I had a great conversation this evening with my housemate Brian.  I took a break from frantically moving and enjoyed a delicious meal which he had prepared for the both of us.  The first topic that naturally came up was the upcoming living situation.  With the advent of a new chapter in the house we are presiding, we attempted to diagnose the various ways people tend to live and the psychological motivation behind it.  I have figured out several different aspects of myself over the years, most of them through painful experiences and repeatedly making the same stupid mistakes.  One of those many things is this: I tend to organize myself externally if my internal life is in disarray.  Control.  Power over the things that we are able to take dominion over.  Maybe if I can organize my room, stay in shape, put in a good days work, repair my car, fix my bicycle, etc...my inner life with follow suit.  And for the most part, it does.  However, the problem comes up again when I stumble across a piece of paper in my new room that tears apart any kind of control I thought I had.

It's like trying to run away as fast as you can from a fire that is engulfing you.  It's almost as though the faster you run, the more problematic the situation becomes.  The fire gets fed even more.   The flames grow higher.  Angrier.  Stronger.  Resilient.  It's only when I stop dead in my tracks, fall face first into the filthy dirt, and roll around in the mud do I stand a chance of survival.   I still have to get much dirtier before this issue is peaceful.

As of late, my life has become incredible.  Almost every area of my life has taken a drastic turn from where it was a month and a half ago.  I have a new job prospect, best friends as housemates, spring is just around the corner, chickens are on the immediate horizon, cycling is starting to become my primary mode of transportation again, and I have an enticing female interest.  But it's nights like tonight that remind me that there are some things that don't get easier.  Sometimes wounds never heal and maybe that ok.

I love you John and I fucking miss you.

Loss & Grief

It’s been hard to breathe the past nine days. There seems to be a lack of oxygen everywhere I walk. It seems as though no matter how deep of a breath I take, my need for more is never satisfied. This has most likely lead to my catatonic states I find myself in on regular basis. Staring blankly into space. Motionless. Sitting in the bathtub for an hour, watching the faucet drip. drip. drip. drip. drip. drip. drip. drip… Eventually coming to wondering how long I’ve been there. Waking up after an alcohol induced sleep only to stare at the cracks in the ceiling, pondering if I should get up two hours before work and aimlessly wander around my uncomfortably quite house, or continue to lay in bed so that the fluidity of my morning routine will fall normally into place. This is tiring. This is exhausting. This is torture.

On January 24th, 2009, I lost part of my soul. One of my best friends, John Emmanuel Dybdall died. There is too much here to process. I do not even know where to start. Everything said about death and the acceptance of it seems trivial and worn out. Words are meaningless. Trying to capture an immense loss as great as I have been crippled by seems laughable. There are certain things one does not understand until one goes through it, death is one of those things. A quote that has been bouncing around my head ever since I attempted to read A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis’s notated processing of his wife’s death, is this: “Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.” Most of my friends have been nothing but supportive and I have more than appreciated every message, voicemail, text, whatever. I am exceptionally fortunate to surround myself with friends who understand this and I want to offer a sincere “Thank You” to all of you. I love you and appreciate you probably more than you realize. But there are a few who are still trying to offer me cliché phrases and obvious religious consolation. I will not accept these right now. Do not tell me it will be ok. Do not tell me God did this for a reason. Do not tell me anything that you believe about death and the afterlife, because I frankly don’t give a shit. Even if what you say is true, I do not need to hear it. You can save those for someone else.

I want to talk about family. Upon driving to up the funeral service on Saturday, an old man in a long black coat and glasses asked me, “Friends or Family?”, and I just sat there for a few seconds. Eventually I said friends, but everything in me was saying family. The concept of what a family is and its purpose has been a hot topic for me in the past six months or so. Why does blood relation so often get priority over the people who have intimately shared love, hate, respect, heartache, joy, excitement, pain, grief, and every other imaginable emotion and life circumstance? Shouldn’t the question be, “Will you comfortably sleep tonight or not?”. Or how about, “Have you been in a constant state of nausea for the past week, or not?” I am in absolutely no way discrediting the grief John’s family. I cannot begin to comprehend what is like to bury a child that I bore or a son that I raised. But I am saying that the amount of disclosure, trust, and love that John and I shared was incomparable to anyone else in my life. John knew the darkest parts of me. John knew the brightest parts of me. John was the person I called when I knew no one else on this earth would understand a single word or lack of words that came out of my mouth. Even though near the end of John’s life, we heavily disagreed on several things and got into heated arguments over them, in the end we were still best friends. We still understood each other.

Until the last year, my life was run relatively pain free and most of everything was provided for me. Apparently the cosmos has decided to make up for 22 pain-free years in the last six months. The house I grew up in is on the market for sale, my nuclear family is hundreds of miles away from me, the routine of school is gone, I am continually accruing debt, my most intense romantic relationship and confidant dissolved, and now one of the two closest people to me is dead. Pieces of my “home” and “family” are rapidly disappearing and I find more often than not an angry scowl on my face shaking my fist at God screaming “What the fuck!?” I am becoming displaced. My faith in anything substantial has taken a huge hit. I find it extremely hard to trust anyone or be confident in anything. Dreams that once seemed to look like they were becoming reality now show themselves as mirages. I realize that I am looking at the glass half empty here, but I am struggling to find anything in the glass at all. I know there are things there, but my thoughts are so clouded and dark that it is hard to find the beams of light that are on the other side of them.

This isn’t an attempt for pity.
This isn’t a cry for help.
This is how I feel.
This is letting you know my state of mind.
This is a request for your patience.
The healing process for me will be long and it will be painful.
All I am asking for is understanding.

“Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.”

- C.S. Lewis