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Grief
Wave

Wave

The truth is, I tried to run ahead of it – ahead of grief. 

I knew time would diminish this pain, because it always did before, even though nothing I’ve ever experienced could compare to this ripping apart; so I collected it. The more time I spent doing something, anything, the more time I would be able to exchange for a sentence reduction later on. The idea was to be free of it. 

Free of the grief itself. 

It doesn’t really work like that, but I didn’t know or it didn’t matter. I needed a strategy, a fucking exit plan. I found one; and then I spent months executing it. I did so many things, none out of pure and undiluted motivation. It was all a transaction. I needed time to pass, time needed a focus. I found a million things to focus on, other than this overwhelming feeling of loss. I even focused on other losses, to avoid the main one. To be honest, death didn’t only take my mother; it destructured a whole paradigm, broke one plane of existence. Everything that survived that nuclear explosion fell onto the next plane of existence, not necessarily in the same position it was before. And just like that, relationships I thought would never change changed overnight. 

A massive oversight. 

And now it was pain on top of pain. 

But it wasn’t the same pain; because like everything had changed once, everything could change again. Only one thing would never do. My mother would never have another birthday. 

The idea alone was unbearable. 

But it wasn’t just an idea. It was made true, by some fucking fate. Now it was a fact, a cold hard truth I could try to deny but couldn’t fully escape. Truth is like that. It haunts you down, it wants to find you harder than you want to find it. It comes back like a lullaby which you only remember the chorus of, both nostalgic and strange; familiar, without a doubt, so weird though that you didn’t think the rest of the song went like this. Still, it goes like this. 

So I repeated it to myself, as a precautionary measure. 

My mother is dead, my mother is dead, my mother is dead. 

I thought that it would make it less surprising if it came from someone else’s mouth or some subtle hint in my daily life. It didn’t. For some reason, I kept relearning it, every time in a different way. My mother died like a glass shattering on the floor, shards everywhere even after you cleaned up. I kept finding them randomly, I became familiar with the sharp piercing pain they bring – I’ve become better at holding the tears. One day, surely, I won’t find them anymore. That would be a logical conclusion. 

For some reason, I don’t believe it to be true. 

I’m bound to be conscious of hidden shards of grief for the rest of my life. 

To avoid them or to step on them, to mistake them for something else – on purpose. 

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Choices are limited, in truth, and they all make sense. 

That’s the thing with death, it reconciles paradoxes; making life both simpler and more complex. After my mother died, few things appeared to be of relevance in my life, thus clearing a lot of clutter out in one go – before I had to do it manually, which takes more time. But after my mother died, nothing seemed to be quite fair anymore; and suddenly, I was realizing, maybe they never were. Just like that, something I was taught to believe found its end at my feet. 

I stepped on it. 

It was better for things to be unfair because no divine timing would justify in my eyes the loss I was faced with. 

If it was all part of a plan, I hated it; if there was none, it was worse. 

If she died just because she could, then what now ?

Would people just start dropping dead all around ? But then again, people are dropping dead all around all the time; I just never looked at it. That wasn’t us. It couldn’t be us. We were invincible. Weren’t we ?

Just like that, something died at my feet. 

As old as myself, a child’s belief. I thought I had shed my childhood when I fell into depression, but it was holding my hand in the pits of hell only to be defeated without a fight. 

How ironic. 

Now I wasn’t a grown child, I was just a mortal adult. 

Not only could I die, but I wouldn’t even have the innocence to protest against it. Negotiations with the grim reaper would be quick and dull. Reincarnation would look pointless. Staying as a ghost was an even more grim fate. What would be the point ? To be an eternal witness ? I was already ready to take my own eyes out after living the softest life. I would make a pathetic scribe to someone else’s path. No, it wouldn’t work. 

But oblivion ?

Oblivion sounded nice. Cozy, even. 

It took me a long time to realize only death has the monopole of it, and I wasn’t ready for that yet. Trying to disappear while alive is a rather complicated process. Life is even more stubborn than truth. If it can appear in literal pools of acid, it’ll find you drowning in your own bile; try to take you for a drink. Say some stupid shit you won’t remember half of it, but while you’re busy listening to it bullshitting you, you’re still alive. You’re still doing something. That’s how it gets you. Either it gives you an angel or a reason to be pissed off. For life, it’s all the same; just leverage to get you moving. That’s what it wants. It doesn’t matter if it’s moving up or down – on the social ladder or any ladder. Life is movement, so that’s the only thing it recognizes. Everything else people attach to it are just projections of their own belief systems. 

Life is dumb as a rock, except for the ways it baits you.

You shouldn’t get too mad at it, it doesn’t know what it’s doing; what it’s putting you through. The movement of your rib cage catching your breath when you cry or when you’re euphoric is exactly the same. It doesn’t know what it’s doing wrong. And wrong is quite subjective. 

You should look in the mirror, sometimes. 

See it like life does. It’s scary. Everything you could like about yourself dissolves like salt in water; it’s just an ocean. Your soul doesn’t shine brighter than the next one, your best traits are obsolete currency, your name is a label on a wave crashing against the shore; so ephemeral you wondered why you named it. Still, you recognize you’re part of something bigger. The movement of the sun, the sprouting of a seed. You have your place along those things, you belong. Here, pinned down by gravity like a insect by a child’s finger, you belong. It was never a question of worth. You’re merely alive, that’s all – all it took. A truth that was worthless to you, because it was so common; but life doesn’t care about anything else. 

Different perspectives. 

When you get stuck with your name again and the crushing feeling of being alone, remember life’s still dumb. There’s no need to aggravate yourself because it likes different things than you. 

Still, you should look in the mirror – at least once.

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