I sat in the hospital room at Sloan-Kettering, listening to Tchaikovsky and watching my father die, thinking how Russian it all seemed.
I’ve tried to write it a hundred times and I can’t yet. I can’t put it all down because I want it still to be mine. I want to keep it and have my grief and not share the story with anyone.
I don’t want to be told that it will get better or time will heal me or that my father is in a better place. I don’t want to be better. Right now I want to be sad. I want to be angry.
I feel guilty that I’m not wasting away on grief, feeding myself only on tears and heartache. I feel guilty that I’m able to get out of bed in the morning, that I’m able to think of other things, that I can already imagine my life going on.
For the One: I’m angry that I spent three hours on the phone last night, trying to figure out a relationship that has nothing to do with my father and never will. I’m perplexed that in building your own walls, you haven’t noticed that I’ve long since been in possession of my own well-fortified citadel. It’s not conquering that interests me. You’re afraid I might leave, but have you ever thought of what I had to go through to get here? One doesn’t long for shelter and then pass by a house, no matter how ramshackle or broken-down it might at first seem.
For the Other: I’m angry that you echo my grief and loss in the most perfect mirror image I’ve ever seen. I’m heartbroken that our connection is based on sorrow and loss and the need to be with someone else who knows how empty you feel. It pains me in ways I will never be able to fully express that it is only your words and the grief-stricken camaraderie in your eyes that makes me feel capable of feeling this loss. That you and I could never exist outside of this world in which we’re wholly alone by being together leaves me incapable of doing justice to the depth of my sorrow through words alone.
For the One-Step-Away: I’m angry that your past sins keep you from having a sincere relationship with me, because you’re always on-guard against making another mistake. If I could explain to you all the ways in which I’ve forgotten those trespasses, I’d lose myself halfway through, because even I can’t recall them all.
I’m angry that I feel more anger than sorrow.
I want to be cared for. I want to be hugged and hushed and tucked away in someone’s pocket for now. I want to be made love to and called beautiful and special and brought back to life. I want to be sheltered and soothed and wrapped in normalcy and intimacy and the promise that things will get better. I want to sit and to think and to cry and to know that when I look up from my solitary reflection, I am not alone.
I want to take some lesson from this, some sense that I’ve suffered to here, to this point at which the overwhelming sadness is merely a last surge before the tide runs out and I am able to stand safely on the shore of my own small peace.
Help me. Leave me alone.
