Present times are still the best times (so far)

I freaking love the internet. In addition to it letting me whine about grief to anyone in the world, it houses resources that generations before me would've happily traded their polio legs for (mm...too soon?). As a side project for the novel I'm working on, I am also pursuing self-publishing a collection of short stories online. And 50 years ago, that sentence would've sounded completely cray-cray.

But with that there internet, I found a site that introduces authors to freelance writing professionals, and after filling out a few online forms and clicking a few buttons, I can request quotes from up to 5 cover art designers or content editors - just like that! Boy I'm glad it stopped being The Not-Information Age. So I did. I've already heard back from 3 of the graphic designers, and one of them, who works at a major publishing house, said my title is great! Me! But for the price of a professional book cover design, I could also go to Best Buy and get around 55 inches of flat screen TV. Totally worth it! I've been buzzing all day!

What actually motivated me to come and share all this in blog form is the realization, just a few moments ago, that I haven't actually accomplished shit yet. I still need to finish editing the short stories! The graphic designers are freelancers, they'll take money from anyone they want. In fact, I should get to work on that stuff now, what am I doing wasting time blogging, when I-

For Whom The Taco Bell Tolls

I was in the drive-thru lane at Taco Bell (which could describe more of my evenings than I'm proud to admit) and I realized that now, a year has passed, and I still possess the ability to cry about B.S. minutiae! Thank god I still have that!

You see, back when my wife was alive, we wound up in the drive-thru lane at Taco Bell more of our evenings than we'd be proud to admit. Now, I have a well-known fondness for their nacho cheese sauce (which I'm sure is legally a "cheese product" that has never known the touch of a cow, but to me it's basically yellow liquid crack). Occasionally, in those days of yore, my wife would order something that came with a little cup of nacho cheese sauce, and if it was more than she wanted to use, she would, of course, give me the remainder. Which, as you all know of course, is true love.

So that all hit me and I burst into tears. Fortunately, I'd already ordered, and I had time before my turn at the little window to reign it in. So yeah, turns out I can still have those moments after a year has passed. Darn. And I'd really been hoping. I will say that this time, among the random griefbursts over minutiae, I felt a bit foolish, more than I used to. Is that progress? I'm calling that progress.

Life is long, hard and gets messy too fast

I've said it before, and I'll probably say it again (though my opinion is subject to change with time): I'm not afraid of death. Even after losing my wife, I can honestly say that I face that hereafter or everafter or whateverafter without any squeemishness. I attribute this to the grandfather I never knew, who died twenty-ish years before I was born: as soon as I learned what a grandparent was, I knew what death was. There's no great enigma to dread. It's just dead.

But I'm still pissed off as all hell about losing my wife. Her dying isn't the problem, the problem is that I'm still alive. I would've happily died when she did. Death is easy! Death means you don't have to go to work, don't have to pay taxes or shovel snow. Death means you don't have to deal with some moron in a BMW cutting you off and then driving in front of you 5 miles under the fucking speed limit. Living's what's hard.

If nothing else, I'm glad that my wife doesn't have to endure life's bullshittery anymore. I'm still stuck out here, and I can't kill myself, because it's not the right season anymore (late Spring, according to Maria Bamford). I know that my time with my wife was the happiest of her life because she told me so. But there was a lot of time when she wasn't with me, and from those troubles, she's now free. I just wish I didn't have to still be here trying to survive life. She's dead, I'm not, so my job's waaaaay harder.

Regularly scheduled grief

I've said it before, grief is losing it's pizzazz. Now that I have a job again, and a schedule, there seems to be less to write about on here. Certainly less of the side-splitting variety, if any of my humor can be considered that. Turns out routines are dead boring. This is not news to me, but it also turns out that even grief can't spice up a Monday-through-Friday work week.

It doesn't help that the weeks are flying by, either. That's another thing about routines, they can make a week blink past and all of a sudden it's Monday again and even grief is like "Hey wait-! Ah, fuck it." Grief's still around, but it's just another part of my routine to slog through.

I hate the idea of routine at it's core, because they are, as previously illustrated, dead boring. My two worst fears are watching the love of my life die, and being boring. Probably a good time to mention that life wasn't ever boring around her. But I've already lived through the one fear. Is living through the other so bad? Ye-he-he-hes! But as long as I keep writing, I can convince myself that I'm not totally boring. Gotta be a little boring for a while, though. Just enough boring to be useful against the grief, and pay back my damn student loans.

