Everything happens for a fucking reason

I should be doing alot of other things. I have demons to exercise and things to unload.

I have been seeing an article and rendition of the same article making its rounds. Some gilted being who exclaims to the world that nothing happens for a reason. Whereas this writer must have had this said to them and they had the same reaction I did upon hearing it “No fucking way”. I get it, I get the hurt and pain has metastasized into anything even resembling some sort of comfort or well being beyond their grief is just literally an impossible thought for these people.

I have a story that’s not worse than anyone else’s. One writer who had a miscarriage that led her to her jaded understanding of the outcome of grief and pain is someone I would never tell I know her pain. That I can say completely that what she is feeling is something outrageous. Really I wouldn’t argue it with anyone who doesn’t accept this term that they need to or should. I just see that they aren’t ready. As a personal battle thinking the whole universe is fucked is perfectly normal, in my opinion.

The problem I have is the spreading of this idea. Where you are in grief is perhaps a place more damaging to someone else. But that’s just my silly naive morals of how people should act. Telling someone that everything happens for a reason can be a cliche thing to say. Its hard to think any good can come from any terrible situation. Death is the most prevalent in this subject, the idea that something you love is no longer here is probably the hardest and somehow the one thing that shows us life in its rawest. Death is insanely relate able, especially after you see it or feel it for yourself. When a place that had something you loved now lays empty. Of course its nice to think they’re waiting for you somewhere beyond the stars and pain. But its not something anyone knows. I think it, but its a whole perspective of life and how we leave this plane. What Ive felt dancing between life and death the few times I did. With death no one is wrong in how they react. Whatever you do aside from hurting other human beings or any creature in your care is fine. Fuck up, you’re due. Because really killing yourself really doesn’t do a whole lot, it seems really useful. In a utilitarian type way. You have these bad feelings as long as you’re alive, end that and the feelings end. Win, win right? Well one writer I read is Augusten Burroughs who completely described every way I had tried to kill myself and the dread of the act itself. Because if you’re thinking about it and fantasizing about being rid of all this life, I agree with you. Ive been there. Maybe not exactly as every person whose reading these words but believe me the moments where you feel time and light fade away, something goes wrong and you’re there forced to either try again or make peace. Its a troubling point in time, I had only never completely accomplished my goal because I didn’t want someone I loved to find me. When that wasn’t an obstacle anymore it was just a matter of when and how. Liquor, pills, my endless knife collection and belts. Liquor covers some of the many things I did while on the substance that taught me what not to do while grieving. I believed I was bound to kill myself, having been the child of not one suicide but another. Complete the cycle I thought. I went on a journey after that, it hasn’t ended yet.

I had several experiences through the haze of my destruction that pointed me in directions I didn’t want to go. I should have but I don’t regret it. Because the thing about progress is it gives you room to accomplish goals until life kicks you to the ground again. Because it will. Now I cant tell you every reason some tragic event happens to you. Everyone is different, everyone has a way or method or history that is shared with either few or none. But I can tell you it happens for a reason, but you have to be honest with many possibilities and yourself most of all. Like I said I’m a child of two suicides, 21 years apart. The first was my father. I don’t know for sure if his death was truly a suicide, I only found out after my mother died that he had tried killing himself with heroin once or twice before. I also only found out after my mother died that my father had impregnated someone else from within his and my mothers group of friends at the time. Being an extreme human being of many sorts I know how I would have reacted to all that info, he was as well. Sometimes its genetic. Go forward 21 years or alittle less and a woman who was far more brilliant than she gave herself credit for is fired from a job, alcohol was the culprit this time. I don’t know alot about my mother outside of when she was around me. Sadly with how much she put upon herself in my young life that wasn’t a whole heck of alot. I know she had been grieving my fathers death for a long time, then her own parents. Beyond that a ton of friends. She shortly after losing her job put herself in a position that she would have died in the room I’m sitting in now. I had moved out, was living a sped up version of the 20 something decade in my own place. She had been forced to go to the hospital, she had done her liver in. This had started around April 2011 and her time had come August 8th 2011. Ultimately I didn’t know if she made August her final month or not. What I found in the fallout of this has tossed me in so many directions that even now I don’t know how I made it here. How I stepped out of that hospital and into the rest of my life. I was 25 and parentless. I had very little idea how I was going to do this life anymore, I had very little use for it.

Those months I had with my mother, she wasn’t allowed to drink. I don’t know if she stopped but she was different. Better in a sense. I still wonder how much she knew, I wonder how much not knowing the extent of her mothers condition played into her mentality at this time. But it was nice. It was nice to talk and hang out. It was hard at the same time. I had prepared myself for many years for her not to be around, I had wished it at points when her and I didn’t get along. I’m sure she felt that same at times. But we loved each other, just easily signed people off from our lives.

