dangerous those tiny cakes are walking distance from my new apartment. I will be back. 

    I watched A Real Pain and felt like I was watching a movie about you. To be clear, it was not a movie about you at all. You are not Jewish, nor have Jewish family history in Poland. You also do not have a male cousin you would travel with in order to participate in a Polish Holocaust Tour because a grandmother left you money to visit her family home. But Kieran Culkin’s character felt like you, loving and suffering and entertaining and loathing. Caring for everyone and no one. Looking for meaning and finding a loss for words. Feeling everything and feeling numb to feeling at all. Having feelings so big, people turned away in discomfort. The film was brilliant in its complexity and artistry, in the acting and the writing. I wish you could see it to dissect it with me although I know it would be hard for you to watch. It was, true to its title, a real pain.

    Once again, I am struck by how close you feel and how far away you are. You are nowhere and everywhere. I did a Sound Bath on Friday and the image of you laying on the floor next to me resonated through my body. I imagined your breath on my neck, you were so close. Tears poured onto the weighted eye mask I borrowed from the studio. To prevent panic, my brain switched gears into wondering what instruments and tools created the sounds. How does thunder emanate from a bowl and rain fall from a stick? One moment we were surrounded by the lapping of waves on the shore which transitioned into the twinkling whimsy of chimes. What makes all of that happen? I miss our endless conversation about whatever we were curious about.

    I wish you could taste the cheesecake. It was airy and not too sweet. You always talked about a cheesecake you used to make and promised to make it for me one day. I wonder how this one compared. I guess that is another thing I can file into my mysteries folder. That and the circumstances that allowed someone to discover how to trap the sound of thunder in a bowl.