Friday, 9 January
I'm crying in my kitchen, desperately, inconsolably, loud; it's shaking my body and I can almost feel the tears digging their burning path through my cheeks, dropping off my face onto the table in viscose puddle. The liquid is murky and it is the distilled skin, flesh and soul that drips from me. I can taste the salt and once it's over, I can feel my face swollen, my jaw tight, rigid, my eyes still scalding in their sockets. It's a Friday night and there's nothing about it; nothing other than the fact that I've had two glasses of wine, put some music on and am alone in my kitchen ..oh, and he's missing and I'm missing him.
I wonder, in his state of bliss, of pure joy, wherever he is, does he miss me? and if he does, it must be in a different way than what I'm feeling, because what i'm feeling is almost nauseating. Has he found a superior state of mind that gave him the clarity I lack? Is his soul touching mine, talking to it, dancing with it, orbiting around it and is my brain dismissing such absurd behaviour? Because how can someone be serene whilst longing for someone else and how can they be happily connected to someone, whilst knowing that the other cannot connect to them and instead, are trying desperately to both break away and claw onto whatever shred of presence is there, invoked, revived, relived.
Monday, 9 February ... a random Monday
Random is holding me for ransom... random images, random thoughts, random objects push the trigger of the gun that's pressing against my throat, my ribs... never on the trajectory of a major organ, never fatal, but close enough to cause pain, to scar, to send me into the sharp edges and elaborate effervescence of suffering, or worst...into the catatonic state.
Limbo is an all-inclusive holiday resort and I'm trapped by the pool, witnessing a debate on whether or not the fresh orange juice is indeed fresh, or indeed made of oranges. Hell is the perspective of getting trapped in limbo, slipping into comfort, numbing the senses and drowning out the questions. Heaven comes with a Go To Hell card, not optional, with the battle for answers, with the uncertainty of having asked the right questions, with shattering of essence and rebuilding the foundation, with letting go and with learning. Learn to be patient, learn to trust, learn to listen. Death is not what scares me, time scares me. It's relative, unstable, unreliable, cunning, but also generous, mysterious and wonderful. It likes to play games, not the entertaining kind, but more like the Chinese finger trap - the more you pull away, the tighter it wraps around you and entraps you, in a hold that is not merely binding, but also painful.
I want to make peace with time, so I write, on a random day, at a random time: I won't waste you. Please don't waste me.
Is anything random? A ruthless man - and by that I mean free from sentimentality, said if one can't imagine a life outside of the existence of a superior governing force, a life that simply ends when it ends, it's for lack of trying. So I'm trying. Nothing of me after I die? That doesn't bother me - I can find a meaning and a purpose within the confines of my chemical presence. Nothing that guides, governs, cares about me as a particular cog in the machine... that's a bit more unsettling, with so many fatalistic, deterministic stamps on the passport of my youth. And then there's the business of patterns - our eyes, and more importantly, our minds are designed to see patterns. It arose as a necessity for survival but it may have outlived its purpose and end up killing us. However, if we are doomed - excuse me - designed to look for patterns, I decide to look for the ones I desire.
Monday, 9 February 2015
Tuesday, 9 December 2014
On turning 30 ... in the midst of the storm
Saturday 22 November ...and the days after that, until Tuesday, 9 December
These waves that wash me more and more these days are starting to erode my beach , bringing to shore all sorts of leftovers - seaweed and shipwreck memorabilia - corroded, faded, obsolete monuments of all that once was and of that which lingers gracefully and proud, but subdued and somewhat disregarded. They give and take and the balance sheet seems to yield surpluses and losses and never break even, as quarters shrink in actual measures but expand disproportionately in abstract and the emotional realm.
The foam of these violent splashes is salty and tastes of iron .
It's been a wild ride and that's the most and least I could say about these years for which to use a decade as a measure is the same as to include the War in the generic 40s.
Childhood ?simple, wild, organic, happy, demands and mostly fulfilled. Adolescent dramas and changes, simple, wild, organic, less demands fulfilled, more fulfilling of demands. The 20s? The great daze, wilderness and submission, ambition beyond limitation and exhaustion, dreams and indulgences, both cunning and misplaced, bravado and vulnerability... A bloody walking oxymoron and let's face it, at times, a stumbling moron.
