Grief is a Freight Train

I have too much restless energy. This feeling…it won’t leave me alone. What is this feeling…I don’t understand it.

I never really learned to deal with emotions. Growing up, if something tragic happened, my family would jump into action-mode: contact so-and-so, send flowers, pray, bake a fucking cake etc. If you could be busy enough, then there would be no time to be sad. I began to judge the level of my parents' grief on how occupied they kept themselves. After my grandmother passed away, I watched my mom clean our house for seven-days straight. I swear to god the woman did not sleep. At the time I thought she had lost her mind...but looking back, I understand it was fear that was keeping her going...the fear of having to sit with her thoughts...the anxiety of having to accept the reality that her mother was gone.

According to my parents, no matter how awful you felt, you were not allowed to cry. You were not allowed to speak of how devastated you were…because these were all signs of defeat…they exposed your weaknesses. And once the tragedy had passed, we were not allowed to mention it because that would be a step in the wrong direction. We were only supposed to move ahead and think to the future. But that kind of coping mechanism has not helped me to become the stoic soldier my parents had envisioned. I’m weak and I’m emotional and I cry about so many things. It’s like I’m crying now for all the times I wasn’t allowed to cry as a kid.

The other day I almost broke down crying because the traffic light turned red as I was approaching it. Seriously? But maybe that didn’t happen…I don’t know if I am comfortable admitting to such unstable behavior.

I’ve felt so exceptionally empty lately. It’s as if I’m existing in this world just enough to keep going but each night I’m consumed by the emptiness. I’m overwhelmed by the insignificance of my days. It’s too much to admit that I am unhappy. So I take a bunch of uppers, waiting for the drugs to give me a surge of energy and then I throw myself into mindless labor. Hoping the physical distraction will somehow cure my sadness. But it is a losing battle, I know. Once the sun sets, I wrestle with my restless soul. I feel allergic to my own thoughts. I want to so badly take my pile of burdens and dump them into the ocean. I want nothing to do with the stories that have accrued under my identity.

I don’t know if my sadness has grown or if I’ve developed a tolerance to these pills. These doses are doing nothing to distract me from my emotions. Simply giving me horrible anxiety about this “feeling” I can’t define. Hmmm...perhaps if I took more. Or maybe it is time to call my shaman again. My druid tree symbol had warned me of this dead period in my life.

Whenever I have a string of these shit days...I just remind myself what I once said to a friend visiting from overseas: Here in America, happiness is only a theoretical state that we read about in books. In actuality, it's just a matter of who is less suicidal on any given day.

Alas, it was not the night to die. It was a night to be alive. So I lived. I lived like there was no tomorrow.

Time for a latte break. good riddance, you chiphorsing fools.

elyvas