The End. Again.
Oct. 25th, 2004 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobellePARF ended yesterday, and with it, some hopes I keep refusing to admit to myself that I had.
It’s the hardest thing in the world to kill, innit? Hope, I mean. Even now, I know it’s buried somewhere, its roots going so deep into me I can’t begin to fathom what they’re wrapped around. But we pulled as much of them them out of the ground as we could late last night, facing each other across the quiet hotel room, through more than three hours of gut-stabbing, heart-wrenching honesty.
It was a more gentle path to hell than I expected it would be. I didn’t cry hysterically as I thought I would. I didn’t cry until this morning— great, huge, wracking sobs as I slid to my knees on the floor, clutching the nylon bedspread where he’d sat, with the pattern I’d stared at so intently the night before when I couldn’t look into his eyes. I cried so hard I choked, so hard I nearly vomited there on the carpet.
And then I stopped.
I got up, I showered, I went to breakfast, I laughed with my friends. I drove home, got my turn signal fixed, bought a really cool car stereo like I’ve been dying to do for years now. I got cat food, picked up the dog.
I cried in the car, of course. That’s nothing new. It’s almost guaranteed that the end of the season will mean I stayed up too late, slept too little, and feel too down to drive home without a bit of melancholy. Last year, I was mad that my boyfriend couldn’t get the day off from work, and couldn’t stay for breakfast or that long, grey drive east. The year before, I was annoyed at men in general, though pleased I got a nice phone call from an old friend.
This year, driving in the chill and the overcast, I was thinking how brittle my veneer is, and how oceanic the tears are underneath.
And I realised, also, that this isn’t just loss and anger and jealousy.
This is grief.
I am grieving. I’m grieving a loss I’ve never been able to fully accept. I’m grieving the praying for the end of hope. I’m grieving the loss of my illicit dream. I’m grieving the inevitable damage to a friendship that’s been beyond price to me.
I’m grieving for love.
I know this isn’t real or sensible to a lot of people. It isn’t sensible, it isn’t logical. I did know it was coming, I know I’ve been here before, and I knew all along that it was always going to end in some variety of here. Don’t ask me how I am if you’re going to tell me how I am. Just accept that I might not be ready to talk about it all, or I might want to open my mouth and wrestle with these issues that tangle me up so again and again. And I don’t need to hear any kind of variation on "I told you so," nor do I need to hear anything on the lines of, "You knew this was gonna happen." Yes. I did. I’ve been abundantly clear from the start that I knew, I saw, I expected. But that doesn’t mean that right now, at this moment, I hurt any less. That I don’t feel like I’m bleeding inside, that I don’t feel that ocean rocking up against my edges. I’ll get over it and one day move on, but now it’s just raw, slicing gruesome, messy sorrow and rage and jealousy and bewilderment and loss.
Just let me grieve a while.
It’s the hardest thing in the world to kill, innit? Hope, I mean. Even now, I know it’s buried somewhere, its roots going so deep into me I can’t begin to fathom what they’re wrapped around. But we pulled as much of them them out of the ground as we could late last night, facing each other across the quiet hotel room, through more than three hours of gut-stabbing, heart-wrenching honesty.
It was a more gentle path to hell than I expected it would be. I didn’t cry hysterically as I thought I would. I didn’t cry until this morning— great, huge, wracking sobs as I slid to my knees on the floor, clutching the nylon bedspread where he’d sat, with the pattern I’d stared at so intently the night before when I couldn’t look into his eyes. I cried so hard I choked, so hard I nearly vomited there on the carpet.
And then I stopped.
I got up, I showered, I went to breakfast, I laughed with my friends. I drove home, got my turn signal fixed, bought a really cool car stereo like I’ve been dying to do for years now. I got cat food, picked up the dog.
I cried in the car, of course. That’s nothing new. It’s almost guaranteed that the end of the season will mean I stayed up too late, slept too little, and feel too down to drive home without a bit of melancholy. Last year, I was mad that my boyfriend couldn’t get the day off from work, and couldn’t stay for breakfast or that long, grey drive east. The year before, I was annoyed at men in general, though pleased I got a nice phone call from an old friend.
This year, driving in the chill and the overcast, I was thinking how brittle my veneer is, and how oceanic the tears are underneath.
And I realised, also, that this isn’t just loss and anger and jealousy.
This is grief.
I am grieving. I’m grieving a loss I’ve never been able to fully accept. I’m grieving the praying for the end of hope. I’m grieving the loss of my illicit dream. I’m grieving the inevitable damage to a friendship that’s been beyond price to me.
I’m grieving for love.
I know this isn’t real or sensible to a lot of people. It isn’t sensible, it isn’t logical. I did know it was coming, I know I’ve been here before, and I knew all along that it was always going to end in some variety of here. Don’t ask me how I am if you’re going to tell me how I am. Just accept that I might not be ready to talk about it all, or I might want to open my mouth and wrestle with these issues that tangle me up so again and again. And I don’t need to hear any kind of variation on "I told you so," nor do I need to hear anything on the lines of, "You knew this was gonna happen." Yes. I did. I’ve been abundantly clear from the start that I knew, I saw, I expected. But that doesn’t mean that right now, at this moment, I hurt any less. That I don’t feel like I’m bleeding inside, that I don’t feel that ocean rocking up against my edges. I’ll get over it and one day move on, but now it’s just raw, slicing gruesome, messy sorrow and rage and jealousy and bewilderment and loss.
Just let me grieve a while.