Your very own tortured poet

Something about grief just makes me feel so small. Tiny and curled in on myself like those roley poley bugs that always seem to be a part of childhood and never adulthood. I think part of me believes I have the power to shrink away from my sadness. That if I can become small and quiet and stay perfectly still, those demons will never find me. But somehow they always do. Even when we think we’ve found the perfect hiding place. And the timing always seems wrong. Because somehow the good days and warm joyful feelings seem to highlight the cold melancholia that has a habit of sneaking its way in.

One day you’re going about your business as usual and the next day the new Taylor Swift album is making you realize how many years you’ve spent just trying to make it to the next threshold. Taking it moment by moment. It dawned on me recently how so much of life when you’re grieving is performative. We’ve set these unreachable standards of wanting to excel at everything - relationships, friendships, work, school - without ever leaving space to fall apart. How indescribably exhausting that is. I find myself finally having the time to unpack all of the bs that the first part of this year threw at us. Not only that, but the last three and a half years of my grief journey. Excruciating painful images flash before my eyes. Memories I’d never wish on anyone. Yet we have to keep going. Me and the rest of the world who are working through some internal struggle or another. So many of us are fighting these Goliath demons in silence. From muffled tears in office bathrooms to sobs alone in the bed at night. We present brave faces. Little toy soldiers standing at the ready to do our jobs. Fill our roles and check our boxes. Life leaves such little room for anguish and trauma and pain. And that seems to lead to a sort of shame about those days when you’re just not okay. At least for me. One of the biggest ways I’m able to cope during these low times is to always give space for my feelings. Let the sadness exist - it’s there for a reason. A very valid one. And I find that if you leave it be instead of trying to strangle it away or snuff it out, it’ll depart on its own when it’s meant to. Sadness tends to do its own thing, no matter how much we fight against it. You take a certain amount of power back when you decide to let go of that control. Feel the feelings and fall apart if you have to. I find that falling apart and putting myself back together is much more freeing than just trying desperately to keep all the shattered pieces in place.

I sat outside by myself for a long time last night. I thought about my Lily Rose and how long I’ve had to live without her now. I wondered if she could see the same moon that I saw. Or feel the same breeze. I thought about saying goodbye to Miss Joyce. How hard it can be to choose the right words when you know you only get one chance to get it right. I thought about my marriage falling apart and starting my life over. And all those months of allowing myself to be used and discarded over and over again in the futile search to feel something other than empty. As I sat there on the concrete still warm from the sun that had set a few hours earlier, each memory washed over me and tugged me out a little farther like waves at the beach. Threatening to pull me out to a place that I can’t come back from. And somehow each time I go down that road I feel guilty. Because I know I don’t have a monopoly on trauma. And although I’ve felt unspeakable pain in my life, so have so many others. Am I feeling sorry for myself? Am I being unreasonable? But then I remember there really is no right and wrong when it comes to hurting. If anything, it’s a universal experience. An unavoidable part of the human condition. And in some weird way, there’s a comfort in that. So I guess what I’m trying to say here is that it’s okay to fall apart. To struggle and to not be okay. I hope one day we can end that unspoken, implicit stigma. This is what it means to be human, after all. And if you need a safe place to unload your baggage, I’m always here. I’ve been told I’m good at carrying heavy things. And, just like Miss Swift said, I can do it with a broken heart.

Yours truly,

Your very own tortured poet