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I am grieving.
No-one has died. Though apparently it was close, in one case. It may still be an option. However, it has not happened yet.
Nonetheless, I am grieving. That is the word, when a loss causes you pain, yes? So I am grieving. For things that happen that can't be undone. For changes that cannot be unchanged. For the point past which you go where things cannot be taken back.
No-one has died. Though apparently it was close, in one case. It may still be an option. However, it has not happened yet.
Nonetheless, I am grieving. That is the word, when a loss causes you pain, yes? So I am grieving. For things that happen that can't be undone. For changes that cannot be unchanged. For the point past which you go where things cannot be taken back.
I have been concerned, lately. That I am not ... That I do not feel, the way I think people are supposed to feel. Yes, before you say it, I recognise the fallacy there.
There is no metric to determine a feeling's appropriateness. There is no means to compare emotions from one person to another, to determine their subjective intensity from an objective standpoint. Like pain charts. On a scale of 1-10, how much does this hurt. But one person's 4 may be another's 10, may be another's 2. The pain is rated in comparison to pains that one person has felt. There is no objective means by which to compare between two different people. The scales cannot be calibrated against each other.
I do not react to emotion the same way other people seem to. That is objectively obvious, to an extent. Whether or not the things I feel are the same as the things other people feel is possibly an unanswerable question. My reactions, however, are recognisably different, at least from those close to me.
I have lost things. Lots of them. Each loss hurts. With each loss, the question always becomes: is this loss endurable. Can I bear this loss.
So far, the answer has been yes. It will continue to be yes, until it becomes no.
That is ... the only solid thing I think I've learned, really. I can endure this, because if I couldn't, I wouldn't. And when I can't, I won't. So until I can't, I will. Because, obviously, so long as I am, I can. If I couldn't, I wouldn't.
Yes, that goes in circles. Basically, though. When you can't, you will stop. If you have not stopped, you can. I am not dead yet. Therefore, I am able to endure.
Right now, I am grieving. I am in pain. There is a loss that cannot currently be undone, though it is not final, not yet. So so. I am afraid, for when the point comes where it is final. Naturally. But from here, for me, it is unchangeable, in that there is nothing I can do. So. Grief. Pain.
Emotions are not things I act on. I think that's where I'm different, mostly. You can't change an emotion, as it happens. You endure it until it subsides, or grows unbearable. I can't deflect grief with alcohol, the way my sister and father do. (I don't think they can, either). So I sit, and let it through. When it subsides, I try to figure out what it was, and why it happened. Then, if it is a thing I can keep from happening again, I will. If it is not, then it is gone for now, and there is nothing more to be done.
When my grandmother died, I cried for four days. And then there was a hollow place in my life, a loss irrevocable, and that hollow place was lived around. After time, it stopped being a conscious live-around. I don't know if that means the pain went away, or if it was just a thing you life with until it stops being noticeable. Background noise. I don't know.
I remember being places where emotion was the only thing that was. Where every event, every person, was an impact against me, and all I was conscious of was the emotion that lived from that impact. Pain, mostly. Shame. Confusion. Loss. Grief. Fear. I remember when they were a wall, a wave without end, and there was nothing else.
I have almost stopped twice. And I have gone, once, to a place where I did not understand the concept of stop or start, where there were no lines and no delineation. Where there was only the wall, and the mute sensation as I held until I couldn't, or something broke.
It doesn't stop on its own. Subside, but not stop. I think you hold until you can remember, and when you remember, you try to do something. Either stop, or understand, or build. Whichever seems easiest at the time. Sometimes stopping seems hard. It's not right way up, really, but sometimes stopping seems harder than holding. I don't know how that works.
People are stopping around me. My family, it does that. We are ... not strong. So far, no-one has stopped permanently, save my grandmother. But always, the past ten years or so, there was one of us on the edge of it. Twice, that someone was me, but all of us. All. Have been on that edge. Now again.
I think what I have been trying to learn in life is how to make a durable person. A durable self. It's not really a thing you can make, though.
There are no walls that keep emotions out. There are no means to change a thing once it has happened. There is no way to undo a loss, once it has been taken from you.
I think I am durable. Not strong, never that. But surprisingly durable. There is a wall, a wave, and I have held through it, and I can hold through it, until I can't. And then it won't matter, because I will have stopped. Things are survivable until they're not, but once they're not you're dead, so it hardly matters at that point.
