Grief and Running
13 January 23
Until a conversation… no, fourteen dozen conversations yesterday, I did not realize that I am grieving. Yup. Read that again. You read it right. How does one not know one is grieving??
Because I do not sit still long enough to grieve. And I am not talking about the loss of my dog almost a year ago. I mean, I am, but she was only one loss in this myriad shitshow of grief in my head right now. I am talking about my divorce eleven years ago. I am talking about all of the mental and emotional drain my fifteen-year marriage cost me. I am talking about the loss of my children’s love and affection because I have never been willing to reveal what a disaster shitshow that marriage was and how much it broke my spirit, so instead I accepted the “bad guy” role for leaving it.
I am talking about sitting front-row-center to bear witness and document everything from financial ruin to broken bones to societal destruction.
I am talking about literally throwing away everything I worked hard to earn and chucking the career right out the door with everything else.
I am talking about financial investments, all of them, going upside down. I am talking about realizing, for the very first time, that investments aren’t only money, but also time and language and friendships and relationships.
I am talking about flying across the ocean to another continent, and then another country and then another one and then another one. And then back across the ocean but still never going home. Because there is no home anymore. Oh, and leaving a man I fell in love with in two freaking days. Who does that? Either thing? Who falls in love in two days and then flies to the literal other side of the freaking globe once she has fallen in love?!
Because I am running. I am always, always running. Away from the head that is attached to my shoulders. How’s that working out for me?
And now, because I’m finally figuring out that I cannot detach that overthinking, overdriven brain from my body, I cannot leave my bed. For days. I have bought and paid for another experience in another country. I have people to go and meet and explore this country with. And they are worried about me. Didn’t even know that was a possibility, folks, that I could disappear into my own space and have people concerned about my missing whereabouts.
But I physically cannot get up and out today or yesterday or the day before that. Because all that un-met, un-dealt-with grief is physically shoving my person onto a mattress I do not own in a country I do not belong to. I emptied those two blasted bags housing the sum total of my remaining worldly possessions onto my bed when I first got here, and then I shoved all of my shit off the bed, and it’s still lying there in a heap on the floor next to me.
I don’t really want any of it anymore. Not the things on the floor, not the emotions in my heart, not the thoughts in my head.
But people are asking, “Where’s Charlotte? Why hasn’t Charlotte come out today?”
And I have no answer.
Because grief, I cannot outrun grief. Much as I’ve tried. Much as I’ve blasted myself literally everywhere except off the planet (though I’ve tried that too…next book).
So tomorrow, or maybe the day after tomorrow, I will tell all of these stories: about the emotionally destructive marriage I stayed in for fifteen years; about how I watched helplessly while my dog suffocated to death as her throat collapsed; about how I stayed in the home of a stranger who didn’t speak my language and unwittingly hurt me over and over again while I stood next to myself and watched; about how I listened to the stories of middle schoolers, now full-grown adults, who lined up for “vaccinations” and instead were injected with syphilis before they were sent home to die or be in miserable pain for weeks; about how I stood on the grounds where grand-scale massacre occurred and stared at display cases full of the skulls of the dead and buried they’d excavated and sobbed my eyes out while a man I just met held me; about falling in love with that man and then leaving anyway; about jumping off of waterfalls and breaking my tailbone and spending the next two months on buses and airplanes and sitting in restaurants in too much pain to sit, but I did anyway, with a pleasant smile on my face; about watching dolphins dive into the bottomless depths of the ocean; about hanging around with a family of elephants who surrounded and protected their young with everything they had, including urine; about witnessing Mother Nature take back her turf, building trees on top of centuries-old temples.
Tomorrow I will tell these stories and more. But today? Today I can’t get out of bed or pick up the last of my remaining belongings off of the floor. Today I can’t exercise or even meditate. Today I cannot greet people or tell anyone one more lie about how I’m okay. Today I just want to lie here and hug this mattress and cry and cry and cry.
