Mourning

 I've been in mourning a lot lately.

I think any other time, I might just categorize this as a particularly weird spate of depression, but... it tastes different to me.

sometimes grieving can just come out of the blue

I lost my grandpa a little more than 3 years ago - on the near-anniversary, I wrote this:

"it's about my three year anniversary at Trupanion which also means it's the three year anniversary of my paternal grandpa's passing - I started working there about 2 days before my mom called me and told me to find a place to sit down so she could give me the news.

my sister walked me through figuring out bereavement time off. his funeral was the first time I saw my extended family as Moss, without any dresses or skirts.

I wore a tie.

I remember talking with my cousin about how we both wish we could have talked to him about our lives better before. I wonder what my cousin wanted to tell him.

I came out to my extended family really Firmly this year because of how much that's been a regret for me, and I'm glad I did it. I wish I'd done it sooner.

anniversaries here are always really weird because of this. I still have the brochure from the service on my work desk.

I dunno. I feel like this is always a sore spot for me, and I'm not sure how to move forward. I'm not sure I want to yet.

thanks

I don't think I want a solution here. I think the grief just punched a button tonight after remembering it's pretty much my work anniversary in a week. just, solidarity."

Today I've been thinking about how grief can continue to impact you in these weird little ways. like a tide coming in, there are more and more small things creeping up the shoreline, until you're underwater.

at least I know the tide will go out again.

My housemate killed herself 2 years ago. It's hard not to take on responsibility. someone you live with, see every few days...but we all see friends and family, and we all go through hard, difficult, even cataclysmic times inside our own heads. She was assaulted by a guy in a sport she played, in our house, and was going through the process of reporting it. I don't know what internal switch flipped, what came up for her that left this door open, what made that decision become more and more real to her.

we once had a coffee date where we talked for almost an hour about personality tests, because we both love them. when i got a silly possum plushie to give to my partner for our first valentines day together, she was in the room when i opened it, and i excitedly told her about it. she lamented to me about her love of costco and buying in bulk - especially, weirdly enough, whole cases of mint gum. she quoted me on twitter once about my then-obsessive love of dominos pizza.

"So I've become friends with some of the Domino's delivery people, which might be a sign that I need to stop ordering Domino's." Mar 3 2018

I struggle with being too close to people. I know that sometimes my own internal switch can flip, that I push people away so that I don't over-rely on them. I struggle finding a middle ground, and so aloof-ness is usually safer, emotionally. We were new housemates to each other, and I don't think I pushed her away, which is a relief to me. I know I have hurt people by being intentionally unavailable, because I am myself afraid of becoming overwhelmingly invested in them. It helps to know this about myself, and it helps to have such a clear view of this tendency, because I know that I gave her the friendship that I would have wanted in a new friend.

Sometimes all the support in the world isn't enough.

In the same ways that I don't believe in the idea that a person could be a monster - or wholly good - I don't believe that anyone is safe from these sorts of personal tragedies. Whatever we do in life, however we protect ourselves, something can always slip through. No matter how we rebuild, no matter how supported we are, we have no guarantees of permanence or protection. 

It's hard to mourn for people. It's hard to still be struck by these feelings. It's hard to navigate anger and grief, matter-of-factness and frustration and intensity. Knowing Chelsea is now a part of my own history, one of those things that I have to balance how and if to tell people. I want to respect her memory, and I want to respect that we all approach death - especially suicide - in different ways. 

I'm still building how to mourn. In that days after, I tore out all the carpets in the house, pried out staples and nails, swept. I did this with housemates and without. and still, at the end of it, there's no end. There's no final ending nail that tells you that you're done mourning, no final scrap of carpet that wipes away the grief. 

Ghosts are just memories. We build up what we think people are like, and we talk to them, and we reinforce those models. And when those people leave our lives, in whatever way is available to them, we are left with those echoes in our heads.

Grief comes in like the tide, and goes out again in the night.