I sometimes feared that I did not feel. I'm not sure if that was denial, or if I simply meant that what I felt was not distinct, not indentifiable, just a sensation, the thing you are until it stops. I have gone all the way down to self, the thing that is, the thing that feels and has no knowledge of anything else. I don't really remember that. There was nothing to remember. I mean, when you're just the thing that is, there's no 'was/is/willbe'. So. No memory.
I feel. What I feel may not be a thing that is intelligible to anyone else. There may be no metric by which what I feel can be made real to anyone else. I do not act as expected, from what I feel. That ... is not a thing I think I can help.
The past ten years. More. Maybe fifteen? They have been ... I have spent them holding through the waves. Trying to learn how to. Just doing, when there was nothing in me to remember what 'trying' is.
I have learned some things. I have learned what many of the things I feel are. I have learned to recognise a lot of them. I have learned to sit and wait, until a thing subsides enough to look at. I have learned how to work around some of them. I have learned how to avoid triggering others. I have learned how to gain assistance, in certain areas. I have learned how to arrange things around the hollow places. I have learned that some things cannot be stopped, some things cannot be undone. I have learned to know, a little better, what is doable, what is not, and why a thing, once it is not doable, is no longer a concern.
Sometimes I fear, because things are no longer a mute wall, a wave where there is nothing save to feel it, that I have stopped feeling. Sometimes I fear I am going too far in the other direction. Something happens, and so long as it is not the wave where all there is is to hold, then it is dissected, analysed, and acted upon according to what is doable. Action is not emotion, so sometimes I wonder if I feel.
Then I do, then a wave comes, and I remember that I was feeling all along. It's just my tidemarks have been placed a bit higher than they're meant to be, I think. Below them, it's just been living around the hollow places.
Right now, I am grieving. It is a wave, and I am holding through it. I can, for the moment, hold. So I will, until it subsides, or I cannot.
The thing about the waves? They are very simple. The reaction to them. It is very simple. Endure, until you can't. And when you can't, you won't.
I am very durable, I think. There are times when I wish I was not. There are times when I think being durable is not a good thing. The depth of the wave you can hold, the depth of the pain you can hold ... Sometimes I don't want to be durable.
But I am. And being so, will continue to endure.
Life will kill me when it gets around to it. And it will kill me when it reaches a place past which it is not in me to endure. Not sooner.
And that? That isn't even brave. It isn't even strong. It's just that to change things before that point, you have to act. And I am lazy. I do not act on emotion. I just sit, until it subsides, or drowns me.
Nothing has drowned me yet. I'm not sure if that's a triumph or not. But I am ... very durable, I think. Very weak. Very lazy. But very durable.
*smiles faintly* How is that, for a character analysis?
There is no metric to determine a feeling's appropriateness. There is no means to compare emotions from one person to another, to determine their subjective intensity from an objective standpoint. Like pain charts. On a scale of 1-10, how much does this hurt. But one person's 4 may be another's 10, may be another's 2. The pain is rated in comparison to pains that one person has felt. There is no objective means by which to compare between two different people. The scales cannot be calibrated against each other.
I do not react to emotion the same way other people seem to. That is objectively obvious, to an extent. Whether or not the things I feel are the same as the things other people feel is possibly an unanswerable question. My reactions, however, are recognisably different, at least from those close to me.
I have lost things. Lots of them. Each loss hurts. With each loss, the question always becomes: is this loss endurable. Can I bear this loss.
So far, the answer has been yes. It will continue to be yes, until it becomes no.
That is ... the only solid thing I think I've learned, really. I can endure this, because if I couldn't, I wouldn't. And when I can't, I won't. So until I can't, I will. Because, obviously, so long as I am, I can. If I couldn't, I wouldn't.
Yes, that goes in circles. Basically, though. When you can't, you will stop. If you have not stopped, you can. I am not dead yet. Therefore, I am able to endure.
Right now, I am grieving. I am in pain. There is a loss that cannot currently be undone, though it is not final, not yet. So so. I am afraid, for when the point comes where it is final. Naturally. But from here, for me, it is unchangeable, in that there is nothing I can do. So. Grief. Pain.
Emotions are not things I act on. I think that's where I'm different, mostly. You can't change an emotion, as it happens. You endure it until it subsides, or grows unbearable. I can't deflect grief with alcohol, the way my sister and father do. (I don't think they can, either). So I sit, and let it through. When it subsides, I try to figure out what it was, and why it happened. Then, if it is a thing I can keep from happening again, I will. If it is not, then it is gone for now, and there is nothing more to be done.
