Love-Hate

It's been a hard week being back in Los Angeles. The reality that mom is gone has set in more here and now than it did while I was back home. This makes some sense, but it doesn't completely make sense. And rather than sit here and actually think about my mom being gone, I'm going to analyze how much sense it makes and doesn't make as to the locale and timing of grieving my loss. It makes sense that when I'm back in my everyday environment that the hole in my life would become apparent in a way that it wouldn't were I in an equally familiar though not as current environment (i.e. at home in St. Louis). I can analytically ring-around-the-rosie around myself to basically conclude, yes, I am normal. Yes, I am dealing with this in an appropriate and normal way, even though it makes and doesn't make sense. Whew, I'm OK. And at the end of the ring-around-the-rosie, we would all fall down in the face of sheer exhaustion from the over-analysis. Really?!?! Yes, really. All in the beautiful and glorious name of DISTRACTION. I can think about grieving and analyze grieving without actually DOING the grieving.

So I've come upon an analogy. I must grieve the loss of my mom. It's going to happen whether I want it to or not, and for the sake of the emotional health of myself and those around me, it is better that I experience this grief than not. So here I go. I'm going away to a beach house to sit at the edge of this gargantuan ocean of grief and pain. It's a forced vacation--a required sabbatical of sorts, and I have to live at the beach, which wouldn't normally be so bad, except that it's winter, and I think this fictional beach house is somewhere in the northeast, so the wind is cold and cutting, the waves ominous, and the sky an unending gray. And let's be honest, I'm a California girl now, and sand should remain sandy and never mix with snow, because snow and sand mixing just doesn't make sense to me. But I digress from the analogy--getting in touch with my grief means going down to the water. At least getting my toes wet, even though the frigidity of the water could take my breath away. Not to mention the fear of getting swept out to sea and drowning if I lose even a mite of footing in the undertow.

SO, brilliant woman that I am, I find ways to distract myself from a journey down to the water. There's a myriad of obstacle courses and activities on the beach to tease me on my walk down to the water. Or I don't even get down to the sand...I stand on the porch of the beach house and look out at the waves--"Why hello, all-encompassing grief-waves that threaten to swallow me whole. I think I'll go back inside and watch a movie, if that's all right with you." I play ring-around-the-rosie on the sand for HOURS, analyzing and re-analyzing my own behavior and the behavior of others as a way to disengage from actually being present in my behavior. This week brought about the tearing down of a campsite that has been a semi-permanent fixture on the sand the past few months--every woman's favorite distraction--a man. I got verbal confirmation this week of something I knew in my gut to be true--that my feelings for someone were not returned to me. But even in the midst of ill-treatment and confusion, rejection from a man is familiar. Losing my mom is not. So I would literally camp out in thought patterns that have been familiar to me since I first liked Benny Lam in kindergarten and got him a Skeletor action figure for his birthday and he didn't like me back. This campsite is well-used. It has a firepit and lots of trash all around. But this week, the wind just blew it all away and there is no obstacle, no distraction, between the water and me. This is a baptism I could do without, though, so I'm scrambling to find something to fill the space.

In the midst of my time in LA, I received (I say that like it was a gift or something) $90 in parking tickets, and I banged up my roommate's car, which she was so kindly letting me borrow during my stay. Really, I don't think I'm emotionally capable of operating heavy machinery. And then I heard a horrible argument in my apartment building and called the police to come check it out. It was one of those weeks that makes a person hate LA. But on Sunday morning, the sky was clear and I was driving the traffic-less freeways and listening to music, and I remembered that I love it in this chaotic, goopy, too much crammed together mess (I meant LA, but I guess I could also mean my life). I remembered why I love it. Even if it's hard. Even while it's hard. Because I also got to see amazing people (or greet my adoring fans, as I would joke in my more egotistical moments). Some of my customers at Starbucks remembered why I had left and were happy to see me back, even with the bad news. I have made genuine human connections with people across a coffee counter in this huge city, and maybe it shouldn't astound me, but it does. And my coworkers celebrated my return. I think I clocked more time inside of warm re-welcoming embraces than I did, I don't know.....in the bathroom? I really can't think of a decent equivalent. But I had a lot of amazing hugs.

And so maybe there's something in the loving and hating....in that dance between the grieving and the distracting, because that's where the majority of life takes place, not at either end of the continuum but on the ride from one end to the other, and if it's a ride, like a big ol' pendulum tire swing, maybe it gets to be fun even while it's hard. I'd like that. And maybe other people are willing to do the dance with me. Hey, if they're hugging me so much, we might as well start dancing, right?