It is that moment, when I open my books
and scan the words of the poetry I love,
that I keep for myself like a schoolchild hoarding their favourite sweets
That I see the ink printed so neatly, the words dance on the page
and hold my feelings better than the black tar holds them inside me
sticky and fluid in my chest
I see that these words are a better reflection of me than my own face in the mirror
these poems and stories I collect, they hold myself more than my body ever could
They reflect me, ignite me and turn me to ash all at once
And I weep
And I laugh
And I smile
And I keep on reading

A Battle Between Happiness and Peacefulness

As I pounded my feet on the treadmill this afternoon, I made progress but I got nowhere. Physically and mentally. My thoughts floated to the elusive "Happiness" that is so ingrained in our language and culture. "I just want to be happy" must be thought in billions of minds, countless times, all day, every day. Yet, we all grasp and understand that happiness is an emotion, fleeting, like all others. What we seek is an underlying peacefulness, contentedness, that is a result of what, exactly?

The clearest answer of course is circumstance. When all our circumstances in the world are "on our side" - the future looks solid and undaunting when we have a stable lifestyle, a nice home we like to live in, a safe financial future, travels plans and trips to look forward to, a lover who adores us whom we adore in return, good health and good family and friends. It is very easy to assume a full hand of these cards to be the remedy to peacefulness - and, whilst they certainly do contribute to a wonderful day or week or month, once you get used to having these things, we can find the restlessness settling in. We feel unsatisfied. We want more. What if there is a lover who can stimulate my mind more, or one who loves me more, who needs me more? Someone who needs me less, who lets me be. What if I had a better living situation, a bigger house - more room to breathe? What if I lived in a van, nomadic, romantic? Perhaps then I would feel so full and empty, all at the same time. We invent problems because it's natural, progression is an exciting part of living, stagnation and peacefulness are not one and the same. Happiness and peacefulness are not one and the same.

Like the majority of the world, I realised pretty early on that circumstances (material or otherwise) aren't what will give me peace. My attitude towards circumstances, my attitude towards the day, would do this. But then my mind would spiral - sometimes because of my circumstances - either positively or negatively in either direction. On a good, clear day, I would wake up with a sparkling mind, work out, eat well, finish up editing pictures, be productive, notice all the sights and the smells and sing to the music and feel at peace. I felt grateful for the day, for all days. My previous sorrows would feel laid to rest, accepted, almost sentimental. On a bad day, I could wake up and argue every negative about myself and my mind and life like a cynic with the worst stung heart. I would try to counteract myself with hope and gratitude, just to slam it back into the ground with the force of a thousand thoughts exploding in my mind like a firework display backfiring.

I still can't work out what determines a good day or a bad day, they just are. Today has been mediocre, leaning towards the bad. I'd like to think my week of chaos and busyness has kept me from being in touch with my mind and emotions, and left me vulnerable to an avalanche of sorts, which has toppled (or begun to?) today.

I ignore my friends and family and retreat inside my cave of myself. No one is enough. I only see the flaws. I only see my own flaws. I feel like a terrible person. I try to go easy on myself - my boyfriend is gone, and I miss him. I've had this argument with myself a thousand times, heard his voice chime in inside my mind: "I've not gone anywhere. Close your eyes and I'm there, you know that." I feel petulant and childlike. He always loved my petulance. The memory of him saying so with mischief in his eyes comes flooding back, and I'm a puddle on the floor again.

I sink into my sofa and think some more about peace. I'm sure it's to do with gratitude, that gratitude holds the key to it all. Being awake enough to see how precious the moment is, the moment of where you are in your life and all the things you hold - no matter what is lost, no matter what is mortal. And then I fight myself with the sad reality that the moment is already gone, cannot be saved, that there is only more loss and more grief and more hopelessness in store. This is my fight, and I am losing it.

I counteract my wallowing with an emergency poison dart, filled with magic and love and cliches. "Aha!" I laugh at myself. "Yes, it all dies. But it also lives! And that is what must be celebrated. And when did death become so morbid? Death should be so wonderful, you can lay down your misery and your baggage and feel the grass waving above your head with no yesterday, no tomorrow. It's peace. Love death, you fool. Love it all."