I still break down and it's cleansing, depressurizing, validating but I try to allow it to happen only around people that are able to simply look at me, say I know, it's ok and leave me to it.
I was talking to a friend of mine today about hope and he said It's what defines humanity, essentially, what makes it all better, all worthwhile. I said No matter how you spin it, some things are hopeless. He replied Sure, but I was talking about the macro and you go and make it personal ... when people disguise their inability to accept or deal with a reality as hope, it becomes dangerous. I asked then if hope is not what keeps you on the desert island where you were shipwrecked, whereas grit is what makes you build a raft and set sail for better or worse. He said Hope is what keeps you from jumping into the shark infested waters to be done with it. But I just wouldn't conceit and asked if it wasn't preferable to make the decision to either jump into the potentially shark infested waters or build that damn raft ( and still potentially end up as shark food), than spending your days, hopefully existing on that desert island until you lose your faculties and regress to primate state. He gently, wisely and so definitely delivered the final blow: Hope is what drives you to keep trying to build that raft after countless failed attempts.
The moral of the story? Nothing is hopeless - as common sense as that might sound. We are all hopefuls and even when playing devil's advocate - because not any part of me, not ever denied hope, it is demonstrably in our DNA helping us along. A little grit is needed though as well.
Saturday, 25 October 2014
Wednesday 22 October, just over a month after
Wednesday, 22 October
Mostly I feel awake. I look back over the years before 19 Sept 2014 and I feel very estranged from the person I was. Not better and certainly not worse.
The year after my mum died seems a daze - I behaved in ways so unlike me, I thought and lived in a fog. It was essentially free falling, more or less aware, more or less willing. It was a year of indulging, of justifying by waiving the need of justification to myself. It didn't feel wrong, it didn't disappoint or gratify - it almost didn't feel like anything at all, with some very few spikes. I was going through the motions, but in a continual and pressing state of expectation. I started having minor anxiety attacks ( they might not have been minor, as I have no reference point and I can't quite verbalise the complexity, intensity and rapidity of those emotions). Existential anxiety. I look through the journal I stated keeping and the words that jump out from those smudged, crumpled pages are " I can't see myself" but I can't read an emotional charge in them - they are more of a N.B. and as I'm writing this it dawns on me - the explanation is in the actual words: I can't see myself. How can you draw something from something you don't see?
It wasn't depression, not in the way it's defined in medical terms -" feeling persistently sad over a period of weeks or months" and not in the way I define it to myself - a lack of vital energy. I did feel lethargic at times and lonely, lost and unsettled but no more than anyone who uproots themselves. It seemed more that my vital energy was wrong - diesel instead of petrol and I was getting nowhere fast. I was essentially what Kierkegaard defines as the unhappiest of people - one who dwells on the past or future, in such a way that they spend their life in the wrong tense. Well, looking back, I was twice the unhappiest because I was living in the past and projecting it into the future. I wasn't aware of it though, so bold as it may be, I'd go as far as to amend the philosopher's postulate and say I was the most foolish and the unluckiest - a fool for the obvious reasons and unlucky because I didn't catch it sooner. This is not to say it was an empty year - I travelled, I learned, I worked, I met people and had experiences but I was really living my life as a pass time.
A very cruel person once said to me you are like an animal - you don't learn by explanation, in a gentle way; you only learn by shock and aggression; in fact this is true of all humanity - the great lessons we learned were prompted by disaster and suffering. I was 23 at that time and my biggest problems were how to nurse a hangover and ditch work as much as possible, without hurting my chances for a quick promotion, as the rising star that I was. Am I more considerate now, more aware, more consistent, more my own person, more caring? Yes, much more and a great many of the lessons I learned were indeed crash courses, hence I have no sense of evolution, but more of a rupture, as if someone picked me up and dumped me so hard that my bones shattered. So you start walking,wobbling, stumbling, falling and even crawling for part of the journey because the alternative is against our nature. Would I have learned the lesson diligently and gently? I think yes, I would've, with time and at the right time and frankly, the jury is still out on the value for pain of this clarity and insight, this change that is so apparent to all who know me and to myself. I am so grateful for all the revelations - and I'm not using the term lightly, but the not so fashionable, not so progressive bottom line is that ignorance is bliss.
