wow. grief.

i had underestimated this whole grieving thing.
i was so sad for a few months, and then it all started lightening up. i still felt sad, but in a less oppressive way. it felt like a manageable amount of emotion.
and then it got unmanageable again.
i got back to barely getting out of bed, doing nothing except going to the gym and sleeping and reading.
i wasn't prepared for moving so far back.
i think it's harder this time because everyone else has moved on, back to taking care of their own lives.
i think that's natural and i don't think anyone is abandoning me or anything, it's just the way things are.
there's a point where everyone else goes back to their lives, back to thinking about the things they're dealing with because you're out of the woods, and after that the calls stop and the check ins stop.
a friend warned me about this, actually, right after mom died. her dad died when she was my age, and she said that this would happen - that there would be a point where everyone else had moved on and you're alone with the grief, missing the checking in.
i don't feel like it's anyone's *job* to check in on me, naturally, and i know that everyone has stuff that they wrestle with, and lives to tend to. i ate up a lot of energy from other people, and it's totally necessary for them to take care of themselves.
so, here i am, back in the barely getting out of bed stage, but mostly alone this time.
it's unfortunate that i am so sad, and so lonely, and not really able to make calls myself, because what i probably need is to spend time with other people, but i can't make it happen.
of course, there are good days, or good hours.
yesterday i sat in the sun outside of whole foods, writing. i was feeling good in my skin, the sun felt wonderful, drinking my iced decaf latte with stevia and lowfat milk, using my fancy new pen that is AMAZING. the writing wasn't feeling like it was especially valuable material, but it all felt nice.
i'm three weeks into my writing class now.
week one was painful, in that i was a half an hour late for no especially good reason aside from me fucking up the time and then getting lost and not being able to find parking and having the wrong apartment number in my phone. it was excruciating walking into that apartment, late, meeting a bunch of people for the first time sweaty and out of breath, feeling like a big asshole. but i went. i seriously considered just leaving because i couldn't handle the embarrassment, and i might have at another time in my life, but i just took a deep breath and went for it.
i have to constantly battle the inner critic in me, telling me that i might not belong in the class because i'm not really a writer and i don't know what i'm doing and this sucks and it's all hopeless. i have to consciously let my mind spin itself around in manic circles and then just do it all anyway. maybe it sucks, but i'll write it anyway. maybe it'll be terrible and i'll be pelted with rotten produce, but i'll write anyway.
my teacher, alan kaufman, has talked a lot about making writing into a practice. he told us this story about when he was studying zen buddhism. he wouldn't see his guru/master/mentor more than every couple of weeks, and his master would come up to him and ask him, 'have you been sitting zazen like that this whole time?' alan would look at himself and realize he was all slouched over, his mind was wandering, his posture crappy. his master would say, 'yeah, so, you haven't been sitting zazen.' because the difficulty of the sitting *is* the practice. it's not just copping a squat and letting your mind wander. it's your posture and your breathing and your gaze and your hands and everything together and it's hard, which is why everyone doesn't do it.
so, he was talking about writing practice the same way. it's not just sitting down with a pen someplace and jotting some stuff down. it's the discipline of doing it everyday, even when it's hard, at the right place, the right time, focused on a topic. and again, there's a reason why not everyone is a writer. because writing is fucking hard.
i'm working on my memoir about mom's death. i'm still a little uncomfortable with the idea of a memoir, because of the cliche of it, but it's just so THERE for writing about.
i found the difficulty of writing and the difficulty of grieving got a little tangled this week, though. writing about mom and her death as i'm processing my feelings about my mom and her death make the writing even harder.
alan suggested that i might need to consider if this is the project i want to work on, which i have certainly pondered myself, but i am not seeing anything else. this feels like the project, but it's true that writing i hard enough without adding in the extra weight of sadness.
i'm going to post this, and then eat some breakfast and get ready for the gym, but i'll be back soon.