Grief as Gravity

The Summer Part 2

Grief as a Blindside

He calls like he always does, but everything is different. He says he’s not sure, but maybe he’s been manic.

He says, “We said so much to each other.”
He says, “I can’t talk to you anymore.”

Grief as a Run on Sentence

I’m with my niece when the call happens. I’ve traveled down to spend one of the last weekends of summer with her and I feel like the floor has fallen out from under me and my eyes keep welling up and I spend more time than I want to on the phone trying to unspin what he’s knotted up and I can’t and I feel a layer of guilt on top of everything else that I’m feeling because I am wasting this precious time with my girl.

Grief as an Ambassador

I text two friends. I tell them what happened and how I’m feeling and they listen and they respond and they validate and they say “fuck him” and “I love you” like good friends do. They say kind things to me. I say as kind of things to myself as I can. I feel crazy for being this upset. It makes sense that you’re devastated. I let my eyes well up even though my niece is beside me. I feel the things I feel and I don’t feel them alone and I say good girl to myself and thank you to my friends.

Grief as a Slumber Party

I ask my niece if she wants to go to Walmart and get art supplies and candy.

“Boy problems?” she asked me.
”Yeah, I guess so.” I say. She nods her wise ten year old head.

We get coloring books and pencils and a painting kit and frozen pizzas and candy for dinner. I hand my brother the pizza when we get home, a subtle ask for help, a giving in to not being the older sister for a minute. He does it without question. I feel proud of him and of me.

We color between the lines and watch a movie and breathe.

Grief as the monster under the bed

I don’t sleep.

Grief as a Liar

Something is wrong with me.
This is my fault.
I did the wrong thing.
It was not real.
I am not real.
Nothing he said was true
I am so stupid.
The kind of love I want is mania
I deserved this.
I am easy for people to leave.

Grief as a Maze

I don’t know what’s true. I don’t know what’s real. I’m worried about him more than I’m worried about myself. I oscillate wildly, day by day, minute by minute, between what narrative is real. I know the truth lies somewhere in between but I can only see black or white. I am in disbelief a lot of the time. How could he say the things he said, feel the things we felt, and then disappear? Do I wait? Why does my intuition about him still feel so confident? Sometimes it feels right and sometimes it feels broken. I worry about him. Should I regret my choices? Would I have made different ones if I had known anything. Do I know anything?

He is at every dead end. I’m nowhere to be found.

Grief as an Author

I am thinking in circles, I can feel it. The same thoughts are repeating and becoming jumbled up and turning from questions into accusations into despair. I need it out. I get my notebook and I write every single thing I’m thinking and feeling down. I reach for it every time I start to think too much. I fill a page and it slows down the spin. I fill 13 and I can leave the house. Once the thoughts are concrete and on paper, they recede and let me breathe. They know they won’t be forgotten.

Grief as the Opposite of a Sensory Deprivation Tank

I want to not feel so much. I want a drink. Badly. But I don’t. This is the first breakup where I don't buy a bottle of wine or meet my friends at the bar and turn everything down. I don't drink. I feel feel feel. The tears could fill a tank.

Grief as a Time Capsule

The day after the phone call, my brother, niece, and I visit my parents. My childhood home has a fresh For Sale sign in the yard. There are still handpainted clouds on my bedroom walls.There are decades-old love letters and break up tapes in the desk drawers, a heart shaped necklace in the closet. It all feels even heavier here, a place where my heart has been broken before. A place where my heart was broken the first time. I’m 14 again. I sit on the floor surrounded by my history crying over another Boy.

Grief as Balm

I stopped crying in front of my mom more than a decade ago. I stopped telling her the things that hurt me. I knew my pain caused her pain and avoiding her pain became more important to me. I didn't feel like she could handle mine. I had been talking to my therapist about wanting to repair this divide for months.