It's very difficult to live one day at a time, it takes patience, with everything around you and with yourself. You're so desperate to heal, to breathe easy again it's pathetic - not in the trivial sense of the word, but in the lyrical, etymological sense of intense sorrow, of passion in pain. But it's a decreasing emotion, it fades one day at a time because the human heart is not built to operate at such levels of sustained intensity - good or bad and feelings evolve,transform. I read about the notion of synthetic happiness, which is what you get when you don't get what you want. Essentially, it's part of our innate emotional autoimmune system and it's a blessing. It's our ability to to find a way to make ourselves happy with the alternative, choice or situation we find ourselves in, even though it's not the ideal scenario, or even very far from it. As it turns out - and this is scientifically proven, at the end of one year from the event, a guy who won the weight of his dreams in lotto money and a guy who lost the use of his lower body in an accident, are equally happy.
My initial reaction is to ask what drugs are you on, mister scientist and may I please have some? Then I get off my high horse of sarcasm and realise I have been through this before, not so long ago and I got with the proverbial program and I was very happy.
I miss him every day, really miss him and he already feels very far away because I know he is never going to be here again and feeling like this is part of my mind's survival mode but it also gifts me with the cold realisation of what happened, at random times and I re-live everything. I wonder what I would choose if someone came up to me and offered me a pill that would erase him from my memory and the easy way out is so appealing but time and time again, I choose him. Now, if someone would finally invent that much coveted time machine...
Mostly I feel awake. I look back over the years before 19 Sept 2014 and I feel very estranged from the person I was. Not better and certainly not worse.
The year after my mum died seems a daze - I behaved in ways so unlike me, I thought and lived in a fog. It was essentially free falling, more or less aware, more or less willing. It was a year of indulging, of justifying by waiving the need of justification to myself. It didn't feel wrong, it didn't disappoint or gratify - it almost didn't feel like anything at all, with some very few spikes. I was going through the motions, but in a continual and pressing state of expectation. I started having minor anxiety attacks ( they might not have been minor, as I have no reference point and I can't quite verbalise the complexity, intensity and rapidity of those emotions). Existential anxiety. I look through the journal I stated keeping and the words that jump out from those smudged, crumpled pages are " I can't see myself" but I can't read an emotional charge in them - they are more of a N.B. and as I'm writing this it dawns on me - the explanation is in the actual words: I can't see myself. How can you draw something from something you don't see?
It wasn't depression, not in the way it's defined in medical terms -" feeling persistently sad over a period of weeks or months" and not in the way I define it to myself - a lack of vital energy. I did feel lethargic at times and lonely, lost and unsettled but no more than anyone who uproots themselves. It seemed more that my vital energy was wrong - diesel instead of petrol and I was getting nowhere fast. I was essentially what Kierkegaard defines as the unhappiest of people - one who dwells on the past or future, in such a way that they spend their life in the wrong tense. Well, looking back, I was twice the unhappiest because I was living in the past and projecting it into the future. I wasn't aware of it though, so bold as it may be, I'd go as far as to amend the philosopher's postulate and say I was the most foolish and the unluckiest - a fool for the obvious reasons and unlucky because I didn't catch it sooner. This is not to say it was an empty year - I travelled, I learned, I worked, I met people and had experiences but I was really living my life as a pass time.
A very cruel person once said to me you are like an animal - you don't learn by explanation, in a gentle way; you only learn by shock and aggression; in fact this is true of all humanity - the great lessons we learned were prompted by disaster and suffering. I was 23 at that time and my biggest problems were how to nurse a hangover and ditch work as much as possible, without hurting my chances for a quick promotion, as the rising star that I was. Am I more considerate now, more aware, more consistent, more my own person, more caring? Yes, much more and a great many of the lessons I learned were indeed crash courses, hence I have no sense of evolution, but more of a rupture, as if someone picked me up and dumped me so hard that my bones shattered. So you start walking,wobbling, stumbling, falling and even crawling for part of the journey because the alternative is against our nature. Would I have learned the lesson diligently and gently? I think yes, I would've, with time and at the right time and frankly, the jury is still out on the value for pain of this clarity and insight, this change that is so apparent to all who know me and to myself. I am so grateful for all the revelations - and I'm not using the term lightly, but the not so fashionable, not so progressive bottom line is that ignorance is bliss.