I sigh and curl up some more. I am not used to giving in to sorrow like this. I know I will become strong again - tomorrow, maybe. But the periods of time I am peaceful for, is that what determines peace? If I fail to be peaceful today, am I no longer a peaceful person? If I die today, will they forever remember me as a sad girl with boots filled with water? Or will they remember the majority of my days - the days they didn't even see, they didn't witness, that I may have written about or photographed, the lost days. What about them?

I drink some water and decide that I should probably stop thinking, today. Who would ever love a mind that can unravel like this? I don't know how to sell myself to someone. Yesterday I was baked with fresh fruit, cream, sugar, love and peace, love and peace. Today I am expired milk and spilled on the carpet.

I suppose this is all part of the human experience, my brain comes with my flesh prison, and I must succumb to it, the bad and the good. I find some peace in that. I should probably go to sleep now, clean up my war wounds and give them a chance to heal. I am exhausted, and I haven't even left my flat.

Goodnight.

Sit With Me A While

Tonight you came, soft and quiet
and sat with me for a while
I knew because my entire body flooded with calm
and tears rolled down my cheeks, I smiled
as you sat with me for a while
You wore soft piano and a gentle summer breeze
Ran your fingers across my forehead,
You didn't need to say a word
because you sat with me for a while
I felt your hand, I saw the creases by your eyes
that I kissed, and did again tonight
as you sat with me for a while

I look up at the sky
It is navy, clouded, empty
There are no metaphors tonight
I hear gleeful screams through the branches of the trees
Cheers and jeers and
riddled fears are in my mind
I'd hoped this pain would make other pain incomparable
The taste of something so bitter would stick to my tongue
Like ice, the temperature of the world would drop
And any small joy would radiate, like a swallowed star
That any other sorrow would simply fade
as a stitch buried deep into a patchwork of sadness
And yet pain feels as pain ever did
And yet somehow I feel weaker now than ever
But better equipped
Tell me that a spirit doesn't crumble with a body
Don't tell me that a body just learns how to hold a crumbled spirit
And rebuild it
And rebuild it
And rebuild it.
I sigh, and let the crickets sing to me for now
I loosen my grip on my excitement once more
Welcome sorrow, sit with her a while
And when she dissipates, I shall make room for more.

Being alone in grief is one of the hardest things to bear. When you speak with family, friends, other people who knew and loved him - he is alive again between you all. You nod, and laugh, and reminisce. You recognise and share the same concept of him, ahh yes, there he is, the person we all remember. When you grieve alone, you alone bear the weight of keeping that person alive. And that my friends, is one hell of a responsibility.

My Grief

You know when you were younger, and you'd gotten into an argument with someone at school, and you woke up in the morning with a deep dark pit in your stomach? You dreaded what the day had in store for you, your mind was focused on only that situation. You didn't want to go in, you desperately wanted to avoid that situation, but you were forced to confront it - you had to go to school. You couldn't just not go into school again, ever. You were rooted in that situation, and it felt AWFUL.

This is what grief feels like. Every day. You wake up in it, you are surrounded by it. It's reminders that you are "IN this" are everywhere - not just in the photographs you want to keep up in your living room (but can't bear to look at yet without bursting into tears), not just in the bag of oats that he gave you for morning smoothies on your kitchen counter (sitting there, untouched), not just in smell of his cologne that you keep but ration yourself for fear of spoiling the memory of, but it's all over your mind, it's all over your memories, it's in your daily routine and the sudden and very noticeable absence - that your favourite part of your life has disappeared.
As C.S Lewis writes about the grief he felt when he lost his wife, "Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything."

I have found myself "in" this, every day for the last three months. The initial days and weeks were unbearable, I found myself howling like a wounded or lost animal at times, I grieved like a child, my heart sobbed for his return.
I felt every inch of my life move, I felt every time the grief changed and shifted. I felt it when it sat more comfortably, but just as heavily, on my back. I noticed on the day I woke up and didn't think of his death immediately, but instead noticed the sunshine through my window. I noticed when I made choices out of emotion, rather than rational thinking - I noticed my grief working it's long dark fingers through my mind and into my life, and I noticed when I bolted upright in defence of this.

