No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.
At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or confused. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be around me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.
...
And grief still feels like fear. Perhaps, more strictly, like suspense. Or like waiting; just hinging about waiting for something to happen. It gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn't seem worth starting anything. I can't settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now here is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness.
3 comments:
Catherine, I just caught up with your last several emails. I wish I could take it all away, or say the magic words. But such things don't exist, and...
I'm so sorry.
the mildly drunk thing - i get that. that just-buzzed-enough state that allows me to shed my inhibitions but still have enough wits about me to do something with that new self. grief is often like that for me.
I have been captured by your blog. I've been reading through it but haven't commented up till now because I couldn't find any words to say. I still can't. Your honesty pierces me.
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