Good Mourning

Let me sleep

I’m grieving.

I don’t really know what that means, or what it entails, but it’s agreed by all parties that I’m grieving. That’s not something that you’re really taught about in life, it’s just something you have to experience. Apparently there’s no rules or specific patterns you go through during grieving. It’s vague, and the only real truth to it is that it hurts.

She may have been my mother in law, but I lovingly called her ma. Her passing was anything but fair. I remained strong through her illness, being the stoic for my wife as she sat at her hospital bed day in and day out. I remained strong when she passed, as my wife handled arrangements. That’s my role in a relationship, after all. Support. So I stayed supportive.

I’m not sure when I broke. I’m not sure IF I broke. I guess the things I’m going through are still within my range of normal, even if that normal is a little fucked up. It’s completely normal for me to be frustrated. Angry. Hateful. Fragile. Despondent.

There’s pride within my achievements of self awareness and mindfulness. Within the understanding of my mental illnesses and addiction, I have found strength. Within my acceptance of the lack of control we have in our lives, I have found control of my reactions and responses.

It’s all failing me now. I can’t control the way I feel, or the way I’m responding to it. I can’t control the panic that overcomes me. I can’t control my lack of patience, or the void where drive and motivation usually are.

I can’t control my hate.

I hate people in denim shirts. I hate men walking tiny dogs. I hate narrow eyed babies and girls with Chelsea’s, people who don’t look before crossing, high waisted jeans and 30 minute parking. I hate young guys with ironic mustaches, double parked beer trucks, young people who gentrify neighborhoods and the old people who fight gentrification. I hate my fat fuck of a body and my piss poor discipline that keeps it that way.

I hate that all of us are on borrowed time, and we’re wasting it doing shit that doesn’t make us happy.

As if my existential dilemma of what I’m doing with my life and why I even exist wasn’t consuming enough, now I can’t stop focusing on my own mortality. It makes everything seem trivial. It makes everything feel like a cage. It makes me feel like I’m an animal backed into a corner, and I have nowhere to run.

Maybe being backed into a corner is good. Maybe it’ll force me to re evaluate the things I do, and the way I spend my time. Or maybe it’ll just force me into avoidance sleep and the mindless tap tap tap of phone games so I don’t have to confront it. Just lull me to sleep by the glow of my screen, sedate me with technology.

Fuck, I want a drink. It’s the only way I’ve ever known to manage the unmanageable, if only for a night. Pump me full of bourbon and Klonopin and tuck me in bed. I’ve worked and practiced and studied and struggled for years to learn to cope with the tragedy of the human condition, only to have it washed away in a matter of days. I know it’s not gone forever, and it’ll return as I heal, but that does me no good where I am.

It does me no good when I’m walking out on my job. When I’m ignoring my employees trying to call me to come talk to my appointment because I’m wrapped in anxiety. It doesn’t help me to discern whether I’m grieving or whether I really hate tattooing and want to quit. It doesn’t help me to understand if blogging and working craft shows is actually a reasonable thing to do for a forty year old man with four kids.

Right now I am lost. I don’t know what to do, and even the safety of home, career, and hobbies feels like a bear trap.

I guess this is grief.

Son of a bitch, I’m an asshole to myself. Even saying that I’m grieving and that’s why I’m getting caught up in these behaviors feels like a cop out. I feel like I’m shifting blame away from myself. I can’t leave well enough alone sometimes, just like I couldn’t leave a simple blog post alone.

I don’t know what I’m going through. I can’t pinpoint most of it. There’s a sense of impending dread, and hanging sorrow. There’s dissatisfaction, and the question of whether I’ve lived a meaningful life. There’s anger that useless and abhorrent people continue to live and ma had to die.

The question of what I’ve been doing with my life has been ongoing and unanswered. This isn’t going to make any of it easier. This bullshit blog post isn’t going to express it properly, and the inevitable lackluster ending won’t caress my ego. The steady collapse of my prose won’t carry the reader along.

I guess we all go through this. I guess we all ask these questions. I wouldn’t want a life where I don’t ask them. Even as words don’t flow to lay out a grand story arc of my fall and redemption, and instead just become mile markers to mediocrity, I still wouldn’t want a life without it.

We’re born, we live, we die. Our relationships matter. Our inner peace matters. Without them, life is meaningless. Mom left having impacted hundreds of people in massive ways. She was loving, kind, and positive. She lived a life with meaning. That’s all I ask for.