Grief
/ɡrēf/ noun - deep sorrow, especially that caused by someone's death.
It's one of those human conditions for which we are the most culturally hypocritical about. On the one hand, we almost universally acknowledge its existence and one of the primary processes integral in dealing with grief involves communicating what you're feeling to the people who supposedly care about you.
On the other hand, though, we also almost universally acknowledge that the absolute last thing we want to hear is someone trying to articulate said grief, regardless of its cause or effect, especially when it carries on for longer than we care to accept or understand.
There are certain points in our lives where we tend to be more willing to acknowledge that a sustained period of grief is coming and those points completely orbit around death, be it a parent, child, friend, lover, even a pet. We seem capable of recognizing the unpleasant reality that because those people (or animals) held such an important place in our lives, that loss is so profoundly impactful that there's no way we can ignore it when it inevitably happens.
But what about the people who aren't in that place of deep sorrow over the dead...but because of the living, instead?
That, oddly enough, is where I come in.
An old friend of mine passed away just before Thanksgiving. His name was Tim. I'd known him since I was a teenager, even though he was twenty years older, and he was one of the rare examples of an overall decent human being that I managed to come across in my life.
He'd been battling cancer for the better part of two years, and that fight unfortunately took its toll enough that he couldn't fight off the complications. When I got word that Tim had died, I did what I guess I was supposed to do. My heart sank. I had a good cry, and I lamented the sad fact that he's not in the world anymore.
...But I didn't grieve for him. At least, it didn't feel that way compared to the layer of emotional atmosphere I've been existing in for the majority of this decade.
If there's one thing I've learned about the way my particular strain of Chronic Depression works (and I say that because I also recognize that Depression and snowflakes share the similarity of no two are alike), it's that it sustains itself in my brain by feeding on four key emotional food groups:
Anger, Shame, Trauma...and Grief.
Yet, if the primary definition of that word can be reduced down to nothing more than deep sorrow, however, then it's impossible to ignore its everyday presence in my emotional life. And as strange as this is probably going to sound, only one of those cords tying me to that grief has anything to do with someone who's dead.
That someone is my brother Erik, who passed away almost 25 years ago. Aside from the fact that I miss him practically every day, the other aspect of my grief is connected to the shame I've carried since because it wasn't me who died instead of him, because of my intertwined shame over who I am and how I see myself because of the life I've lived.
See, for all his human flaws, failings and peccadilloes, Erik was a good person who was destined for great things. Whereas I...yeah...not so lucky. And try as I have to carry on and move forward and soldier on since he left, the two times each year when my grief for his absence returns always serve as a focal point for my brain to remind me that the world would no doubt be a better place if I wasn't in it.
The rest of my grief, though, is focused squarely on the living and breathing; people who mattered to me, who I cared about, who I loved deeply, passionately...and that didn't stop me from losing them.
Anyone who's ever gone through losing side of a divorce, especially one that involves children, will probably tell you (provided you're willing to listen) that it's one of the most brutal experiences you can have.
Growing up, I'd invested a lot of emotional capital in the idea that when I grew up and became a parent, I was going to do everything I knew how to be a better example to my children than mine were to me.
Editorial Note: It also took me the better part of forty years to come to the educated conclusion that while my parents aren't entirely terrible people in all aspects of their lives, the evidence is more than conclusive that they should've never started a family together. My being a byproduct of this ties more into my shame than grief...so I suppose that's a story for another day.
My son was born on March 9, 2011. The next day, my brain finally broke under the force of a catastrophic emotional breakdown. His mother and I finalized the divorce barely seven months later so she could go off and start her new life with the guy she'd already chosen as my replacement while she was still pregnant.
The sudden reality that what had been a sixteen-year relationship and a ten-year marriage was done and gone with three signatures on a stack of legal documents was one thing. Realizing that I'd also lost the ability to be an involved parent in my son's life was something else.
And even though I get to see and talk to him every week through Skype, there's a lot of other days during that same week where I find myself openly grieving the fact that I failed him as a father before he was even able to crawl, because I wasn't strong enough to keep holding off this chaotic maelstrom sitting inside my head.
Not long after the divorce, I also found myself in a position where I thought I had a chance to start a new relationship with my best friend from college. It's not like I planned it to happen, or wished for it, or even really wanted it. The feelings I found myself grappling with came as a result of being around each other for the better part of two years, about learning about each other, finding out what we had in common and where we differed, about very rare and very special times where we could both be open and vulnerable with each other without any pretense or expectation of romantic affection.
What I remember about that time was going home every night with the thought that I knew someone who was so different than what I'd experienced to that point and being equal parts intellectually enthralled, emotionally intoxicated and utterly terrified.
Then...I fucked it all up...and she walked out of my life. Twice.
You don't need me to tell you that being rejected by someone you genuinely love hurts. Interspersed with all the puppy videos, socio-politicial conspiracy theories and porn, there's no shortage of people willing to tell you what they consider to be the right way to move on from it.
That's not to say I didn't move on from it, though I freely admit that my way of doing so will never gain any seal of social approval, either. I've been retired from new relationships of any and all sorts for the past seven years because I can't go through a week without finding myself thinking about her, or reliving one of the good or bad moments we had, or probably the worst bit of all, finding myself having open, audible conversations with her as if she was sitting right next to me, even though I know that as I write this, she's about 2,000 miles away in Southern California and I'll probably never see her again.
Now, before you lay into me about how unhealthy that is, how much I need to just let it go, let me stop you right there.
I know.
I knew when I was still feeling the immediate aftershocks and I know it even more so now all these years later.
But here's the kicker.
Whenever I try to (and believe me, I have tried), the stark reality is that the sheer amount of raw, unfiltered and white-hot grief that I feel completely and totally destroys me. Conversely, the grief I feel when I let myself skirt along the far edges of it with the help of the coping mechanisms I've developed makes getting through each day just a little easier.
If you're reading this, I don't expect you to understand. Hell, most of the time, even I don't fully understand, because like Depression, there is no standard format for how grief works.
Grief is also a clandestine operator, always sitting in the closed off recesses of your mind waiting for that perfectly opportune moment when the right stimulus comes along to snipe you right through the heart with the emotional impact of a 50-cal. shell.
I can be going through a boring, mundane, utterly predictable day and all it takes is an audio or visual cue, a smell, a word, or even half-a-thought about my son or Katie...and the floodgates just open.
There have been times where I lied in bed at night, trying desperately to get to sleep, wondering if it would be easier for me if they ceased to exist. If, when I woke up the following morning and my brain was still booting up, I came to the realization that they were just suddenly gone.
Not dead, but just...gone!
Part of me would like to think that would be better because if they didn't exist then I wouldn't find myself thinking about them, because I wouldn't have any reason to. There would be no point in my caring about them as much as I do, even after all that's happened.
But that, of course, is not an option. They exist, here and now, and their existence weighs on my heart whether they like it or not, whether they or me wants that existence to or not...because they mattered to me. In vastly different ways, sure, but dammit, they mattered to me.
They mattered for the simple reason that I love them, and being unable to show them, or communicate that to them, or do what I can to make myself worth being someone to love back...?
That's left me with this hole right in the center of my being that every so often gets filled with the deepest sorrow I know of.
It fills with grief...and I honestly don't know if that is ever truly going to go away.
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