It's very difficult to live one day at a time, it takes patience, with everything around you and with yourself. You're so desperate to heal, to breathe easy again it's pathetic - not in the trivial sense of the word, but in the lyrical, etymological sense of intense sorrow, of passion in pain. But it's a decreasing emotion, it fades one day at a time because the human heart is not built to operate at such levels of sustained intensity - good or bad and feelings evolve,transform. I read about the notion of synthetic happiness, which is what you get when you don't get what you want. Essentially, it's part of our innate emotional autoimmune system and it's a blessing. It's our ability to to find a way to make ourselves happy with the alternative, choice or situation we find ourselves in, even though it's not the ideal scenario, or even very far from it. As it turns out - and this is scientifically proven, at the end of one year from the event, a guy who won the weight of his dreams in lotto money and a guy who lost the use of his lower body in an accident, are equally happy.
My initial reaction is to ask what drugs are you on, mister scientist and may I please have some? Then I get off my high horse of sarcasm and realise I have been through this before, not so long ago and I got with the proverbial program and I was very happy.
I miss him every day, really miss him and he already feels very far away because I know he is never going to be here again and feeling like this is part of my mind's survival mode but it also gifts me with the cold realisation of what happened, at random times and I re-live everything. I wonder what I would choose if someone came up to me and offered me a pill that would erase him from my memory and the easy way out is so appealing but time and time again, I choose him. Now, if someone would finally invent that much coveted time machine...
Sunday, 19 October 2014
On love, monks and an algorithm that works
Wednesday, 15 October and Sunday, 19 October
To be read while listening to https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=etta+james+sunday+kind+of+love
I'm struggling to grasp the nature of love, in fact, the entire concept and most of all its should be manifestation. How can I not when I would fall asleep listening the story of everlasting, ever-enduring, ever-conquering love, meant for one person and one alone, strong enough to defeat illness, evil, sorcery and death. Night after night, in a bedtime ritual that had my sister and I safely snuggled up and my mother young, beautiful, married to my father, reading to us, I was making my mind up about love - it was going to be a magical affair and it was going to last.
My first heart break knocked the wind out of me; the love was an infatuation and it was magical, but lasted only two weeks. So I changed one of the parameters and decided that I liked the magic, but I can't rely on it lasting. That's when I became passionate, expressive, wild in my love affairs, looking for and giving the kind of consuming love, the real love, where you feel one with the other. But the time horizon stayed abstract, yet very palpably trapped in a near future; I started reading more serious love stories, of terrible pain, disappointment, complexity, fear and disillusion and decided to call myself a commitment freak. I saw it as an attractive feature because it translated into being independent, granting freedom - sometimes too much or in a borderline pathological way, requiring freedom - sometimes in a savage, impatient way. I was never going to be needy, clingy, mushy, or in fact pretty much anything ending in "y".
I'm struggling with the idea and ideal of happiness because my hedonistic nature is pushing back hard against new paths I'm exploring at this time and circumstances in my life. I'm turning, or trying to turn more towards the dimensions of mindfulness - the present, letting go but not disengaging, being aware of one's thoughts but not consciously attempting to change them, peace of mind. But even the word itself - minndFULLness is problematic to me - it is a contradiction, and not just in terms, but even more dangerous - in terms and action, or lack thereof. You are required to think your thoughts away - to observe your mind's products and allow them to fade away. I've been riding the wave of passion in my life and learned to surf it skilfully; I've been admired and have admired people for their passion and hand on heart, have never heard anyone remarking in awe he/she is so wonderfully composed and subdued - that's so hot!
I've never linked love to possession, yet cannot construct it without attachment. You love someone, live with and alongside someone with all that it means, from the nooks in their body that give you the rest you need, to the joy or pain you would only truly feel for yourself. How then, can you not get attached, while still loving them like that ? I don't only get attached to the person, I am terribly attached to the idea of attachment itself! How can I be passionately unattached? Is it really a trade-off or is the dynamic above my level of understanding at this point in my life?