Life is mean(ing)

I have to admit, in my grief, I'm a bit smug. I've talked to many griefy peeps in the past year who have expressed sadness over feeling they have no purpose without their loved one. I don't really know what to say. I can't really relate, because me? I have a purpose. You're looking at it right now. I am determined to honor my wife and simultaneously carve out a new meaning for my life through writing. How am I doing so far? Can you feel the meaning-y goodness?

If you feel that your life has no purpose, I would say that this is an opportunity to scrap whatever you're currently doing with your life, and do anything new. You've already lost everything that mattered: why not finally pursue designer basket-weaving or a degree in mime science like you've always talked about doing "someday?" You can always tell people you're doing it "in their honor" and nobody can bitch about that.

But following through on a new life purpose is hard, even if you know exactly what you want to do. I'm still back living with my parents to pursue my thing, and if the person you're grieving is a parent, well, you know. I've talked to people who feel no reason to live whatsoever, and that's a dark place to be. If you can think of anything, no matter how humbling, that would give your life reason to go on, I'm sure your loved one would support you. So if you always told your loved one how you'd like to learn the cello one day, go buy or steal a secondhand cello and start plucking away, or however cellos work. If it makes you want to keep living, it's what you should be doing, in my clearly biased opinion.

Grinding out smiles

Happiness is hard work! I've often said how lazy I am, and trying to be happy is pissing me off. Now I have to schedule happy and then follow through with a plan. Who has time for that? And even so, happy is still tainted with that earwaxy aftertaste of grief.

Used to be, all I had to do to be happy was come home. As effortless and spontaneous as a nice fart, and thoroughly more satisfying. Even if I was doing something else, as long as I had that proximity to my wife, I was simultaneously happy. Hell, even just thinking about her when I was at work could make me happier than the sorry excuse for happy I have to scrape together these days.

However, if you had asked me about happy a year ago when my wife was freshly dead, I wouldn't've even known what language you were speaking. For a while, "happy" was entirely removed from my vocabulary, and the fact that I have regained use of the word means I might as well get over my laziness and accept whatever I can get. Eh. I'll do it tomorrow.

The paper anniversary (sometimes OK to burn)

It's officially been a year. Plus two days, now. And what a shitty year it's been! So now I just have to do it again. And again. And again. But I only have to keep doing it over and over again until I die. The good news is that all the shittiness of the past year will start becoming the routine for how I go through a year! I've been hearing in my grief groups (for almost a year now as well) that the second year is usually worse than the first, because the fog is wearing off now, and reality is still, well, reality.

At least the anniversary day went well. Myself and a few friends who knew her as long or longer than I did met at her grave (which is still headstoneless) and swapped stories. We also burned some of her favorite incenses as well, because as I've said before, burning shit is just awesome, but you have to exercise discretion. Incense: OK to burn. Building you're currently living in: not OK to burn (tempting though it may be). But all in all, the anniversary passed with more laughter than tears, which is a net gain in my eyes.

So now I'm back to grinding through existence, just like I was on the 14th. I'm no stronger or wiser or peacefuler than I was a few days ago. I'm still fairly incredulous that a year has possibly passed since the love of my life stopped being alive. I still yearn to punch walls and I still cry at songs that don't call for it. And it's not getting any easier, as I've been warned. But at least...at least I have an upbeat, optimistic zinger to close this on: I am not dead yet.

Sick of grief

So about grief throwing me a curveball around the one-year mark for my wife dying: I might end up sick that day. I woke up this morning with a scratchy throat, and it hasn't gotten better through ignoring it today. I've got to hand it to grief: I did not see this one coming. Griefbursts, I'm all geared up and prepped for. But a sore throat? Cunning. Absolutely cunning.

Part of wonders if this sore throat really is supernatural in some way. What if I mysteriously catch a cold every mid-October now? Like some cheap M. Night Shyamalan movie, The Sickening. I'll have to make my ritual of visiting her gravesite include tissues and Dayquil.

