Grief never stops.
She simply camouflages herself in different forms, daring you to challenge facing it, day after day. Sometimes sexy and alluring, we all enjoy a moment of self soothing, allowing what feels like release to wash over us-out of us, through tears, wails, cries, steps, stomps, dulled screams into feather fluffed pillows. Shameless, near infantile, reverting back primitively or perhaps to a state of childlike sorrow. Unable to express verbally the issue at hand, and coos and cuddles only go so far for so long. Lets face it, what are we as adults besides big kids playing pretend with our words, and having no one to patiently coddle us when we unexplainably sob.
Perhaps it’s been trained into us to hold back a tantrum. To act ‘grown up’ when life hurts you again and again. Or perhaps it was our parents, the big kids in our lives conditioning us for the biggest bitch we were all doomed to meet, Grief.
An enigma, Grief is. She’s eluded psychologists for decades on just how many corners of the mind she can occupy. Using your psyche like Jareth’s Labyrinth, dreams used as the currency to communicate-convey her messages. Cloaking herself in all the darkest regions of your subconscious, waiting for the perfect moment to reveal herself in all her bodacious glory. Etching out different sides of herself, like a hall of fun house mirrors, choosing dream after dream to lead you to dead end after dead end.
Sometimes she’s blunt and blatant, traceable, her entrance into your life stemming from a death in the family or someone you considered just as close. A miscarriage, a childhood best friend falling out of touch, the loss of a pet, perhaps a layoff with a company you saw yourself growing old with… Understandably defeating, mind numbing, perhaps chemically brain altering- these events that Grief uses as the velvety red carpet entrance into your life. Whispering delicate sweet nothings into your minds eye, egging you on the hunt for closure to things that don’t give closure… somethings just are in life. There isn’t always a rhyme or reason- because Grief, doesn’t believe in the laws of Nature. She’s disrespectful, harsh, gruff in the way that if she was a person she would wear a graphic tee that reads “No Sh*ts Given”. Tough luck, lessons learned through pain. Brutal, honest, raw, pain. The kind of pain that has some people renouncing themselves from faith, dubbing themselves atheist’s because no god, no matter how ethereal, righteous and mighty would subject a puny human to such atrocities and try and sell you on it being a lesson.
Bold and commanding like a Bird of Prey, willing to eat it’s own if that was the easiest catch around. But not Nobel enough to be something that hunts in the daylight like an eagle or hawk. No, she’s cunning and cruel. Waiting for night fall to prey on your demise, cascading down from the trees appearing so similarly to them, that you wonder for just a moment if the tree itself has sprung to life, wide eyed and singing serenades, of “Who? Who are you? And do you have any secrets you want to share before they consume you? Or would you rather I do the dirty work for you…? Hmmm?” Spinning her head around and around, dizzying your judgement, your sense of self. She’s alluring and momentous, consuming in her ability to validate your darkest thoughts, spin you off a course by overwhelming the rest of your senses. Picking you clean until all that’s left to regurgitate is bone. The non-digestible bits the structure that once held you together. Reduced to a scattered pellet of pieces. Fractions of who you were before encountering this mistress.
Spotlight-attention whore-hounding for the kill. Insatiable, hunter going after Humanity, picking on our identities and emotions. Fueling the negativity and the hurt, never yielding only camouflaging, waiting until the darkness creeps in to strike.
- Photo by me of a mural in Downtown Fullerton, CA.
- This is my own work and has not been generated in whole or in part by AI
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