The Hangover

I’ve woken up the last few days feeling a little hazy. I know why. Monday’s post was… a lot.

I write in a certain way. I have no idea how other writers go about the process, but for me it is kind of like method acting minus the acting. It’s method real-ing. I go to the emotional heart of something and then just open an artery. There is a fair amount of bleeding involved, but it isn’t painful.

To feel is to live. Tapping into my strongest emotions, my deepest feelings – even when they’re ‘negative’ – feels like being fully alive. You can either be present in this whole one-shot-deal we call life or let it slip right by.

My worst nightmare isn’t pain or grief or anxiety, it’s feeling… little… or nothing.

I went through a stretch of ‘anhedonia’ back in December. Now, THAT sucks. I’ll take a high-octane horrible over a muted, bland, joyless decaf any day. Ya gotta take the whole rainbow if you want its best colors. I want the whole damn ROYGBIV from red to violet and back. Fill my palette. I’ll paint the stories.

Monday’s post was just a canvas filled. It belongs on the wall right along with the others. While I’m sure it read as raw, it was really just undiluted. I don’t know how to write about very personal things any other way – nor do I see a reason why I would ever want to anywhere - let alone here at this long table of ours.

Why would I ever want to water down what I pour out when I’m serving it at a table that is itself a toast to life?

L’chaim, friends.

May we never be diminished in our joys or alone in our sorrows.
May our journeys be neither easy nor hard, but long.
May we never go hungry for the want of a table where we are loved.
May we always have soft places warm to the whole of us.
And may this always be one of them.

To life.

Drink it up… and as you do, pour out how it feels.

I’ve always poured it out here. Right now, those feelings come by the gallon not the ounce. My reservoir runs deep right now. Monday was a controlled release. I poured out emotion in volume because that is its volume.

I *am* anxious about the future. I *am* worried about whether I can get this back to sustainable. I *am* distressed by the uncertainty around that - which leaves me having to perpetually operate around the worst case even if optimistic about a better case or the best one.

Talking about all of this on Monday had a weight for me that went beyond the words. A significance. It was a last act of sorts. A final walk through of a house you loved and then lost after first losing the person you used to share it with.

In the end, there is nothing more to do but turn out the lights in rooms now bare to the floors, pausing in each one only briefly so as to not suffer picturing them full.

Last year, I fell in love with someone… and then I watched them devolve into a person so entirely unrecognizable, there was nothing left of the person I met.

At this point, all I am left with is a cognitive dissonance caused by two competing statements which I can’t reconcile.

I can understand how a person in pain could do this to another person.

I don’t understand how this person could do this to me.

There will never be an answer.

I will never really know whether this person ever really cared about me at all.

I know they don’t care about how they hurt me, hurt my life.

I know they’re relieved to not have to care about that.

They were drowning in shame. It was killing them, and they were killing me. So, in April, I did something everyone saw and no one understood. I gave the person what they wanted: to be able to make a villain of me so they could escape the spiral that was dragging them down.

Sometimes the most loving thing you can do for someone is let them hate you.

Or rewrite you.

Or erase you.

I gave them that. I was a communications strategist for 25 years. April was possibly my most strategic communication ever. Someday I’ll tell the story.

I knew in doing that, I would cease to exist for the other person. Not just in the present but in the past as well. The actual me would be replaced by a flattened caricature.

It’s a strange thing to know that you are the only one who retains the experience of a relationship.

It’s a strange thing to know that someone will simply cease to see you or know you or remember you with the press of a button.

And it’s a strange thing to be ‘done’ with this relationship and all of its loose ends on my side. I will forever be hostage to what the other person does or says which in any way relates to me or pulls me into stories.

For me though, Monday was the last closing of heartbreaking chapter.

That post had hung over my head for so long, I didn’t know how I’d feel after I posted it.

I thought I would feel relief. Mostly, I just felt a soft sadness that comes with the last long exhale after the final stage of grief.

It was the acceptance of… having completed the stage of acceptance… and with it, the entire cycle of grief.

Even in working through grief there is a connection, an engagement. In going through the five stages, while the work is toward letting go, it is still work that engages with what was. You are working toward letting it go. You haven’t fully let it go yet..

There are still balloon strings in your hands, though the number of balloons gets smaller and smaller.

At the end of acceptance, there are none.

They are just gone and the work of letting them go is gone too.

It’s really over…

And this is just all there is…

And life has just moved on…

And there are no more balloons.

And there really are no more balloons now.

This week has felt like a grim, last look over the shoulder at a home fading into the distance from a cab heading toward the airport for a flight to a new life waiting on the other end.

And I have that… a new life waiting.

I have yet to even talk about that.

As awful as all of the above has been… as deep the financial hole it left behind is… there is an equal-but-opposite other half to the story of the past year.

I have done a metric shit-ton of healing.

While I am still bruised up, I am also the most fit I’ve ever been in my life. I feel the lightest I ever have in my life.

Things that hurt have now healed.

Things I carried have been lifted from my back.

A year ago, after my friend died, I felt as if the universe had gifted me a box of darkness as a task assigned out of love.

It was as if the forces that lie beyond said softly “You’ve traveled heavy for long enough. It is time that you heal. In this box are all of the things that hurt. You must clear it of its contents. It will be a journey. You will see markers as you reach milestones - and when you reach where this leads, you will be left with absolutely no doubt of your arrival.”

I will have more to say about all of this.

For now, I will say only this:

I was left with absolutely no doubt of my arrival.

I arrived. I knew I had. And, as soon as I did, it was as if the veil between us and what lies beyond thinned, and all of the people I have lost came to meet me at the gate.

My father, my mother-in-law, my grandfather, my friend.

One by one, each of the people who, together, had been my hardest losses were brought into my presence in ways so specific and uncanny, they felt like visitations.

I think they were.

I believe they were.

It’s a hell of a story. I’ll get to it. And I have the one I mentioned on Monday to serve up this week.

There are good things ahead… for me… for this rare, special community of ours.

It is going to be a good summer.

I wish I weren’t encumbered by an anchor lashing me to past pain - which keeps it in the present.

I have so damn far to go to get this back to sustainable. At the end of the day, far to go is still just a matter of steps though… and I’m no stranger to racking up big numbers there.

So far this year, I’ve walked the equivalent of going from my home in New Jersey to my friend’s house… in Denver.

I’ve already walked 1,597 miles – the equivalent of 60 marathons – and its still June.

One step at a time.

Just keep walking.

On that note, if you became a paid subscriber this week, thank you so very much. Your support helped me fill my lungs this week. I wouldn’t say I’ve caught my breath. I’m still a mile from shore and laboring to tread water… but every subscription is a double-oxygen that shrinks the distance left to swim and gives me a sense of porpoise. [See what I did there. Porpoise... Dolphin... Swimming... I’m sorry, I’m a dad. This is what we do.]