I am perfectly, painfully and hopefully aware that all states we find ourselves in are temporary. I understand it as it is meant - not in the sceptical, bitter way of there being no point in looking for that connection and that relationship which will last and fulfil, but that my own state of being at a given time will change and there is no need, no way and no desire to be instrumental in the process. In fact, it's precisely inaction that best equips you to navigate life, by letting go - being unattached.
I can play with these notions better when it comes to negative feelings of pain, fear or doubt and less or almost not all with the states of bliss, happiness, excitement. It's natural - I need to DEAL with these feelings and ENJOY the others...everything in between, is severely understated and wrongfully taken for granted. It seems like the itinerary of a train, with stations of pain and happiness, with the expectation that they follow in an orderly fashion, happiness after pain and even if a bit harder to swallow, pain after happiness. And then comes the great shock to the system when they don't play ball.
Unfortunately, I've not had the chance to read or talk about this with a practitioner that wasn't a monk, a social recluse - a typical pater familias or a mother. On the other hand, I have had the very great fortune of talking to a couple who are still incredibly harmonious and in love after more than 20 years of LIFE, who have formed a harmonious family and who are harmonious individuals. And they are very much attached to all that their LIFE is.
So as a conclusion, I end this tirade with a thought that has absolutely no reference to any of the above, but resonates with me and it's simple - find someone with whom you can laugh about anything, and everything will be fine.
Sunday, 12 October 2014
On stuff people say and generally on people around you
Sunday, 12 October
There is no winning -indifference or normality doesn't feel right,it somehow undermines your pain,your extraordinary state of being at this particular time; equally, being handled with gloves, and constantly talking about it is tiresome as you feel the need to assure everyone that you know what is happening to you and that you understand this is a temporary state, that you will be OK..eventually. The worse kind of empathy - which stems from the best intentions, is thrown at you in personal stories of people who try to relate to you and talk about their losses. They inadvertently compare your situation to yours and you start to as well and empathy for you at this point is a depleting resource. You listen quietly, "empathising", but actually you would rather shout - my pain is worse,my loss is greater, no, GREATEST.
You will know the people you want to talk to - they somehow give you insight, put things into perspective, but most of all, listen to you when you want to talk about it and otherwise treat you naturally and you feel natural around them. They are in tune with you, somehow, they sense you and respond perfectly. They might be the ones you've known since you were a kid, or those whom you've just met and you felt friendship at first sight with, or the ones you would've least expected to get you, or those who have gone through something similar and in a subdued voice simply say I know and nothing more. You will find yourself looking for the company of those who can help you decipher the meaning of it all. I found them - they were the ones I called straight away , after my brain finally managed to process the words Scott's been killed and they saved my mind.
I am unashamed when it comes to my emotions, very analytical, self-critical, yet not at all judgemental - I will talk to anyone and sometimes in a matter-of-fact manner, which simply stuns people; I observed myself doing so after my mum died, when trying to explain the context of some particular time frame. I make people feel awkward and I am awkward about receiving their sympathy because with the passing of time, I am more and more reluctant to open the wound again but the scar tissue is there and begs an explanation, while I am perfectly aware that is part of me, part of my normality and my evolution.
Pain is not a licence to be mean, inconsiderate and selfish but the tendency sometimes is to feel entitled or to indulge and you start to slip into and unhealthy and ugly phase. I get angry at myself whenever I give into these feelings and no matter how many people tell me it's OK, understandable and forgiveable, I still believe it's not and must put more effort into controlling it.
My father has lost his partner of 30 years last year, the one he built a family with and his whole life around and he's now not old, nor young, surrounded by family and friends but with little hope that he will have a partner again,let alone love. He keeps saying to me you have to get over it, understand you're hurting him and yourself by holding on and you know very well there is nothing we can do to bring them back. It's the second time I've shouted at him I CAN'T GET OVER IT! It's been three weeks. He is at a loss, trying to explain that he meant I must look after my health and that who, if not him can understand me better? I feel like an ungrateful little bitch. I call him and apologise, crying, saying I love you and he says don't be silly, I'm just concerned about you, you are all I have..what would happen to me if anything happened to you?
On the other hand, three days after he had died I was told that this was in some way, a lesson for me, a warning sign that I have to correct some errors in my life, that this must be why such horrible things happen to me, I was recommended confessing my sins, consulting a priest, or a medium, or both ... feel free to be brutally dismissive of such tremendous and dangerous stupidity. Or of anything you feel is.
