Can you ever laugh at your own grief? Everyone has it...grief...in some form or another. So I ask, does yours ever make you think or do things that inevitably, either in the moment or later on, cause you to look back and laugh inside? Sometimes its a cryptic laugh, one of bitterness and irony. Other times its sad and full of self pity. And sometimes its truly just seeing the ridiculousness that really in my mind just equates with being Sheri. The times I am standing in line at Wal-Mart and hear someone bitching about the length of the wait, and in my self absorbed and muddled mind, I am wanting to bite out to them "Yeah? Well just trying having your CHILD DIE!! How's that for pissed off?!" I can almost bust out laughing at myself about that right now. How out of context that would be.
Out of context. That is a good phrase for how I feel a lot of the time. As if my presence just does not make sense. It almost does not seem to matter where I am or what I am doing. I feel like a fake, a fraud, like I am pretending to be there. Pretending to work. Pretending to play. Pretending to shop. I don't know what I think I am honestly supposed to be doing. Obviously work still has to be done. Food still has to be bought. Shamefully or otherwise, I still crave entertainment and laughter and the presence of my friends. What is it about the loss of Joseph that triggers that gut deep feeling that everything from that moment forward now needs, in some kind of loyalty, to be framed with the reality both of his existence and his death? I didn't give him that much power when he was alive...and truth be told, selfish being that I have always been, it was not uncommon for me to feel somewhat resentful when the demands of motherhood encroached upon some of my other desires. And you know, it probably speaks a bit to my character, or lack thereof, that I can now feel that way...that nothing ought to exist without Joseph...but yet go forward with it anyway, whatever "it" may be...making love, going to dinner with friends, laughing with girlfriends, reading a book, taking a bath. That perhaps my guilt about such endeavors is somehow payment at the Altar of Joseph..that if I don't really enjoy it, or if I just feel really bad that I really enjoy it, somehow I have paid the price for that enjoyment. Maybe in time there will be a sale...a "buy one get one free", Two Guilts for the Price of One kind of thing. When I can go have fun at something and not feel as if it is somehow shameful. I can even feel shame for not wanting to feel ashamed. He's DEAD. He doesn't even get to LIVE. Its bad enough that I can possibly want to feel good for a while. But how I can ask the Universe or God or Whomever to also not feel BAD about feeling GOOD? If he could live through dying, surely I can live through feeling horrible for the rest of my life, yes?
Absurd on paper. Absolutely honest in my heart. I really do find myself feeling that way, having those mental conversations. Holding my pain up against the irks of the world and thrusting it forward as if I hold the trump card, so trump-ful that nobody ought to even TRY to be miserable around me. I'll tell you when you are miserable buddy!!
And then my dirty little secret. I am tired of feeling miserable. And yet I don't want to stop. Because I am awfully close to that place where instead of having Joseph, I have my misery..and that too can be babied and raised and turned into its own being and creature. And if I don't have that....I have only the empty place where he used to be, and my undeniable need to find acceptance for it being there. And putting aside the fact that I don't want to....is the niggling reality that I also don't know how.
Out of context. That is a good phrase for how I feel a lot of the time. As if my presence just does not make sense. It almost does not seem to matter where I am or what I am doing. I feel like a fake, a fraud, like I am pretending to be there. Pretending to work. Pretending to play. Pretending to shop. I don't know what I think I am honestly supposed to be doing. Obviously work still has to be done. Food still has to be bought. Shamefully or otherwise, I still crave entertainment and laughter and the presence of my friends. What is it about the loss of Joseph that triggers that gut deep feeling that everything from that moment forward now needs, in some kind of loyalty, to be framed with the reality both of his existence and his death? I didn't give him that much power when he was alive...and truth be told, selfish being that I have always been, it was not uncommon for me to feel somewhat resentful when the demands of motherhood encroached upon some of my other desires. And you know, it probably speaks a bit to my character, or lack thereof, that I can now feel that way...that nothing ought to exist without Joseph...but yet go forward with it anyway, whatever "it" may be...making love, going to dinner with friends, laughing with girlfriends, reading a book, taking a bath. That perhaps my guilt about such endeavors is somehow payment at the Altar of Joseph..that if I don't really enjoy it, or if I just feel really bad that I really enjoy it, somehow I have paid the price for that enjoyment. Maybe in time there will be a sale...a "buy one get one free", Two Guilts for the Price of One kind of thing. When I can go have fun at something and not feel as if it is somehow shameful. I can even feel shame for not wanting to feel ashamed. He's DEAD. He doesn't even get to LIVE. Its bad enough that I can possibly want to feel good for a while. But how I can ask the Universe or God or Whomever to also not feel BAD about feeling GOOD? If he could live through dying, surely I can live through feeling horrible for the rest of my life, yes?
Absurd on paper. Absolutely honest in my heart. I really do find myself feeling that way, having those mental conversations. Holding my pain up against the irks of the world and thrusting it forward as if I hold the trump card, so trump-ful that nobody ought to even TRY to be miserable around me. I'll tell you when you are miserable buddy!!
And then my dirty little secret. I am tired of feeling miserable. And yet I don't want to stop. Because I am awfully close to that place where instead of having Joseph, I have my misery..and that too can be babied and raised and turned into its own being and creature. And if I don't have that....I have only the empty place where he used to be, and my undeniable need to find acceptance for it being there. And putting aside the fact that I don't want to....is the niggling reality that I also don't know how.
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