Grief and the guise we hide under

Without stating the obvious or beating a proverbial horse, the last couple of years have been absolute bullshit. As an optimist, I would be remiss if I didn't allude to the beautiful things that bloomed from that merciless mountains of manure - however, this essay isn't about that part of the garden. For the lesson without its context, skip ahead.

The tail end of 2020 through the first half of January 2022 - the 15th, if I’m exact - unfolded with a series of soul punches I took straight to my cartoonishly big, hopelessly open, and ever-optimistic heart: the suicide of my stepfather, the suicide of a lover, and the death of my best friend. Three men who existed in unrelated worlds, within my world, gone. I won’t wax on about the spirit that lingers when the form is lost, because I’m not there yet and I think grief is something we need to talk about. Not the hope and optimism and lovely sentiments we cling to when our heart has broken open - not the proclamations we make to assure other people we’re “emotionally healthy” and processing our loss in the appropriate intervals. Not grief that has a Hallmark card, but real grief. Ugly grief. Grief that keeps up you up at night and wakes you after you’ve finally fall asleep. Grief that rattles around in your chest and stuffs itself in your pocket, and when your heart leaks you reach for that tissue that’s crumbly and snotty it reminds you - oh look, more grief!

My stepfather was a man who was wild about my mother, and who came into my life after the tumult of my adolescence and teenage angst; he was gregarious, generous with his love, and midwestern in all the ways that make a person so fucking wonderful. He would call to check in on me when my mother and I were at odds - and though saved by Jesus, he was a Harley-rider at heart and understood my renegade spirit in ways my mother never could. When my brother came home from Afghanistan - a veteran Marine with PTSD who had until-then, only existed in my mother’s stories - my stepdad thanked him for his service with a hug and a “welcome home, son” - no questions asked. We always had a home in the house he warmed with all that love he held for my mom. I do not understand his death and I accept that I never will. Both facts aside, he was a hero of a man I’m honored to have known in the time he let me know him.

It may be a surprise to many of you, but my heart has only known a handful of lovers. Not necessarily because I’m “too picky” or “too busy” or so flirtatious I can’t settle in - I’m just not a casual woman. I’m a slow roast, gamey catch and if you don’t know to soften your meat with apples and onions before sliding that pan into the oven - you never really caught me, anyway. I’m messy, easily lost in musings, and so fiercely in the experience of life that lovers must love all the alleyways, because loving me is like getting lost in the city. So, lovers, there have been few. One in particular, whose arrival and departure marked both beginning and end to the roughest year of my life, still remains my biggest lesson and best mistake. He was married, I was not; both of us wounded, anesthetizing with lust, and equally in denial with our entirely separate yet totally synched, pain; I was sowing the seeds for a radical, explosive period of growth, he was not. What brought us together, as one might guess drove us apart: his marriage, my thirst for change – and between the first and final goodbye, we found our own kind of safety. Beneath jokes and under covers - crooning karaoke song picks on I-need-you road trips, on planes – that one train – and a few Pacific Ocean bong hits; in secrets we shared late at night, under the bright light of bourbon and I-can-pretend-to-forget-tomorrow. We were each other’s most trusted and reliable distraction, and what held us in that suspended animation was an intimate understanding of one another’s sorrow. I’m the daughter, and sister, to a long line of veterans and I recognize the wild tangle of fear when it looks back at me through the eyes of a loved one – he was the son, and brother, in a long line of females and understood what kind of ugly could stalk young women. I hate to admit that his death didn’t leave me with questions of why, or how, though in the five years since we last spoke, I know he found his own kind of happy. I learned more about myself, hating myself, and the emotional sensitivity I tried hard to harden started to feel different after he, in the wake of drama neither of us needed, told me to cry with pride as it was proof I was living a life. That man loved loud and made you love, too.

The big grey potato I kiss and goose and affectionately call my Twinkie momma was the last love of my best friend’s life. Initially, Twinkie belonged to the first love of my best friend’s life, who also passed, tragically, just one year before J. That’s a lot of loss for one pittie, even for a big girl like her. J’s death, if I’m honest, is the grief that still feels the heaviest - like a weighted blanket of sadness that’s both cathartic and oppressive, depending on my day. J was my very first friend in Austin and that sweet man took me under his wing like the Mexican Fairy Hipster I never knew I needed – but desperately needed. He gave me a proper education in film, while we argued over The Smiths and settled in agreement with shared affection for Buena Vista Social Club. He turned me onto the XX long before anyone else knew who the XX were – and years later, when we saw them play ACL Live, he reminded me to thank him for such a gracious act of charity. His drama was loud and I LOVED IT. My fellow Pisces Triton – in sync, our eccentricities and moods made magic; out of sync, we quarreled like Barbara and Oliver Rose. His family became my family, with every Christmas Eve Mass and after-midnight tamale I chased down with Abuelita hot chocolate. He was a vibrant human being with laughter that weakened my grumpiest day, a trait I miss right now more than ever.

From this grief I’ve learned the settling sounds of sadness.. First, it’s sharp and cuts across the skin like hot knives or melted wax – sour and loud and wet with tears that feel like anger – then it sinks into you, like molasses filling an empty mason jar. Thick with sobs that erupt from the belly, shaking shoulders with its aftershocks or sorrow, riddled with grief, big grief, that doesn’t care about the appropriate period of mourning or what other people think - not a care for anything, at all, because you’re fucking sad. Your friend died and you’re sad, and when the sads come you let them run wild so you can FEEL - because these sads were, and sometimes still are, mine. And they’re valid. And he’s worth all my emotions and every last tear because he is the most magical person I’ve ever known, and I miss him.

It’s okay to not be okay. Write that down and save it for later because there will always be a(nother) bout with grief, or sadness, or anger, and/or jealousy, and all the other emotions we shame ourselves out of experiencing - and why? Because it hurts? Or because we don’t want to inconvenience others by living out loud? Hurt will always hurt, and I don’t think it gets easier but I do think – if we give ourselves grace and space to feel – we’ll get better at it. We need to talk about grief and normalize the myriad of ways we, humans with our shared and flawed humanity, cope with loss. We can only see others from the same depth we find within ourselves – we can only find compassion through commiserating over a shared felt experience. Emotions don’t make us weak and vulnerability does not mean we’re less than; both are residue of an authentic, lived experience and at their apex, strength – that sees and understands, and holds tolerance for what’s different – is rooted.