There is no winning -indifference or normality doesn't feel right,it somehow undermines your pain,your extraordinary state of being at this particular time; equally, being handled with gloves, and constantly talking about it is tiresome as you feel the need to assure everyone that you know what is happening to you and that you understand this is a temporary state, that you will be OK..eventually. The worse kind of empathy - which stems from the best intentions, is thrown at you in personal stories of people who try to relate to you and talk about their losses. They inadvertently compare your situation to yours and you start to as well and empathy for you at this point is a depleting resource. You listen quietly, "empathising", but actually you would rather shout - my pain is worse,my loss is greater, no, GREATEST.
You will know the people you want to talk to - they somehow give you insight, put things into perspective, but most of all, listen to you when you want to talk about it and otherwise treat you naturally and you feel natural around them. They are in tune with you, somehow, they sense you and respond perfectly. They might be the ones you've known since you were a kid, or those whom you've just met and you felt friendship at first sight with, or the ones you would've least expected to get you, or those who have gone through something similar and in a subdued voice simply say I know and nothing more. You will find yourself looking for the company of those who can help you decipher the meaning of it all. I found them - they were the ones I called straight away , after my brain finally managed to process the words Scott's been killed and they saved my mind.
I am unashamed when it comes to my emotions, very analytical, self-critical, yet not at all judgemental - I will talk to anyone and sometimes in a matter-of-fact manner, which simply stuns people; I observed myself doing so after my mum died, when trying to explain the context of some particular time frame. I make people feel awkward and I am awkward about receiving their sympathy because with the passing of time, I am more and more reluctant to open the wound again but the scar tissue is there and begs an explanation, while I am perfectly aware that is part of me, part of my normality and my evolution.
Pain is not a licence to be mean, inconsiderate and selfish but the tendency sometimes is to feel entitled or to indulge and you start to slip into and unhealthy and ugly phase. I get angry at myself whenever I give into these feelings and no matter how many people tell me it's OK, understandable and forgiveable, I still believe it's not and must put more effort into controlling it.
My father has lost his partner of 30 years last year, the one he built a family with and his whole life around and he's now not old, nor young, surrounded by family and friends but with little hope that he will have a partner again,let alone love. He keeps saying to me you have to get over it, understand you're hurting him and yourself by holding on and you know very well there is nothing we can do to bring them back. It's the second time I've shouted at him I CAN'T GET OVER IT! It's been three weeks. He is at a loss, trying to explain that he meant I must look after my health and that who, if not him can understand me better? I feel like an ungrateful little bitch. I call him and apologise, crying, saying I love you and he says don't be silly, I'm just concerned about you, you are all I have..what would happen to me if anything happened to you?
On the other hand, three days after he had died I was told that this was in some way, a lesson for me, a warning sign that I have to correct some errors in my life, that this must be why such horrible things happen to me, I was recommended confessing my sins, consulting a priest, or a medium, or both ... feel free to be brutally dismissive of such tremendous and dangerous stupidity. Or of anything you feel is.
The Closing Ceremony
Thursday, 9 October
To be read listening to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHCQ__AqzHA
I'm saying goodbye to Scott just a day shy of the three unnaturally long weeks since he died and I wake up to a beautiful sun in an overcast sky, the colours of my anxiety. It's been almost three weeks since my mind hasn't stopped, my heart changing its beat to the ill orchestrated tune of a whole range of emotions from desolation to hopeful joy and back again within a matter of hours, leaving me in a state of expectation, of tension, as the only certainty I have is that it will be a hard day. I'm not sure at this point if there will be any tears and I am a bit worried that there won't.
I'm lucky, as I find myself in the place I've come to associate with harmony, beauty, meaningful talks and easy laughter, with family and friends, with love and freedom of being and expressing who you are, a place where even the building, or rather, the home has a name - Carrot Cottage. It's right that it has name because it is as full of character, warmth and colour as the people who have found it, looked after it and let it be what it wanted to be. It's not perfect - the shower head keeps falling off at the most inopportune times, the oven door sometimes falls off its hinges, but it sleeps as many or as few people that need it and it never feels crowded or empty, it's colourful, playful, comfortable, a wonderful mismatch that just flows together effortlessly and it's bursting with creativity and individuality. The people who live there are musicians, artists, intellectuals, film makers, they are interesting and interested and have understood that freedom can only thrive on respect, love and communication. I love them.
