Weird Spot

I’m in a weird spot in life right now, where I am consumed by grief, pain, shame, and disappointment; and I am surrounded by people who are living their best lives:

• New houses

• Pregnancy and birth

• The first grand baby on my Dad’s side (though he’s a tot now)

• WORK - the act of going to work in a building with people, where I used to be, at a place that is doing a lot to build up the city I live in. It’s everywhere.

• Going on vacations

I‘m on a carousel shit show of bad news on repeat with different headlines each week, trying my best to be happy for those around me while I’m screaming inside for a space to cry. Getting laid off while in the midst of a grief crisis is the equivalent of being kicked off your life raft after being pulled off the sinking ship, only to be told you’re too sad to save and now you need to GET THE FUCK OUT.

Yes, I know, people on social media are showing their best sides. They are showing what they want the consumer nation to see, not the ugly-sad crying they do in front of the bathroom mirror at 3am on Saturday night after too many drinks and one too many tokes, thinking the light is hitting you just artistically enough that your train wreck self is hot shiz and not at all cheugy (did I really just use that word? Thanks @justme.rod).

You know what I have right now?

A list of topics to cover in my therapy appointment today. That’s my life summed up in one sentence.

Enter the Life

Things are hard.

I feel like that has become my motto in the past 16 months, since the pandemic hit. In many ways it still feels like I am forever stuck in a Groundhog’s day loop of March 2020, living the pandemic hit, the news of my brother, the initial FMLA request, and the crumbling of just about everything I knew around me. Things that felt safe, things that I took for granted, were suddenly disappearing around me.

Things as simple as toilet paper. Who TF hoards toilet paper? Thank God for bidets - and my BF, who was adamant we get one when we first moved into this house. I was hesitant, but now, BF, thank you for the bidet. Good move.

They day my brother died was the day my life stood still, and stayed in a frozen parallel for several months. Coming fresh off of a divorce, a job change I desperately wanted, a move, and a few other personal challenges, this sudden crash of chaos hit me in a way unlike what I had experienced before. Even though I had been through personal devastation and just had my whole life rocked, here I was again, a year later, doing the same thing under harder circumstances.

There is more. The grief is so thick it needed a chainsaw to carve a dent in it.