February, March, April and May.
Welcome to my blog, we have bananees and avacadees. We’re six months into the year. I’ve been in grief counselling for eight weeks. Ten weeks ago I called up the hospice saying I needed to talk to someone. A while before that I looked into how feasible it is to replace my brain with one of those big wheels of cheese I see at farmers markets and trying to find the pin by my wrist that’ll allow me to unscrew my hands and replace them with some new ones (they keep closing).
I’ve had a couple of thoughts orbiting the important stuff in my head recently. I’ve had this idea that, from the moment you’re born, tragedy is lined up for you. Several forms of death and misfortune will come for those you love, and the more people you love, the more people you’ll lose. The more faith you have, the more you’ll be tested. Unfortunately, every good thing in life, it’s not lined up, you have to find it, fight for it and what can be even harder, you have to make yourself enjoy it.
The consequence of completely removing your ego is being frozen in your bed in fear of how small you and insignificant you are. Lacking a sense of your own importance, you find purpose in meeting other peoples needs. As many as you can, you keep doing this, staying as busy as possible till you realise that one person’s desires are in conflict with another's and you are too scared to tell either one, as that means you fail at pleasing them, which means you’re a failure.
Grieving ends like an earth wind an fire song, or any fun song from the seventies. It doesn’t stop with an exclamation point, it’s a slow turning down of a party that will never end, it’s just going away for now.
Seeking out happiness is hard when you don’t feel worthy of it. When you put happiness into a space, or love into a person, and that space gets torn down and that person is no longer there to reciprocate, will never be able to smile back at you. Smile at all. So it goes.
I miss him, but I miss her most. We talk everyday. Arguing, her frustration at me shutting myself off in the fear of letting anymore of that sadness in my heart could take me to a place I can’t come back from. Watching from far away. Angry, upset. at me, angry and upset. drifting dangerously close to the edge of ending anything.
Night shifts and day shifts and night shifts and day shifts. Burning energy away in minimum wage, twelve hour shifts, Ive been saying it’s for the Fringe but if I had more self worth I’d have started a kickstarter, gofundme. I’d have finished that commission that’d pay more than enough. There’s more to it. Sleeping on the floor in the suit I wore for dad’s wedding. It’s like, while things are dark, I might as well settle in.
One of the other thoughts that was orbiting. Thinking about life. How beautiful life is. the sunsets, the beauty that surrounds us, from the posh beer taps to passing a sleeping cow on a train. Life is full of so much beauty. Life is increidble. Life is beautiful. I just hate my life.
June, July, August and September.
You want to say the people you love pulled you through, but if I think it was only them it’d be disrespectful to the people who’ve had to cut their own hands off just to be let go of. Week five my counsellor shouts at me. Tells me to stop with the deep sighs. Stop touching my eyes. Look: The relationship isn’t working. The career isn’t working. You’re not happy. What are you doing about it. I don’t know. Nothing. Everything.
Grief is still playing in the background- do you remembahh- I think about what I need to do to be happy. When I look at appeasing myself, beyond everyone else, it brings me back to where I was a year and a half ago. Writing a facebook status like a press statement in New York, saying I’m moving there. The most confident I’ve been about the biggest decision I’ve ever made- like I could just click my fingers and it could be done.
That means upsetting my family, leaving boxedin, giving up my career. Then I lost two family members, stopped working on my career, nearly lost boxedin and it was all in the worst ways and I shrank into myself like a burnt up crisp packet. You could still see the logo. Even though it’s bare tiny.
I’m excited for the future. I”m excited about Boxedin at the roundhouse and BAC- seeing this small thing be a little less small. Excited to finally see Jodi read again at Bit Deep. I”m almost excited for Until You Hear That Bell at the Fringe, if it didn’t cost so much fucking money.
And then in September I’m turning thirty. Thirty years old, in a three year long relationship- still separated. All I have in my head is closing that gap, and fighting tooth and nail to have as much fun as I can along the way.
Bring on the clash.