I start getting ready and see myself drifting into the ritual that precedes an occasion, considerably longer, more thorough, steady, calculated movements to counteract the impatience inside - I style my hair, put my make up on, consider outfits and then re-consider and in the end I'm pleased with the result. All the time I think Is this appropriate?? Am I not being superficial? But then it dawns on me - I'm HIS girl and I'm about to meet people that have been part of his life before me, for the first time .. I will make him proud and show myself as he saw me - beautiful and in love.
I step outside his house, with his family and see the coffin for the first time - this was what I feared most. I had heard it over and over - that's not him in there and I knew it, of course, yet there he was, or rather IT was, in front of me, a few yards and a lifetime away. I never saw him again after he gave me a kiss goodbye that morning, when I barely opened my sleepy eyes and I know it's for the best but my morbid, curious, obstinate mind just wouldn't let me settle.
I was trying so hard to be dignified, to muffle my cries, to comfort his parents and brother and ended up a shaking mess, gripping his father's hand and latching on to him in desperate need of consolation. I heard everyone speak and felt their pain, most of all his brother's and then, as if in a daze, my name was called and I made my way to the podium, with the determination of a person who has a job to do. I started reading my own words, that I had prepared with tears and anguish just week or so before. They seemed like a memory I had dug up from layers of thought and time. In retrospect, I'm so happy I wrote them then, as they were raw and coarse. I read it to the end, as a cry meant to convince a disbeliever, although no one had questioned anything and now I realise I was actually shouting at whoever rolled the dice and took him away.
I had been saying goodbye to him every morning since it happened and pretty much all throughout the days that were washing over me or running through me thereafter, so there was no attachment to the coffin everyone was turning their last glance towards - I actually resented it..the box containing something so precious, so within reach, yet nothing of what it once was.
I was exhausted at the end of the day and I don't mean to be or sound ungrateful, but I was tired of words of consolation, of assurances that he loved me, of meeting people..so many people. Of course I didn't sleep well that night but the night after, before going to bed, I asked him to come and sleep with me - he did and I slept like a baby, without dreams.
It's over now and like any milestone, riddled with anticipation, with a false sense of security, with the certainty of community, I was expecting to feel a void once it passed, the feeling of a come down after a powerful high. But the void was there before and still is, not any more or less heavy.
Thursday, 2 October 2014
On pain and waves
Thursday 2 October
It comes in waves. Expect waves, waves of pain, of deep sadness, of joy. You'll not see them coming and they will knock you out. Those mornings or hours in the day you feel normal, you don't think about it will surprise you - it's too good to believe that the pain is gone, you know it rationally and the realisation brings it back. The yoga teacher reminded me : the job of the mind is to produce, that of the heart is to feel. I'm at a loss because I feel that I need to process this, to understand it somehow, not to run away from it, to take my time with it; yet it feels so good when I can't feel my heart. Since it all started, I can FEEL my heart and it's heavy and it gives me a nauseating sensation.
It comes in waves. Expect waves, waves of pain, of deep sadness, of joy. You'll not see them coming and they will knock you out. Those mornings or hours in the day you feel normal, you don't think about it will surprise you - it's too good to believe that the pain is gone, you know it rationally and the realisation brings it back. The yoga teacher reminded me : the job of the mind is to produce, that of the heart is to feel. I'm at a loss because I feel that I need to process this, to understand it somehow, not to run away from it, to take my time with it; yet it feels so good when I can't feel my heart. Since it all started, I can FEEL my heart and it's heavy and it gives me a nauseating sensation.
I haven't come to a conclusion on this and the only word of advice is when it gets too heavy, take a breath, stop, say I love you, cry and find something to do. It will oppose you and generally people say take your time but the more time you spend there the worse it gets. I am writing this in a moment of calm, in one of those good hours. And I think of children - they are often the ones who feel more pain than we will ever remember having felt , but their capacity to heal is endless. Is it because they are so eager to learn, explore, experience? Or is it just that they haven't learned the words to fully describe how bad it hurts?
