Lessons From the Kissing Booth

I would be lying if I said that I was doing well right now. It feels like all of my maps have been turned sideways.

Grief is always a strange experience, and as the news came to me later than it did to most it feels like I'm on some sort of reduced grief timeline. Like there's a very limited window here to get a handle on the sadness and anger and guilt before the point becomes moot. Only so much time to lock in my memories of our better times.

I am lucky to have amazing people around to bolster me up and take me out in public where I'm usually too self-conscious to do any sober public crying, although sometimes my dignity doesn't stop me. Yesterday the dentist lectured me about flossing and I lost control of my strings and collapsed into a sad snotty heap on his chair while he looked on in panic. My favorite waiter remembered my name last night, and it took all of my self control not to jump up and hug him. My feelings swing wildly in many directions, and when I regain control of them I feel extra guilty for making people uncomfortable. I am held together by the thinnest of strings.

And frequently there is a monster that grabs my head and makes me watch a movie over and over in split screen of me leaving one party to go to another while at the same time across town he was killing himself. I've spent the last two nights on my couch because he was the last person to share my bed with me, and it feels made of coals. In the daytime and the bar and in the company of people I can understand logic, understand the futility of assigning or accepting blame, understand that he made a business decision and that it couldn't have been stopped. But the rest of the time the monster is holding logic by the throat in its other hand, and I am overcome with anger and guilt and flat black sucking grief. It feels like you can see the holes in me from space.