The Unbearable Darkness of Being

I am in a dark place. It always takes me by surprise, though you'd think I'd be used to it, but no. I'll be walking along, whistling, and with the slightest turn, suddenly be up to my chin in quicksand. I don't want this bottomless sorrow any longer. I never did. But a dark mistress rode in and stole my love away, and in the process, left me with this sucking chest wound, for which there is no fill. Might as well try to patch a dam with jelly. These tears threaten to flood and drown, and I only only only want to be held, buoyed in the current, and allowed to cry. I don't want to hear, "Shhh... it's alright." A lie - there is nothing alright about this. I don't want to hear, "I understand." Another lie - there is no understanding.

The antidote is to give love, but the love I give is refused. My love is tainted, it's laced with recent death. It's too much to ask of another. And so, I am alone, and grasping for branches that break and crumble like ancient bones.

So, I go to work with a smile on my face, and I'm pleasant and I chew the shit out of each millisecond that passes, and gulp down my grief with glasses of water, and get pissed if someone asks if I'm ok.

This is never ok. This was unexpected. This was unfair. This was so wrong.

Tomorrow it will be 7 months since I last held John's hand, last kissed his forehead. Tomorrow, it will have been 14 years ago that I last held my friend Cindy, and then held her husband and children after they said goodbye. I am left with ashes and memories... and this sucking chest wound. Yet, I'll get through it somehow... somehow... because I'm the strong one, right? Fuck. If this is strength, then I hope I'm never weak... because it feels like I'm broken inside. And I am so very weary of that sensation.

Before all of you panic and start calling me. I'll come back from it - I always do. I'm with Agatha Christie on this one:

"I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing."
~AC