I feel the tears building as I sit at her kitchen table and I resist the urge to run down the stairs to my room. I crumble and cry on the bench in our kitchen. She is at the sink and turns and sees me and she is okay.

She holds me. Something heals a little bit that had nothing to do with him.

Grief as Solid Ground

I know it was real. His reality doesn’t change mine. Even if he chooses something else, this was still good. I can trust myself. I loved myself in that relationship and I haven’t changed.

What I do know is who I am. This doesn’t change that. I. like. me. I pat myself on the back then cry anyway.

I feel calmer. I laugh with my family. Dad says its okay to feel how you feel and asks what he can get me at the store.

I feel a little bit of hope that this isn't a pit.

Grief as a Woman

My period starts which doesn’t help my moods or my migraines or my desire to eat or my desire to get off the couch. So I don’t, except to walk my dog, for two days.

I feel bad about it and then I let it go. It’s okay to be sad. It’s okay to rest. It’s okay to spend some time on the couch. It’s okay to cry most of the day. It’s okay.

Is he okay?

Grief as a Girl

I leave a part of me with him for awhile.

She says no you guys go
I'm going to stay
She sits outside his closed door
Hoping he can feel her on the other side.

Grief in a Costume

I go to work. I function well, no one’s the wiser, and I still can’t think about anything else. I don't have my notebook to write to stop the thought spirals so I text myself the things I’m thinking instead. It helps too.

Grief as a Romance

I let myself miss him. I write poetry and songs about him. Ten more pages in a notebook. Everything I write comes out in verse. He’s stolen my prose. I embrace the things that were beautiful. I celebrate the parts of me that I found with him. I promise them they’re here to stay even if he isn’t.

I say hello to August
A month I thought I’d welcome next to you.
This is a love story
Even if this is how it ends
with a tied tongue
a trapped heart
open hands
with values intact
but a heart that’s cracked
and bigger, more full
with hope
with confidence
not in an outcome
but in what’s true
in me
and in you.
with fucking growth
with breath instead of walls
with music
and tangled sheets
and touch
and faith
in something I could touch
and a million things I couldn’t.
Look how many pages you’ve filled
by going away.

Grief as a Broken Record

I text my friends. I tell them what happened and how I’m feeling and they listen and they respond and they validate and they say fuck him like good friends do. They say kind things to me. I say as kind of things to myself as I can. It makes sense that you’re still devastated. I have so many questions. My friends try to answer them. I feel like I just keep sending them the same texts over and over again. But they still reply because they are perfect. I’m a broken record with a broken heart.

I can’t look at the guitar in my house, as if the first time I ever saw a guitar was in his hands. How do I not lose music?

I tuck the guitar into the closet.

Grief as Grey

My brain wants clarity, a right and a wrong. The “truth”. A simple story. But all of the answers live in the muck in the middle and many of them will sink to the bottom never to be dug out anyway.

Grief as the Villain

There are other narratives out there. I know it. Narratives where I am the villain to people I loved. Love. Narratives that aren’t even accurate. And I have to let them go. I have to let them exist. I cannot control or correct them. I have to just exist knowing I'm the villain in a story someone else wrote. But it's okay because people write the stories they need to to survive. I won't take that away from them.

I did right by me.
Should I have known better?
I did the best I could with the information I had at the time.
I can handle the narratives being different.
We tell ourselves the stories we need to.
In my narrative, there is no villain.
My narrative is a life jacket, not hand cuffs.
It’s the one that feels true in my gut, not in grasping fingers.

Grief as a Craving

I want to cry with someone, a craving I’ve never had before. I usually hang up the phone or close the door when I want to cry.

Grief as Alternate Reality

It’s been two weeks, he’s called me twice in that time.

The day after our last conversation, a friend I haven’t seen in years comes to visit. I’m excited to see him.

