No-Thing #44

“To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing.”

---Anne Carson

Living in NYC is like getting stabbed over and over again by an angry toddler with a butter knife. It’ll damage you and leave some gnarly scars, but it probably won’t kill you.

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It is impossible to compete with the gravity imposed by grief. It will win and it will never be moved aside. Grief will swallow everything and no-thing will be left. No trace of anything that existed before the grief arrived. A black hole.

The black hole is grief.

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I cannot remember the last time I felt like I genuinely loved myself. I mostly tolerate myself and try my best to not be cruel to myself. This isn’t ideal, but I am aware of it and working through it and have hope that what’s to come is better than what has been.

Now, I love others---platonically---with a ferocity and honesty that can be overwhelming. I hold the people I love in a light that has no end and no beginning. I love my people so much that I would never question why they leave---and a fair few have left recently and I have had to make my peace with this---because leaving is also a form of love, and who am I to question the why of leaving. I’m just a human, I’m not angelic or wise.

[I am so full of grief and fear that I am paralyzed.]

The sound that grief makes inside of my body is like metal on metal inside of a rusted and rotating/grinding metal cage, the signal coming from light years away but so excruciating that it makes my eyes hurt. The sound makes me taste blood all the time. I find myself looking over my shoulder to make sure there isn’t some dilapidated tin man following me. I open the fridge to make sure it’s not the fan inside dying.

[The dying is inside of me.]

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I knew for sure that my first marriage was over when my stepbrother committed suicide and my then-wife didn’t even look up from her phone when I told her. I’d already been fucking up the marriage through my own choices and shit behavior, but that moment stuck with me and helped me understand that all my shit behavior was me trying to blow up the marriage by getting caught being a piece of shit, which was cowardly and unkind and I should have just left in an honest and compassionate way. There was no reason for me to be hurtful and unkind and unfaithful. I was a coward, and the underhum inside of my cowardice was my grief, and because I wasn’t allowed to grieve, my grief came out as anger and infidelity.

Cowardice is always some other thing wearing the wrong clothing and saying the wrong words.

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For a long time now, I’ve tried to just push these things away and not think about them or deal with them. Even as a person who no longer drinks or uses drugs or sex to numb myself out, I tried to hide my grief behind a curtain, out of sight and mind. I just keep swimming in chum-filled water, just waiting for the sharks to come. And they don’t and haven’t. Instead, I’ve got a black hole incessantly churning away at me, pulling me apart molecule by molecule while I try to navigate life and ease my way toward old age. I do my best to be present and kind. I try.

******

Karmic payback is real. Trust me, I know.

******

I’ve been fighting with my sad the last few months in a way that has drained me, the sad winning every time. I feel like a dead sun/son. I do the same things every day. I go to work and walk dogs and ignore people on the street and ignore people on the subway and go to the grocery store and buy dinner and come home and eat in my room and then I just disappear into my head and the tape plays back the parts of my life that still confuse and hurt me. I try to untie massive emotional knots with fingers that don’t have enough strength to pull and twist properly. I keep yelling into my pillow in the middle of the night when my head won’t let me rest or feel anything other than grief and fear and sad and desperation.

The sad is so pervasive that it creeps into my meditation and that’s now how that’s supposed to work. If someone told me that was happening to them, I’d be worried for them, but I’m not worried for myself. I know what the sad is and why it’s here and what I have to do.

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I haven’t been touched by another human being in a long time, other than some sporadic hugs from friends. Those hugs matter. I’m thankful I hang out with dogs because the physical attention we give one another is pure and free from pretense or anything like that. When a dog leans into my leg it echoes into my body like warm sunlight. It helps, but I am lonely and feel very disconnected from everything and everyone.

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Creeping up on twenty years since my father died. Twenty years is an eternity and a blip. This also means it’s almost thirty years since my mother died. I have a lot of death in my life, but so does everyone. The grief, though. The grief is so heavy and so embedded into me that there isn’t a day without it. A friend just lost her mother and all I want to do is hug her and feed her and sit with her and allow her to feel everything freely, without all the bullshit others throw at us when we lose a parent.

That churning sound is louder than everything.

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I like to sit back and watch all the scurrying about and witness all the time folks waste on things that no longer matter to me as a person. I’ve left a lot of things that used to feel important behind. I’m unsure if that has been the wise thing for me to do, but it has certainly made more room for other feelings to fill those spaces. All the stuff about publishing and writing and people sabre-rattling about what is or isn’t good or what is or isn’t the right way to do things just leaves me empty and sad and the human equivalent of a dog sighing before sleep. If you feel called to write, write. If you feel called to try and publish, try. I’m just bloodletting.

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I was asked by my friend Matt to come out of performance cryosleep and do a reading at a benefit show he had put together out on Long Island at the beginning of November. Of course I agreed, Matt is a good person with a good heart and the cause was for an organization that helps folks transition back into the world from varying situations like homelessness and rehab centers, so it was up my heart’s alley.

The event was really beautiful. So many good humans sharing space with one another and sharing their magick to raise money to help others. Felt good to be present and participate. It’d been a long time since I spoke to a room full of bright eyes and minds that were open to receive and return the energy and love. All the musicians were incredible. Gave me hope. We can do this. Together.

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I feel guilt for the pain I’m in when the world is in far more serious pain. I try to make sure my exterior self is soft, kind, and compassionate. It’s a lot, trying to tamp down what’s happening on the interior chambers of this heart, this imbalanced mind. I don’t want anyone to suffer. I don’t want anyone to be afraid. So many are suffering and so many are afraid.

I’m just a man riding out the dog days of a long and difficult life, but it’s no more difficult than anyone else’s. Some days I’m okay and glad to be here. Some days I’m not. I keep going and that matters to me. Just know that I see you, too.

Hang in there. Stay kind.