When my grandmother died, I cried for four days. And then there was a hollow place in my life, a loss irrevocable, and that hollow place was lived around. After time, it stopped being a conscious live-around. I don't know if that means the pain went away, or if it was just a thing you life with until it stops being noticeable. Background noise. I don't know.
I remember being places where emotion was the only thing that was. Where every event, every person, was an impact against me, and all I was conscious of was the emotion that lived from that impact. Pain, mostly. Shame. Confusion. Loss. Grief. Fear. I remember when they were a wall, a wave without end, and there was nothing else.
I have almost stopped twice. And I have gone, once, to a place where I did not understand the concept of stop or start, where there were no lines and no delineation. Where there was only the wall, and the mute sensation as I held until I couldn't, or something broke.
It doesn't stop on its own. Subside, but not stop. I think you hold until you can remember, and when you remember, you try to do something. Either stop, or understand, or build. Whichever seems easiest at the time. Sometimes stopping seems hard. It's not right way up, really, but sometimes stopping seems harder than holding. I don't know how that works.
People are stopping around me. My family, it does that. We are ... not strong. So far, no-one has stopped permanently, save my grandmother. But always, the past ten years or so, there was one of us on the edge of it. Twice, that someone was me, but all of us. All. Have been on that edge. Now again.
I think what I have been trying to learn in life is how to make a durable person. A durable self. It's not really a thing you can make, though.
There are no walls that keep emotions out. There are no means to change a thing once it has happened. There is no way to undo a loss, once it has been taken from you.
I think I am durable. Not strong, never that. But surprisingly durable. There is a wall, a wave, and I have held through it, and I can hold through it, until I can't. And then it won't matter, because I will have stopped. Things are survivable until they're not, but once they're not you're dead, so it hardly matters at that point.
I sometimes feared that I did not feel. I'm not sure if that was denial, or if I simply meant that what I felt was not distinct, not indentifiable, just a sensation, the thing you are until it stops. I have gone all the way down to self, the thing that is, the thing that feels and has no knowledge of anything else. I don't really remember that. There was nothing to remember. I mean, when you're just the thing that is, there's no 'was/is/willbe'. So. No memory.
I feel. What I feel may not be a thing that is intelligible to anyone else. There may be no metric by which what I feel can be made real to anyone else. I do not act as expected, from what I feel. That ... is not a thing I think I can help.
The past ten years. More. Maybe fifteen? They have been ... I have spent them holding through the waves. Trying to learn how to. Just doing, when there was nothing in me to remember what 'trying' is.
I have learned some things. I have learned what many of the things I feel are. I have learned to recognise a lot of them. I have learned to sit and wait, until a thing subsides enough to look at. I have learned how to work around some of them. I have learned how to avoid triggering others. I have learned how to gain assistance, in certain areas. I have learned how to arrange things around the hollow places. I have learned that some things cannot be stopped, some things cannot be undone. I have learned to know, a little better, what is doable, what is not, and why a thing, once it is not doable, is no longer a concern.
Sometimes I fear, because things are no longer a mute wall, a wave where there is nothing save to feel it, that I have stopped feeling. Sometimes I fear I am going too far in the other direction. Something happens, and so long as it is not the wave where all there is is to hold, then it is dissected, analysed, and acted upon according to what is doable. Action is not emotion, so sometimes I wonder if I feel.
Then I do, then a wave comes, and I remember that I was feeling all along. It's just my tidemarks have been placed a bit higher than they're meant to be, I think. Below them, it's just been living around the hollow places.
Right now, I am grieving. It is a wave, and I am holding through it. I can, for the moment, hold. So I will, until it subsides, or I cannot.
The thing about the waves? They are very simple. The reaction to them. It is very simple. Endure, until you can't. And when you can't, you won't.
I am very durable, I think. There are times when I wish I was not. There are times when I think being durable is not a good thing. The depth of the wave you can hold, the depth of the pain you can hold ... Sometimes I don't want to be durable.
But I am. And being so, will continue to endure.
Life will kill me when it gets around to it. And it will kill me when it reaches a place past which it is not in me to endure. Not sooner.
And that? That isn't even brave. It isn't even strong. It's just that to change things before that point, you have to act. And I am lazy. I do not act on emotion. I just sit, until it subsides, or drowns me.
Nothing has drowned me yet. I'm not sure if that's a triumph or not. But I am ... very durable, I think. Very weak. Very lazy. But very durable.
*smiles faintly* How is that, for a character analysis?
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