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.
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.