If I do happen to be sick in some paranormal way related to grief, and my wife sent a poltergeist to give me this poorly-timed bug, I guess it could be worse. If I really am sick, then I have a legit excuse to take care of myself that's hard to argue against. I may be forced to lay low and take it easy for a few days. Drat!

Regretulations

There's a lot of things to regret when someone dies. Like every thing. The regrets get easier to ignore - where regret used to be an unbearable cluster headache, now it's a dull migraine. But oh-by-the-way, new regrets can also pop up at any time! Ain't that special? And they can take the form of accomplishments, too. As in: "I regret my loved one isn't here to see this accomplishment, they would be so proud."

I made a decision when my wife died that I would live on, since she couldn't, and that means I have to, you know, keep living on. I also realized fairly quickly that if I keep living, my wife will never see me become the best version of myself. Because I'm still improving. I have to improve. Otherwise I'll implode. And if I did that, my wife would be piiiiiiiissed.

I'm writing a book in honor of my wife that she will never read a word of. Well, I try to write, when that regret doesn't get in the way. Isn't that fascinating, how progress on a project can be hindered by the grief-regret that the project's progress can trigger? There's a lot of loopiness in grief. Enough to give anyone a headache. Like a mental headache. A headache of the mind. I guess just a head-headache.

Grief-ception

I've already lived through some major events without my wife: her birthday, my birthday, our anniversary, the release of Lady Dynamite on Netflix (seriously, everyone watch this). I've been learning. In five days, when I get to the first anniversary of her death, I can expect to feel a bit shitty on that particular day. I also know, from past experience, that I will likely have a griefburst, not on the anniversary, but the day before. Know what this means? Not only can I anticipate my regular grief, I can anticipating my anticipatory grief!

Maybe now, because I'm expecting it the day before, the griefburst will hit two days early? Grief is sneaky like that. Maybe I'll have two griefbursts, or none until the day after? But I know to expect...something! I'm totally ready for grief to- well, be unpredictable. Which vaguely sounds like I'm back to square one.

But I'll get through whatever it is. It's a miracle I made it this far at all. Another day won't kill me (knock on wood for freak meteor strikes, rampaging llamas, etc). But I'm watching you, grief, studying your patterns, learning the way you think. I'm inside your mind, grief! How does that make you feel? Oh wait, I already know, cuz I'm seeing your thoughts!

The lamest astrological sign

So I may officially be the worst son ever! Grab the popcorn, kids. So my mom has cancer *uncalled-for rimshot*. One of the first few thoughts that the honorable son of the year had was "I fucking hate my life."

MY life.

She's got the cancer, and I hate my life.

And then, to make things even worse, I went and talked about that private thought on the internet! Did things get a little meta just now? Anyway, the doctors say the cancer is curable, with a surgery that cancer is making all too routine these days. And a friend told me that it's a big thing that they're willing to say it's curable. I guess doctors should know better than to throw "curable" around lightly.

But it's just a little much for me. Grief for my wife is still attached to me like a tum-

...maybe I won't make that joke. Suffice it to say, my mind has no shortage of things running around it. I hope that it's as simple as they say it is, and my mom gets the surgery and boom! she becomes a badass cancer survivor. But I think that, if anything, grief has prepared me mentally better than I would be otherwise for this news. It's something. I forget if it was Confucius, or maybe Shakespeare, or possibly Socrates who famously said "fuck cancer."

2016: Year of the Fog

There's two fogs in grief. One is the fog of shock. That's where most of us grieflings were for a good few months or so after the death. Shock is a survival thing, it's our mind shutting out the bad stuff so we can, you know, not die from it. The other for is a fog of loneliness. That fog doesn't protect you, it just drives you up the wall.

When I think I'm doing well in my grief, something small can trigger my loneliness, and even crying doesn't make it go away. I am a pretty extreme case, though, where I went from being a lonely teenager, to an 11-year relationship that went quite codependent, and now I'm back to the loneliness. I've said it before, I suck at keeping myself company.

Shock fog makes you do things like sleep, and watch Netflix, and bullshit small-talk about politics. Loneliness fog makes you do things like draft online dating profiles over and over, and hate your friends when they ignore you for a few minutes, and change your masturbation habits. Loneliness fog can only be cured by time, and positive human interaction. But for grieflings, positive human interaction is...complicated.