Do we amplify our own pain? When you cut yourself it only starts hurting when you look at it - that's the general consensus and I experienced the phenomenon. When I was in car crash a few years ago, I banged my head on the wind shield, cracked it open and felt nothing. The surprise of the incident, the incredibly short amount of time for such in intricate sequence of events and sensations to happen to my mind and body simply overloaded my circuits. I did start to have some headaches after the accident. But that's physical pain - you can re-live the incident in your head as many times as you like - it will never hurt again.
The images that tormented me, or rather, I tormented myself with were that of him in that car, alone, the moment of realisation he was going to collide and him getting crushed. My heart would tear violently, as if it were cut but a butcher's knife, in a steady, harsh, decisive cut. With my mother, it was the image of her feeling that one sharp pain that shook her entire body and the words my dad said she had uttered - my head really hurts . I kept playing the words and images in my head those first few days, knowing what they would do to me. I kept playing over in my head the phone call I got from my father on that Wednesday afternoon a year ago - your mother is in a coma and the doctors aren't giving us any hope ( shy of one day), as well as the words that his friend said to me that Friday afternoon - Scott's been killed . Such harsh words, so definitive and cruel, but they fade comparison to reality.
I find myself drifting back to bargaining - with my mother, I can now remember there was some - it lasted for the three days she spent in hospital, on life support. I remember going to the nurses and the doctor, with tears in my eyes and a praying look, a desperate but also hopeful look, asking them to tell me the truth about her. They would look back at me, that compassionate look that tells you it's not going to be what you want to hear - the doctor would say there is no hope of recovery and even on the off-chance her heart would start beating again and her lungs start pumping, her brain is a paste now. He would ask me to imagine the brain, with all the synapses, the shape it has, how it's tied together and then imagine my mum's is now mush. Still, for those three days, I hoped and when I started hearing my father plead, asking for her back, in any state, I realised I must start hoping she would die..and soon. With Scott, everything was straightforward and I was grateful.
I think about the pain I felt after my failed love stories ( two relevant ones before him), the pain I felt after losing my mother, even the pain I felt watching movies like Blue Valentine or P.S I Love you is THE SAME. It feels the same. It's equally sharp, your rib cage gets so tight that you feel like you will implode. What is different is the coordinates - the time it goes on for, the disruption in your life, the collateral damage it brings, the recovery time. Once again I realise, I have to accept I will hurt like this again and most likely, it will be caused by something much less tragic and when it comes to pain, well, there is no rock bottom.
Note to self : the emotions we go through are our own, we feel them, we live through them and there are no degrees of comparison. Scott's death hurts me as much as the loss of a pet, the falling out with a friend, the disillusionment with life or oneself.
As difficult this is to understand, both rationally and emotionally, I see how petty it is to underrate the pain of others, how unfair and cruel and while doing so is a natural reaction, justifiable to some extent ( we're human and deal in measurements, evaluations, comparisons), I can't help but think: when I'm happy I don't need anyone to be happy with me, to validate and augment my states of elation ... what entitles me to it when I'm not?
I think about the pain I felt after my failed love stories ( two relevant ones before him), the pain I felt after losing my mother, even the pain I felt watching movies like Blue Valentine or P.S I Love you is THE SAME. It feels the same. It's equally sharp, your rib cage gets so tight that you feel like you will implode. What is different is the coordinates - the time it goes on for, the disruption in your life, the collateral damage it brings, the recovery time. Once again I realise, I have to accept I will hurt like this again and most likely, it will be caused by something much less tragic and when it comes to pain, well, there is no rock bottom.
Note to self : the emotions we go through are our own, we feel them, we live through them and there are no degrees of comparison. Scott's death hurts me as much as the loss of a pet, the falling out with a friend, the disillusionment with life or oneself.
As difficult this is to understand, both rationally and emotionally, I see how petty it is to underrate the pain of others, how unfair and cruel and while doing so is a natural reaction, justifiable to some extent ( we're human and deal in measurements, evaluations, comparisons), I can't help but think: when I'm happy I don't need anyone to be happy with me, to validate and augment my states of elation ... what entitles me to it when I'm not?
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