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Of Grief and Men

One of the things I did this past weekend was poke around in my weblog archives, somewhat because I realized I had missed my four year blogiversary but mainly because I was lonely and the dog couldn't care as long as she has fuzzy pillows upon which to sleep.

Four years ago, I was 20. I suffered from insomnia, apparently, but mostly I had no job and no classes to skip and nothing to do and no one to see and no car to use and a new husband who worked extremely long hours and was depressed from lack of human interaction. What better reason to start a blog?

But also, four years ago, I was a woman who still had a living, breathing sister. A sister who would call me in the middle of the night because a party had gone suddenly wrong, her boyfriend was an ass, or she missed me.

I found myself envying that woman, the one with the sister. And my feelings for that woman of four years prior became more intense as I read closer and closer to September 2002.

Reading all through August I, as the woman who lives in summer of 2005, knew what was coming. And I was powerless to stop it.

I thought of how little she was aware, how happy she was, how naïve. How completely and utterly unprepared. How her entire world was about to change and yet she had no idea.

I felt like I was watching a movie I have seen hundreds of times before and yet still wishing the main character would make different choices, that the story would not end as it had so many times before.

Please, let her live this time.
My heart could not bear going through it again.

But I did not have to go through that again, and never will. I only get to remember.

I was surprised to see how little of my grief I wrote here. There were long periods where I did not speak at all of my sister, moments I never recorded. And I think that wise.

I do not think you, nor I, nor the internet would have survived had I allowed my grief to flow freely onto these pages. I feel as though I barely survived the amount of grief I did let loose.

And yet it would seem that grief lurks all around me in various guises and intensities. It could be something as simple as a burnt dinner, a dropped glass of grape juice. It could be something as complicated as my sister's death.

No matter how hard it hits or long it lasts, I find I am able to recognize the various stages in myself. Anger. Bargaining. Denial. Depression.

I'm still not sure what to do with it, but recognizing it is a good first step.