Wednesday, January 9, 2013

This is not the water I wanted to walk on.


Couple of years ago I would wear one layer of clothing in this weather and stand in the balcony like an idiot. Now, I'm sandwiched between two blankets and listening to the sound coming in through my broken shutters, of cars driving through rain water.

Someone just said driving in the rain at night makes her think of Julie. I got really mad at myself for a second there that this person wasn't me. It is a decent storm, of course still less intense than the storm, but I actually didn't make a connection this time.

I didn't remember to sing Lifehouse's storm to myself during the only time it makes sense in, like the way I always did when it was especially rainy and Julie was sick. I didn't go through the details of the storm that erupted on the day of the accident, which I still remember too well.

First, I wanted to reply to that someone by saying that she got in the accident shortly before the storm, and that it was in the afternoon not late at night. And then I realized the person I was telling this to was me, justifying why I, her actual best friend, did not have the same thought of her as when an almost-stranger to her did. I let her be, after all who am I to tell anyone what should or shouldn't remind them of Julie? I didn't do the same with myself though.

All I think of now is how angry I still am. I see people writing on her wall that "Christmas celebration must be more fun in heaven" and I just want to call up every last one of them and tell them they're fucking idiots. I'm not even sure what makes me angrier, the fact that she's dead or the fact that some of her closest friends speak with such glaring certainty of how she must be feeling and where she is now.
If I had the same idea about death and heaven would I have felt any better than I do? Would I have been any less angry? Am I ever going to know the answer to this or am I just going to retain my anger as I cannot communicate it with anything that could make it subside?

This line never stopped hanging behind my every thought of this kind. 'Not a lot of people know what it feels like to be angry in your bones." Is that even it? Is that me angry in my bones? Because sometimes I really feel that I'm not even angry enough. I'm still taken by surprise at how I'm functioning normally and even finding the will to do things I've always put off. The only explanation that does not make me feel disgusted at myself and/or irrevocably desensitized is that the experience of loss, case-specific as it is, could very well not be a linear process, rather all opposites sentiments and tracks of thought running parallel at all times.

I am nowhere near figuring any of this out, even though I sometimes get the feeling that maybe my perception of the concept of acceptance was misguided and that I shouldn't resist any faint suggestion that I'm feeling better out of my fear that this directly means I would start to forget her.

But no, it's moments like these where the true thought rings louder. I'm still right where I am. I only managed to somehow contain the anger by not getting randomly pissed at everyone I know, the way I did in the first few weeks after her death, the only outlet my anger had, for it was certainly not going to be through explainable actions or articulated thoughts.

I'm afraid that the only link between me and you Julie now is this anger. That I'm holding on to it as if I'm holding on to you, since it seems the anger is the only part of the process that sustained such entrenched tenure, and in that way I know if it's always there you'll always be there too. I'm afraid that the anger will overlap with the memory of our good days and that I'll forget the very same things I'm scared shitless of ever forgetting, the ones I hold on to the anger for the sake of. I'm afraid the anger will get so caught up with me that I'll just end up with empty bitterness which is not how I want to keep you in my memory.

That's it. I have no idea what to do and no idea how to stop thinking that I don't.

I keep thinking it was the world's fault that we misunderstood death, and this is why it completely paralyzes our reasoning when it strikes. I keep thinking that living to be a hundred and dying comfortably on your bed next to your children and their own children was never what was 'supposed' to happen to everyone, and the fact that this is what we grew up to believe is a major part of why we get angry with God and start seeing life as pointless.

If that's true, then the world might have fucked us up beyond repair.

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