Not supposed to be here.

Now I pick up again. I revisit prompts. Now almost nine months out. I try to write again because I am drowning, Listen to where I left off. It is most pertinent now: 

What does a shift in your grief, even a tiny, momentary one, mean to you? What does it say about loss? Or love?

“The pain, or the memory of pain, that here was literally sucked away by something nameless until only a void was left. The knowledge that this question was possible: pain that turns finally into emptiness. The knowledge that the same equation applied to everything, more or less.”―  Roberto Bolaño, 2666

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This is the void. Welcome. It is not grief anymore. It is a deep depression. I kept up a frenetic pace. I took a second job. I ate dinner with friends. I went to the gym six days per week. I listened to music and got sad. I avoided my bed. I avoided the quiet here with my words and my heart. I was doing “so well.” And then the void came. It was all that was left. It is a void and it is all that I have. This void.

Empty.

I am not just sad anymore. I am not just grieving you. You have become a sadness that is not outside of me but a part of me. Your sadness has integrated. It is consumed. It is a parasite. It eats my heart. My hope. It is not a thing that happened but a thing that is me. This is what I was scared of. When this loss becomes a part of me. How do I let you become a part of me when your loss is so heavy? It pulls me under. I lie in bed hating the people that I have to stay alive for, hating how hard it is to be alive for all of you. Because the pain is so deep, the depression so strong that I don’t know how to keep breathing except that I have to.

From an email to Brian:

I feel as if my emotional spectrum of happy to sad has been replace with apathy to anxiety. One or the other or often a confusing cocktail of the two. Like right now. I’ve done nothing at work today. I didn’t do much for our short week last week either. Even played sick on Monday. I’m not proud of it. I actually feel stomach turning shame about this behavior. But I don’t care to do anything about it. Don’t know if I even could do anything about it. And finally don’t care to find out if I can or can't do anything about it. SO, I give zero fucks and it makes me anxious as hell. But I can still do a mean tap dance to make sure you pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. It’s going to be a grueling winter.

He called and gave me the you’re-tough-suck-it-up-speech. I didn’t go to work for two days.

It’s been nine months. I’m supposed to be better. I’m worse. I’ve integrated. And it’s awful.

I think all the time. I’m not supposed to be here. I shouldn’t be paying someone else to fix my bike after that bad accident. I shouldn’t have had to ride home bruised with my handlebars cockeyed after that accident. I shouldn’t have been riding at all. I should have been riding a bus to you and met you in a McDonalds parking lot. Where you beamed at me from the car the second my hand touched the passenger handle.

I shouldn’t have been in Aspen for Thanksgiving drinking and doing drugs. I shouldn’t have sobbed my way through a snowy run on the Roaring Fork River, as beautiful as it was. I should have been in bed with you trying to make a baby. I shouldn’t have been drinking whiskey at 4 AM. I should have been nestled in your arms whispering to you through a nightmare.

I shouldn’t be in this basement, listening to a band you’ve never closed your eyes to. I shouldn’t be cozied up to a dog you never met on your bed that I inherited. No matter how dear this dog is.

I shouldn’t be a shell. I shouldn’t have to lie all the time. I’m not supposed to be here.

Litany to lint

After I washed your comforter in my new apartment: 

Have you ever cried over a lint ball. Gently stroking a dead mans hair. Moving it about to recall the kaleidoscope of colors that caught the sun. Dark brown, light brown, copper and grey. Did you recall tousled morning hair and chest hair between your fingers. Arm hair beneath your hand as you absently rubbed his forearm. A pubic hair perhaps pulled out during lovedmaking. Did you consider how you could maybe keep the thing. Seven months gone and you still have to fight the urge to steal away the most simple detritus. So you cry over a lint ball till you toss it in a strange trash an and go have a good cry. 

