Grief #6

Grief is a wild and howling wilderness, and you can only wander it lonely. By definition, any attempt to form a comforting company and traverse it together will set it somewhat at a remove.

But a word of warning: if you attempt to avoid the crossing altogether by surrounding yourself constantly with crowds of busy companions, it will grow in your gut and slowly take over your whole body. Or if you think you can cut the journey short, or hurry through, holding your breath and rushing past as though avoiding an unpleasant sight or smell; this is useless. Grief is inevitable. It will hunt you.

It is better to find one or two companions who are lost in their own wastelands, or who have wandered through theirs in the past, and then you can cross lonely-together.

Side-by-side, but each silent, alone, and lost in their own loss. This way, each dulls somewhat the pain of the other and the journey is made bearable.

A moment for explanation

 I rarely write with no sense of an audience. I don't exactly write FOR a specific audience, I just generally write knowing that eventually someone will read it. 

The numbered pieces on Grief that I've been posting this year were all written knowing that they would eventually be read by an audience, but it has taken me five years to be ready to share them. I'm sharing them because I wrote them to be read. Thank you for reading them. 

I am also writing the story of the initial impact, but I'm not ready to share that just yet. I used to have a very clear picture of who my readers were, but that's become murky, hence the hesitation, the delay to hit "publish". 

I think I'm mostly writing for myself these days, but still always knowing that eventually, someone will read it.

Grief #5

Grief is repeated suffocation. 

The sudden blow of memory is not so much a painful one, but rather a sensation of having all the breath expelled from your lungs at once. A stumbling cessation of that essential rhythm: in-out-in-out-in-out. 

Then... remember THIS? 

Nothing. 

 --sucking for air--gasp--

BREATHE, dammit. 

Life must go on.

And then you do. You breathe. The wet, hot air of grief and misery slowly gives way to clearer, fresher breezes and your heart goes on shoving oxygenated blood through your arteries, in spite of yourself. 

You go on breathing and living.