December.
Joe has already been gone a full month.
Logically, I know this is real, but it certainly still does not feel like it.
November is mostly a blur. I spent a lot of time staring at the wall or crying—or staring at the wall while crying—and barely paying attention to hours upon hours of old cooking shows and even older cartoons. I also played a lot of Solitaire.
What’s great—and by great, I mean expletives and rude gestures—is that my system’s “normal” response to extreme stress is a host of physical symptoms that frequently mirror The Plague. I spent a lot of time trying to discern if I had an actual virus, or if it was just LIFE.
It was, in fact, just LIFE.
Grief is jarring and exhausting. I will feel okay, mostly normal, and then get clothes-lined by the realization that things are not normal. I haven’t been crying as much, but it doesn’t usually take effort to bring it on. I feel guilty for going about business as usual, and even worse for actually enjoying anything. I feel guilty for giving a generic I’ve been really stressed reason to my chiropractors as to why my back and shoulders are in knots. While I still have the urge to just yell MY BROTHER DIED at anyone who asks how I’m doing, I really don’t want to get into that with someone who cracks my neck every other week. And then I feel guilty for keeping my personal business personal. I know guilt is part of the “process” and I know logic has little place in that “process.” I know there’s nothing linear about any of it and that it doesn’t wrap up in a nice little five-stage arc like too many people staunchly believe. But knowing doesn’t really make experiencing any easier. The grief ball is too big and the box is too small.
External influence likes to jump out of nowhere to fuck me up too. I started reading a book that was supposed to be mindless chick-lit, and in the first chapter the main character is carrying around her recently-deceased brother’s ashes. I stopped reading before I threw my phone across the room. There was a local news story about a man who was resuscitated and saved by emergency responders after suffering a heart attack, and it was heartening that he got a happy ending, but goddammit, why didn’t my brother get that chance? Then I was looking for something in my contacts and fucking Gmail decided to flag something that it thought needed attention. It was two separate phone numbers for Joe, and it gutted me to realize that I no longer need either one.
In summation:
November sucked. December better not get any fucking ideas.
—
(Close in the Distance from Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker)
—
I was not much in a music listening mood for the month of November. After the 4th, I pretty much only listened to music in the car. I haven’t even had iTunes open. I did, however, get my money’s worth out of my Boomerang subscription. Countless hours of Scooby Doo were the soundtrack to staring at the wall, crying, and endless games of Solitaire.
—
Top 10 6 Most Played Artists for November 2022…
1.) Ingram Hill … 71 plays
2.) The Monkees … 64 plays
3.) Matchbox Twenty … 58 plays
4.) O.A.R. … 33 plays
5.) Nine Days … 23 plays
6.) Gavin DeGraw … 13 plays
Honorable mention: …
Total of 262 plays of 203 tracks from 19 albums by 6 artists.
—
 |
Close in the Distance Jason Charles Miller |
(Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker)