Grr...

The sweet little nagging voice in my head is bugging me to write. Like a defiant toddler, I tell it ‘no’, and find 4,000 other things to do. Writing is scary. I’m still terrified of putting everything out there, of being judged, or criticized, but the learning process of getting over that is too great to stop now. Plus the other scary part is I never know what might come up so I put it aside and let things build up until it all explodes. I hope the explosion happens on paper but sometimes that’s not the case. I’m feel like a time bomb, still in my partially isolated funk and don’t need to be around people.
The anger part of grief is no joke. I thought somehow I could skirt around it. I knew it would happen and because I knew it I thought I would be aware of it and control it. Not so much. It snuck up on me and picked at me in tiny little exasperated moments. I tried to brush it off, make excuses but it’s still there like an unwelcome visitor sitting on my couch, standing next to me at work, riding along with me in my car, interrupting my thoughts, and keeping me from doing anything productive.
I am not angry at God, at Rob or at anyone. I don’t understand it exactly. I’ve never been mad for no reason. I’ve chosen to take it out on myself, telling myself that I can’t write, I have nothing to say, I can’t make the sparklies, they’re not pretty, I can’t cut hair, what the fuck am I doing to my client, and so on.
One of my co-workers pointed out that right when Rob died I was doing a good job speaking up and talking a lot but now I’ve been really quiet lately. I know it but not only do I have nothing nice to say right now, I not really sure what it is I need to say. All week I’ve cried and cried, desperate to talk to someone but every time I think of picking up the phone, I freeze, not knowing what to say once I hear a familiar “hello?” on the other end.
Another friend pointed out that creative people get really bent out of shape when they can’t create or get stuck in something. I think that’s part of it too. I haven’t been able to find words to communicate what’s in my head. It seems everything come out wrong.
I feel like I need the Earth to stop rotating for a moment. Please let me catch up. It feels like I’m going so fast, days are flying by and I’m trying so damn hard to function but I can’t organize my thoughts. I can’t cut hair and process my feelings, I can’t be with people constantly and sort through all the junk that’s living in my head.
The people I feel closest to right now are my co-workers. They’re the only ones who have let me be in my weird, inconsistent moods, loving me anyways and never trying to fix anything. No one says anything when I snap, or cry. No one reminds me that it’s going to be ok, they just listen. Somehow I wonder how I got here. How did I stumble upon the most amazing group of people I’ve ever met?
I want to talk to my family and tell them what’s been going on in my head but that usually results in me getting angry, hearing the constant “Everything will be ok. You’re doing just fine.” I dream up emails I could send to my dad telling him how much I miss Rob, knowing that he’d just read them and let them be. I never do it though. Maybe thinking about it is enough. I don’t know.
When I do pick up the phone to return the four calls I’ve missed from mom she and I talk about work and the sparklies I’ve made and what’s going to happen with that. I venture out of my comfort zone and tell her I’ve been really angry lately and I don’t know what I want or need and it’s making me crazy. She reminds me it’s all part of it and one day I’ll wake up and the process will be over with and I’ll move on. I feel like I am moving forward but it’s not something that can be rushed. I don’t want to think about the day that I wake up and I don’t think about Rob. She says that I can’t stay stuck. I don’t feel I’m necessarily stuck, just confused.
“It’s not like you had a whole year with him.” she tells me and it makes me want to hang up right then and there. I know her point is not to say what I’m feeling isn’t valid, it’s just that what I hear is “move forward, you didn’t have that much time with him so you shouldn’t be upset for too long.” Regardless if that’s how she meant it, that’s what I heard and it hurts. I feel it discounts the time I did have. It kills me that I can’t find the words to describe how much I loved Rob. I’ll never be able to explain it. I never knew I could ever feel that way. Didn’t think it was possible. I’ve never wanted to be with someone so badly in my life. No one has ever lit me up the way he did. No one has ever loved me for exactly who I was.
So this is why I don’t talk and plan to take as much time as I’m going to take, not knowing what that is. I know people mean well but sometimes things come out that I may take the wrong way, zero in on it and hang on to it for a little too long using it to beat myself whenever I feel like I’m doing something “wrong”.
At times, moving to Chicago right this minute seems like the best idea I’ve had in years. I can be completely anonymous in my little world, full of new surroundings never having to talk about this because no one knows. If I leave though, does that mean I’m running away? Is that what I need?
Later I’m on the phone with another friend who says that maybe Rob couldn’t completely fulfill what I needed here on Earth, so in leaving he’s become a deeper entity that stays with me all the time and serving another purpose. His words remind me of talking with a client who lost her husband several years ago at a really young age. She said his death really made her “come into her own” and helped her really discover who she was. I feel the same thing has happened to me. I don’t understand why it took losing Rob to make me open my eyes and actually live my life. I’m much more interested now in taking care of myself (for the most partJ ) than I ever was before. How is it that death can put things into perspective and have the ability to change so many lives?