He sits down in my recliner and tells me he’s leaving his wife. There are so many similarities between the things he says about his marriage and himself and the things HE said that I am nauseous. And I hurt because his wife is my friend too and I thought their marriage was one of the good ones and there are just too many similarities and the stories start to mesh together in my head. I’m overwhelmed. The friend moves into my living room that night at 2am and stays for the next 4 days. Blowing up my air mattress makes me ache for a different reason, a friend I lost in the process. I lost a lot.

Grief as a Shield

It’s too much. I escape my apartment by 10am the next morning, my friend on the air mattress, and spend the entire day on another friend’s couch. I text with the unpairing pair who need my support – I give what I have, which isn’t much. My friend puts Survivor on his TV while he and his two young girls swirl around and on me for hours.

I feel sapped
I don’t want anything
Except to want something

Grief as an Ache

I miss him. I miss the ease and joy. It feels like there is no joy, no light anywhere. And to maybe find some, I have to jump through logistical hoops, scheduling and booking, hoops that feel too high.

I want to reach out to him. I want to make sure he’s okay. I don’t. I question whether he knows I’m here if he needs help. But he knows. I know he knows. I assure myself he knows. He knows and is choosing to not reach out.

Grief as a Doable To Do List

I talk to my friend about how I feel like I’m doing nothing with my time, but I also don’t want to do anything. She shows me how she lists everything she needs to do that day in the morning and schedules it out. It's a lot of small things like brush teeth, shower, read, journal - things I'm mostly doing anyway. She asks me to send her my list the next morning.

Grief as a Venn Diagram

My therapist tells me I can’t control this. I just have to feel it. I am acting like if I can figure out how to do the right thing, the right thing will happen because of my actions. (Oh hey, Enneagram 8)

She has me make a venn diagram of “things I can control” and “things I can’t control” with a small overlap of “things I can influence.” I end up with everything in the things I can influence category crossed out and moved into things I can’t control (because can’t can also mean shouldn’t). She tells me to focus on the things I can control. How I react, how I think, what I do with the rest of August, what I put on Substack, what I extend out, what I input…

Grief as a Steering Wheel

I go to the Hudson Valley to see my friends. I go without a plan for things to do or where to stay (though I have half-hearted pins on Airbnb). I can control what I do for the rest of August. I can take the next step even if I don't have the whole plan.

Listened to my body
it said get the fuck out
fresh air
will clear the migraines

Grief as a Mother

I give 14 year old me a hug and pull her away from his door where she’s sitting waiting.

Come on sweet girl
you can’t stay by the door anymore
you belong with us
we will care for you
we will make music with you
we will hold your hope close

Grief as a picture my therapist shows me

Grief as a Doorway

I hike with my friends. I have the best day. We go to a watering hole and Cooper swims like an otter and we laugh and wander and make Lady Gaga drinks and I let myself have some because I’m not drinking because I’m sad.

I read Letters to a Poet from Rilke. I want to send it to him because I think he'd like it. I don’t. I want to tell him about this day and about how I wish he were here. I don't.

Rilke tells me you move through things, not past them, and as you move through them, they change you. I know I am being changed and something about that feels good because I know I’m doing my best and I know I’m making choices I’m proud of and I’m trying so whoever I’m becoming, I am proud of. Let’s see her.

Grief as a Love Story

I want to stay in the Hudson Valley for the rest of the week, but I haven’t committed to an Airbnb yet. It feels so hard. None of it feels right. My friends tell me to just stay with them for the rest of the week. I don’t want to be a burden and I say so. They tell me they want me there. And I believe them. I spend the day reading on their couch while they are at a wedding. We have dinner together and watch VHS movies at night.

Grief as an Email

It’s been two weeks and two days since the floor dropped out, one week since the last phone call.
10:30pm
“I was in a manic state... I won’t be able to stay in contact.”

The cold email is his signature, not a symptom, but I’m sure it’s okay with everyone this time because he’’s sending it to me and I matter less.

I cry myself to sleep under the covers in my friend’s pink office with my dog curled against my side.

