I said it wouldn't be easy and boy was I right. Although it was speculated to be quite an unlucky year due to the 3 Friday the 13ths, 2009 has definitely proven to be my unluckiest year yet.
On the first Friday--Friday, February 13--I worked my last day at my company. While I was fortunate to receive a great job in this economy and leave voluntarily, it all happened very quickly. I left with significantly less than a two week notice and I didn't get to say goodbye to some of the people who molded me into what I've become. My team was crushed and the ending was bittersweet. That job was all I ever knew, and it was a surprisingly tough day for me.
Thank God Valentine's Day was the next day. It was a reminder that love is meant to be celebrated.
One week later, I moved back in with my parents. I've been living with them for a little over a month now and every day my room seems to be tinier and tinier. Despite the aesthetics, I'm happy to report we've only had one blow-up. It was major and it involved some colorful language. It was regarding 'discretion', a decidedly Boomer trait that I have chosen not to adopt just yet.
Although there have been times where I've reverted back to my thirteen year old self and transformed into a mindset that was convinced that my parents were never going to understand me, this transition has not been too much a struggle for me. The love in this house is stronger than my temporary discomfort.
The second Friday--Friday, March 13th--would later prove to be a lot more significant than the first. Friday, March 13 was the last day I saw my best friend before he took his own life less than 2 weeks later. His temporary discomfort was just too much.
I was flying to Phoenix for a week on Saturday, and Sean come all the way to Atlanta to see me off before my first big business trip. We were used to celebrating first's together. We ate dinner, drank wine and told stories about how we were going to change the world...Today I am humbled by the talks we had.
I thought I was this anomaly of a person until I lost someone who took a piece of me with him.
My spirit can handle sadness. In my mind, sadness feels organic. I'm okay with it. Before Sean died, I didn't know the difference between sadness and grief. I thought I had grieved before; but real grief, I've found, only occurs when there is a true loss.
My spirit doesn't do as well with loss.
When words just aren't enough, people tend to rely on expression. I'm no different, neither are you and neither is the psycho down the street. So in an attempt to say what I couldn't quite 'say,' I laid curled up in my bed for hours and hours. I cried until my eyes became swollen and red. I was consumed by shock, guilt, remorse, and a pain that ran to the deepest part of me. I was angry and dealing with feelings that I've never had to deal with.
It sounds bad because it was. And it still is.
The beautiful thing, the thing that is causing me to write publicly right now, is that people picked up on what I was expressing. They looked past my medium and found the message. And then they reacted. While we may disagree on the things like 'responsibility' and 'discretion', loss is cross-generational.
As my fifty-something year old mother was holding my trembling body, trying her hardest to convince me to take just "one more bite", my twenty-something friends were facebooking, texting and even calling, trying their hardest to say how sorry they were. Meanwhile, my seventy-something year old grandmother was wishing she was here with me and writing some of the most heartfelt words I've ever read and putting it in the mail. To say I was, and still am, very very touched is a large understatement.
Effort, gratitude and gracefulness, it turns out, are cross-generational as well.
The things that people say and do for you during the most tragic, defining moments of your lives are the things that you will take with you forever. While we did not choose the time period that we are coming of age in, we can choose the way we interact with others each and every day.
So there you have it. When it comes to communication, the message is not always in the words but rather in the expression. Content used to be the king, now it's context. As I realize how many people have experienced a loss (tangible, personal or otherwise) during this recession, I wonder if I've been as graceful as I should've been.
Someone once told me that writer's block is not your mind telling you that you don't have anything to say, but it's your mind fearing that what you say isn't going to be _______ enough. Funny thing is, when you lose something, you feel like you shouldn't be afraid of anything.
So I'm writing.
"Sometimes, I guess there just aren't enough rocks"--Forrest Gump
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