716 S. Logan

from my last night in our apartment: 

How can a beautiful blue also be black? In it's not dark blue. The sky is blue and black at the same time. This is dusk. The dusk of us. Crayons cornflower blue and black. You exist like that inside me. Outside me. You are both. Not against each other but the same. To put you in both places. But the sky can do it. And I touch the sky and I touch you so I can make it be. Stunning blue and black. Not streaming against each other but laying across each other as your body used to lay against mine. You are darkness an light and you are still mine. I don't mind either. I could take you then, generous and selfish, good and bad, seeking and flawed. I can take you now. For all. It is harder now. Absence wants absolutes. It wants to make your memory one thing or the other. But you are neither. And I love you. Even in your irrevocable absence. 

I'm wrapped up in you. The shirt I first stole and took that sexy, sleepy series of photos in. And the sweatpants you loved and I haven't washed because they still have a fading white wash of our lovemaking on the front of the waistband. I don't remember that time that's left it's mark. But I remember so many morning times where I'd be cranky and you'd cheer me with your urgency for me and tuck your favorite sweatpants down to slide into me against the bathroom. Whispering that we were going to be late. Me pouting and you playing pragmatic. So even though I've worn them since then on our wedding day by a fire you should have built but didn't know I could, I can't wash them. Relishing the smell of fire as I relish you and me against the soft skin below my navel. Holding our love against my womb as if we were dancing, you behind me and me pressed against you, your arms wrapped me from behind, lazy swaying into our future. A family never realized but held so dearly. 

I am yours. And now I have to carve out the piece of me that is yours. But I won't put it in a box. I will hold it with reverence. The part of me that is yours that no one else can't touch. It is sacred. And I carry it forward. And I don't want to spend this last night resenting you for not being able to see how that was possible. A part of me is always yours. And yes I do worry that one day they'll be nothing left with these gems held and otherwise occupied but I have to hope that it grows. This love. Our love. It is apart but something else regenerates. This capacity for love and hope and good. You couldn't see that. And I have to forgive you. 

Anger begins

A note on my phone from August 8th: 

I am going to be okay.

But, it's not because you did this. It's not because I'm better off without you. It's because I have something I need. It's not because you didn't have something I need. 

And still, at the end of the day. I need to survive. Yes. I'm a little more cavalier about my safety. But maybe that's good. I do things that scare me all the time now. Because I've been as scared as a person could be and I am still on my goddamn feet. You didn't do that. I fucking did that.

And I still reach for you. When things are, hurry to share the news good. When things are chip a tooth you're clenching so hard bad. I throw my arm across the bed to find cold comforter, and hear the rock from rainbow lakes slide across the box of your ashes. Even when I dream. I dream of waking and reaching for you and finding you gone. Everywhere I look you are gone. And I persist. 

I am strong as fuck. Not because of you. In spite of you. I do impossible things everyday. Starting with climbing out of bed. And ending with climbing back into bed to try to release as my brain races while my forehead furrows. And every moment in between. I fight. I may finally need the Botox my sister kept trying to push on me. And every moment in between. I fight. To savor moments of respite and surrender to the moment of relentless grief. I do the impossible because I don't know how not to. 

People say it's brave. I'm not sure bravery is much more than being terrified of the alternative. 

Placeholder

somewhere in the middle of June. I could write no more. The following posts are some notes I posted here and there. They remain unpolished but represent a stage of fervor. The absence of data is still data. As I was taught in my previous career as a social scientist. 

Here is a note from July: 
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Hi baby. My baby. My sweet baby love. My sweet love. Oh my love. I had a good day. A good work day. The kind of day that makes the world feel full of possibility. And you. Are not here to share it. Which ruins it. Anything that makes me feel leaves a rock in my throat. I had a good day. I got excited. I thought I could make a difference. Wanted to tell you. I hurt all over. All the time. Like. Burn victim the air hurts my skin when it moves. I need things to stay still. 
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I do remember that day though I don't remember the details. Something felt full of possibility and then immediately it felt empty and alone. 

This is a placeholder. I can barely remember the frenetic pace I kept throughout these days. Trying to be brave,