Grief as a Grocery List

Cans of plain seltzer vanilla ice cream coffee beans light medium

Grief as a Battle Cry

Would you date a woman like you?
I’d go to war for a woman like me.

Grief as a Mystic

We wake up to a new day and a major planetary shift. That night, I ask my friend if we can do some sort of ritual and she propels off the couch and into action. My heart swells at them for the millionth time. We build an altar to the planets who are in conjunction. She asks me to add an item that signifies wisdom to me and I add my own journal. I hang my rings on their mirrors. I pick flowers and herbs out of her garden and hold them to my face. We light candles and she reads my cards and they are perfect. We dance in the living room. I fill a jar with water and leave it out for the moon (but with a layer of saran wrap over it, of course).

I go to sleep grateful, and connected, and empty and full.

Grief as a Mirror

The girl in the mirror has been in therapy for a decade. She knows herself. She likes herself. She has wisdom.

She says look at you, you’re allowing yourself to share your grief because you’re not as ashamed as you have been in the past. You made choices based on your values at every step. You were careful and also open. You can be proud of your choices, of the steps you took.

Look at you, you chose innocence. You chose to trust people with their own shit and not be suspicious and guarded and I’m sorry you got blindsided, but that’s not because you did something wrong. Innocence is good. And it’s hard. And you did it.

Look at you, you know you should surrender to not knowing what happened, what’s happening, you know you can’t control it.

Look at you, being kind to yourself and making effort even when it feels like it’s not working. Look at you taking care of yourself.

Look at you.

The girl in the mirror looks like me, but I can’t feel the things she’s feeling. I feel guilt and disbelieve and I wonder if I was part of the problem and I don’t understand how why I still lost them both when I was truly doing my best.

Grief as Gravity

I plan hikes and then usually spend the day driving crying in my car.
I put my friends voices into the car speakers
I read so much fiction
I brainstorm a new book
I see him watching my story.
I tell my friends how I'm feeling.
I meet and realtor and see a house.
I go to the dog park with my friends
I check the Instagram he doesn't post on.
I write 7 more pages, no more verse, all prose
Hes not my person, my person wouldn’t do this.
I hug my friends and they hold me tight and I cry.
I help hang art in their new nursery.
I jump into a freezing watering hole in all my clothes
I write about the good things I’m doing for myself to acknowledge them.
I read next to a waterfall and help my friends build their Wayfair furniture.
I go on a trip with my family
I go back to New York and make my friends dinner
I lay on the couch

Am I going to miss you longer than I loved you, longer than I knew you
If I bleed on these pages, will you devour them?

I keep taking steps and I keep expecting to feel better and I don’t, but I keep taking steps anyway. I keep doing things and I am proud of myself for them but it doesn't feel like they're working.

Grief as Love

There’s no one to be mad at and too many people to be sad at/for. I genuinely want everyone to be okay. I want everyone to be happy. And when I choose that, I feel better for at least a minute.

I’ll infuse the situation with love, even if I’m the only one who tastes it. I can’t be the only one who tastes it.

Grief as a Swiftie

In an interview, Taylor Swift says, “my name could be in the headline and it could still be none of my business.” I adopt that mentality, I carry it around on my hip and repeat its name to myself several times a day.

How's he doing? None of my business. What is she thinking? None of my business. What’s going on? None of my business.

The only things that are my business are my experience and what I do with what’s left.

Grief as Stasis

I intend to go back up to the Hudson Valley, but I can’t make myself move.

Grief as an Ocean

1 week 3 weeks 2 weeks later it still hits me like a wave. I can’t breathe until I get alone and let every bit of liquid I can wring out of my eyes, my heart out.

It’s hard not to know. It’s hard to not want to understand. It’s hard to feel in the middle of something so vast.