It has been my quest, for a long time now, to be emotionally healthy. As an artist, suffering can be glorified easily, we can wallow in our pain and let it take us, sometimes our identities are so enmeshed with pain that we do not even recognise or know a self without it. This terrifies me, not one ounce of me wants to suffer through life - artist or not. It goes against everything I believe in to wallow in sadness, to offer despair a chair at your table. I stand up for smiling and kindness, for finding the good and the positive, for being greater than your suffering. If you were to cut my soul in half, you would find the essence of positivity there at the root.

Loss like this, however, is new to me. I didn't shy away from the experience of it, because any experience can be a strength maker, and I intend to live so intensely that I could die at any moment without regret. That said, I grossly underestimated the impact this would have. I thought that knowing someone would die (after all, we all do) and preparing myself for it, would somehow lessen the shock, or the pain of grief. It doesn't.
BUT, I thought. Surely if I learn to truly "live in the moment" with him, to soak up every wonderful moment I get to spend with him, to really cherish him and appreciate every second of life with him with all the gratitude I can muster - surely that would numb some of the loss? I mean, if I do that, then I won't ever look back and say "I wish I'd appreciated my time with him more"?

Well, yes and no. I am so grateful that I can say I savoured every moment with him, and that I truly acknowledged how precious it was, and that I felt true happiness with him, but living this way also invited this big dark cloud of entropy to hover over me. Feeling that elation and joy meant that one day I would be very much without that elation and joy, and I didn't know how that would feel - whether or not that would break me, break my positive spirit. The catch was, until he had actually died and I had learned that I could still access that happiness and joy, I just didn't know. So my joy and love was tinged with this overwhelming sadness that it was just so, so temporary. I couldn't crawl into those moments with him, in his arms, and stay there. Indeed, the last morning I spent with him on that day he left, we cuddled and laughed and smiled and told each other to have a wonderful day, and I let myself let him go. I thought, "he isn't mine to keep." You have to live like you won't die, like those you love won't die, otherwise you will be crippled by the attachment of having them. And eventually, this need for other people will contract and compound and you will be so afraid of losing things and of change, that you never dip your toe into the water that all life has to offer. I knew I couldn't do that. So every time we parted, I savoured the moment, and I let it go.

And looking back, I'm glad life didn't wrench me from him. I'm glad my last goodbye to him was as sweet as all the others.

So yes, this is where I am. I wake up and notice he is gone, but it is not immediate, it is not overwhelming as it was. I am currently more grateful for the memories I have, than sad that I cannot make more. Most days are enjoyable and I drive in the car and sing, I let myself enjoy what life has to offer, because he wanted me to do that and because I want to do that. Occasionally I have a bad day, like yesterday, when I just do not have the energy mentally to psych myself up for another day of positive living. And that's OK for me, too - as long as it's just a day, and as long as I don't wallow.

What I'm beginning to realise, is that grieving is also the same as healing. For me, to switch off the sadness would be to switch off the same emotion that gives me access to happiness, to gratitude, to appreciation, to peace. Grieving like this allows me to enjoy the lighter moments, knowing that I've truly felt the heavier ones. I let myself enjoy them, just as I let myself suffer the sad ones. It's cheating the guilt that comes with grieving - the guilt of feeling good and being able to carry on when you never thought it would come so easily without them.

The night before he died, we sat on his bed and I ate a bowl of peas and he ate chicken soup (he had a cold). We talked about what we wanted from life. He just wanted to always "be", and I just wanted to always "feel". It still stands - I never want to stop feeling, I never want to stop dipping my toe into what life has to offer, everyone deserves to. And he continues to "be", in my heart, in my head, in the things he taught me that I apply to life. He's alive in the stories I tell about him, he's alive in the mannerisms and language I picked up from him, in my photographs, in my memories. It's funny, because I suppose that's the solution to death, almost, keeping someone alive in you.

A Thank-You

I opened the window, the air breathed green again
"Thank you."
I said to him.
"You've given me everything I needed to learn.
And everything I could never quite touch
is mine now.
Thank you."

A tear leaked down my cheek.
Given the choice, I would always choose him as him,
over him as concept.
him as memory.
him as experience.
him as lesson.
him as story.
But knowing I cannot choose
and knowing what he would want to be
since he cannot be himself any more.

Then I shall open my arms to all of it.
Today is the first day of my life.
Today I embrace.
I hold my life again, with him, still breathing into it.

Today I say,
Thank you.