Since then the hits didn’t exactly stop coming. I let them drag me out deeper into the ocean of depression and sadness. I let the grief take me away. Far from who I was. Who I will be. I drifted through it, always in some state of haze. My world just kept going despite what I wanted or what I felt. The world moved on too. Its one thing I ultimately made part of how I cope, the world wont stop for you or anyone. Death doesn’t change that. Loss after that became a wave that just passes over me, a few beautiful souls left us in this time. It didn’t help the idea that everything happens for a reason. Watching the same cycle in another family where they lose a father or brother and the whole spectrum of grief start for them. That feeling is universal, it crosses languages and probably dimensions. Tears come to my eyes thinking of someone just feeling this, the loss of their parent. I cant speak for every child, but Ive had the love and hate for my birthers. I know some, not all.

So after all this, what fucking reason could there be. How could I come to you and tell you there is absolutely a reason that everything happens? I can, I am. I went on a journey that hasn’t ended yet, that journey is a personal crusade to be. Fight through feelings of uselessness and depression. Experience for experience. It started in a moment when I’m walking alone down a street, my mother had just passed and I was making one of my many trips to and from my mothers apartment to figure it all out (where I’m living, what was happening to her dog, etc) and I heard a ringtone from a phone. Now this ringtone is one of them that comes with the phone. Its by no means specific to any person. But this ringtone was the one my mother had on her phone. I remember for years absolutely hating the sound of it. I look around me and see no one about to flip a phone open. I check myself to make sure I didn’t have her phone on me ( I still have it, it has a few sound bites of her). When I couldn’t find any other reason this was happening I stood for a moment til the ringing stopped. With tears in my eyes I with much confusion kept on my way. My soul searching started that day. The reason everything happens depends on you, but theres a reason. You make the reason true. We all do. But that reason is yours to find. I found many reasons as I coped throughout my life about my father not being around. But its simple when someone is deep into the drug life like he was. As good a man as he was, that world is impossible to navigate without having it rub off on you. His mother had just died and kicked his serious habit into a deathwish. Being one of the toughest people anyone knew and running down the highway to hell make for a bad mix that no one could stop. So identifying things that came from that as reasons why what happened happened wasn’t impossible, hard but not impossible. It gave me a proclivity towards harder drugs than weed and mushrooms. Which honestly are mostly harmless. It made me appreciate meeting good fathers later in life. It made my want to be a father that much more important. Other deaths I was audience to had their own ways of having their own reasons. Bringing family together and pushing each other to make that much more effort to love one another. It taught me how to live, one thing I can never knock my mother for is that she did what she wanted. There was no telling that woman how to live, despite how much better it would have been for her. In some eyes this is being overly stubborn, to me its will that’s unbreakable.

But this is about getting through grief. My words to people who cannot see a reason out of their grief, are either in too deeply into their grief or bitter about what hand they are dealt. Been in both spots. I went to therapy and completely got turned off by this idea, how ludicrous that theres a reason I was feeling this shit. Got angry when the answer was to “keep busy” and that “time is your most trusted ally” but theres alot of truth in both of these things. Grief puts a pause button on alot of your mind and feelings. If you’re like me it can make you pause more physical things in your universe. Because at the end of it, when you have the belt tightening around your neck and you’re one or two more grommets away from stopping your air supply, hearing your throat crunch under the strength of the leather. Or when you’ve thrown up all the fluids you consumed for the passed three hours after you had just repeated this process the last few days and you’re shaking alone in your apartment waiting for anything to take you away from this. These moments when they pass and you’ve woken up or somehow didn’t make it to that grommet laying on the floor with the worst pain you’ve ever felt in your chest/throat is when I realized that surviving immense pain is reason enough that anything has happened. That I know I can handle this, because we all can. If you’re reading this far you’ve at least had the will to find out what a reason could be and are probably looking for one yourself. My suggestion to you is as follows: stay constantly fucking busy, forget time and live the way who you miss would have wanted. Fuck anyone who says otherwise, if you must be cause to destruction make it only your own and limit it. We can easily fall off a ledge if we don’t step away from it for a little while. Find the outlet, we all have something that helps. I write now, it helps. Whenever I don’t write I feel like I need to. I was fortunate enough to get something monetarily that gave me a good year of fucking up and something that when I feel like retiring will be waiting for me. Some would say I’m fortunate and some would be appalled at that assumption. If you’re looking for a reason take the least I can tell you, you’re stronger than you think. I know that you feel this feeling that’s so horribly terribly empty and painful that it seems like it will never heal, you are absolutely right about that. It will never heal, its a wound that sometimes will have to bleed to keep from bursting at the seems. I wish I can say you will never be overwhelmed by emotion or hurt about the ones you’ve lost or anything else that brings you to a point where you cant handle your life anymore, but that would be a lie. Whatever you do to cope don’t lose sight of yourself, if you do, find yourself with such conviction that there is nothing but what you need to be or where. Surviving is enough of a reason.

This was originally written on my personal blog zombiemilk.com, just felt like posting it here.