I cry in the shower until I am on my knees. Why does it still feel like this? Shouldn’t I be over it? It’s okay. It makes sense that it feels like this. It’s been two weeks or a month depending on what fucked up timeline you want to count from.

I cry through an entire therapy appointment that spills past the hour.

Grief as Suicide Ideation

I want to die. I tell my therapist and she says* “that makes sense. It makes sense to want to opt out of a hard thing.” The desire immediately feels less dire and like just another feeling. I tell a friend and she says “not enough people talk about suicide. I think a lot of us have felt that way. It’s normal.” I feel less like wanting to die after I say it out loud and it doesn't scare anyone. I am not alone.

(after checking the suicide watch basics and confirming I did not have a plan or active intent - she is a good therapist.)

Grief as Effort

I book an Airbnb next to a waterfall, back to the Hudson Valley. I love waterfalls and I feel excited to go. I intend to leave at 10am, but I drag and finally leave at 3pm, just enough time to drive up to meet my friend for their birthday dinner.

I return the guitar we borrowed on my way out of the city.

Grief as the Sun

Felt actual joy as I was walking Cooper today in our little Hudson valley town. Can you believe I wanted to die yesterday? I would have missed this. Good job, Stephanie.

My sister drives 8 hours to visit me at Waterfall House and I do not text myself once. We do yoga with goats and buy art at a flea market and dance and eat good food. She meets the friends I’d been staying with in the Hudson Valley and we walk the dogs in a park and everything is so bright.

Grief as a Climb

I find an outdoor live music venue near Waterfall House and I’m there every night.
I eat good food by myself and read next to their firepit.
We go to an open mic and I put a date in my calendar to come back and sing.
I drive.
I walk out for coffee with Cooper in the morning and come back and sit on the porch and write.
I prep a show.
When I don't want to do anything, I do something that will make my dog happy and we end up outside breathing fresh air and I laugh at his joy.
I’m sad on my drive back from the Hudson Valley so I call my niece to see how her first day of school went.
I flirt.
He finally unfollows me on Instagram and I wish that I didn’t care but I do.
I take the train and hour and a half to go with my Hudson Valley friends for a final beach day before work starts again. I eat with their family.

Grief as a Mandate

I see a post that says “79% of grieving Americans wish the media would share more about grief and how to cope.” (The silent weight of grief in America National Study) I don’t know if this is real. I don’t really care. I just know it probably came across my feed at this moment for a reason.

Because that is something I can do. I can grieve out loud if it makes one other person feel less alone.

Grief in the Backseat

I go back to work. It feels good.
I take a guitar lesson from a friend. It feels good.
I still have questions, but less urgency for them.
I cry sometimes.
I ask my friend to borrow his guitar again, this time for me.

Grief as Creation

This Summer Part 1

Grief as Anger

Finally finally anger. My friends have been feeling angry for me since the beginning, but I have felt devastated and confused and worried and empathetic. I’m relieved to finally feel angry too.

Grief as Growth

I go to therapy. It's been three weeks since I cried through my last appointment. I'm at work. I’m okay.

You see, all the little things they worked even when they felt like they weren't.

It's like gravity. You have to keep pulling yourself up constantly and it gets easier and easier as you teach your brain new patterns.

I’ve navigated grief differently than I’ve ever navigated it. And I’m proud of that. I’m changed because of it.

Grief as The Point

I almost forgot that this is the whole point. To feel this much,. To make things out of it. To love. To show up and do your very best and still get shattered, and keep loving and feeling anyway. To feel the sunshine and the breeze on a face tight with dried salt.

To wonder and laugh big. To consume. To create. To be soft and ferocious. To have an open heart and also open hands. To hold all of the parts of the people that love you with deep care and enthusiasm. To be seen. To make space. To breathe in and out over and over again.

I leave a message for the baby that is soon to be born in the Hudson Valley, “your parents saved my life. I can’t wait to meet you.” Gravity has less of a fighting chance with people like mine. I don’t know how to thank them.