Just Tell Me.
Nice. I honestly had not thought of that. Cheers, Grief booklet.
It had also never occurred to me that Travel wouldn’t work. In books, romantic heroes and heroines everywhere know to take solace in Travel (perhaps with the caveat they have a base, a Home from which to travel from). So last week I went to Mexico. On a whim. Yep. That’s how I roll, baby.
On the way to the airport I decided didn’t want to go after all.
At the airport, it was the middle of the night, and even though a patient friend was talking me down through the two hour wait, I wanted to bolt. It was like being put on the school bus again. But I thought about all the hassle it would cause for Air Mexicana to find my bag and pull it off the plane when they’d been nice enough to give me an exit row aisle seat.
On the plane, a nice little A 319, there were no sleepy men in sombreros, no goats, and no chickens. Neither was the Taco Bell chihuahua yapping it up in the galley. (How travel expands the mind!) It was the quietest flight I have ever been on - sedate, even.
Despite these disappointments, I felt better once I arrived at Mexico City and took a plane for the mountains - the sorts of mountains, I noticed, as they appeared through the little window, where CNN shows pictures of plane debris scattered about.
At the house, during the week that followed, I knew I was there to Relax. I met quite a few people here and there at lunches and dinners, all good and interesting in their own way. Still, sitting alone and restless outside my casita, I took measure of the banana-less banana trees, the obscenely garish coloured flowers, the maddening flutter and squawk of the birds flying constantly in and out of the windows, the insects (oh, the fucking insects!) - and I looked miserably at the lake, shimmering and empty, far below, and I thought: I wish this was Italy. And that was when it struck me that no, actually, it being Italy wouldn’t help either. Not Italy, not Greenland, not Thailand, not even Christmas Island…none of these places would work. "It’s not you, it’s me", I wanted to say then to this poor place and all its natives, who, naturally, I couldn’t fucking stand either. And as for New York, well, it has now become merely the place that is the least unbearable.
Arriving back here to ignore the aforementioned Grief booklet a friend sent to me, it sits on my desk fairly unexamined, its pristine-ness feeling like a rebuke every time I walk in the room. I’ve skimmed bits, like the damning sentence I quoted above. There are also, I saw, lists. Lists of things you’re "allowed" to feel, not feel, feel a bit, feel "in waves", feel half the time, wonder why you’re not feeling, wonder when you will feel, wonder when you won’t feel, and why…..all this Feeling! It’s exhausting.
I am not myself. I am angry with those who haven’t called or haven’t called enough, irritated with those who call or call too much (whatever that means). I have nothing to say and everything to say, but either way I can’t say it or don’t want to or can’t be bothered. I am ignoring people who mean well, people I am fond of. I have cancelled my way out of so many fun things these past few weeks, but I can’t remember what they are and neither do I care. But I do care that I am Missing Fun Stuff. And that pisses me off, too. But I can’t seem to stop. I want in, I want out, I want it all to go away, I want it all now - Bring it On, take it back. I haven’t looked at the news or a newspaper in five weeks. I’m reluctant to go to one of my favourite escapes, the movies, but don’t know why. I can’t sleep, and I eat only for fuel and because if I don’t my stomach hurts, which (you guessed it) is annoying. I am good only for whining and raging with a dollop of self-pity, as you can see - and I resent myself for it. I can’t stand looking at people in the street; their bodies, their clothes, their noses, the weird and stupid sounds coming out of their mouth holes. I am ready to punch them in the face. I am ready to ask them to help me cross the street because I’m secretly blind. I am ready to ask them for all their air miles I don’t want.
Underground, the screech of the subway now makes me want to out-screech it. I pace the platform, a budding crazy person, my I-Pod playing the same song for weeks now, and unable to hear it for the clatter and noise of the place, switching it off, switching it on, upping the volume and worrying and not worrying about becoming deaf. Sometimes, walking above ground, a zombie numbness descends and I feel my face slacken, and then I might feel hungry. Or not. Otherwise my patience (such as it ever was, yes I know) is non-existent. My tolerance, gone. My concentration, shot. It jumps from here to there, but never to, you know, There. To Her. "That way", mumbled King Lear, "madness lies." But by then he was already mad. This not thinking, not "going there", as the Americans say, is not only "Denial" but also, I have begun to think, a betrayal. Of her. (Such as she was, though she isn’t, though there is no "she" - and I will stop this deconstructionist Roland Barthes-ing right here. Barf.) It’s conceivable that I need to stop with the "Soldier. Spartan. Monster trucks." mantra that sailed me through the funeral and all the rest. Is it time for something else yet? "Conscientious objector. Coward. Bicycle." I just don’t know. It’s like jumping off the high diving board. Maybe, you say, peering uncertainly down at the deep water below and backing up…..maybe….maybe tomorrow? Can’t we just come back tomorrow?
Everything is permitted, says the Grief booklet, like some demented New Age version of Aleister Crowley. It’s all perfectly normal: everything you feel, don’t feel, can’t feel…blah, blah, blah….and on into infinity, resulting in endless option paralysis. Is there really no organized way that this thing is done? No formula? Especially in the 21st century, lacking Rituals, being an atheist, lacking family. Can you not custom build me a little something? A schedule, a To-Do list, even a shitty Power Point presentation - or a teensy-weensy little clue of a map scribbled on the back of a napkin with a blunt pencil…? Can you really and truly not tell me What To Do? Well, a kindly grief counsellor would likely answer, well….there are no right and wrong ways here, you know. Uh-huh. Really? I would say again. And raising my grief-induced gun to the kindly grief counsellor’s greying head, I might ask him, just like in the movies: "How about now?"
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