F*ing Grief
/
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
I haven’t showered in weeks. Don’t get judgey, I’ve washed the bits; I don’t smell like a dumpster I just feel like one.
As someone that has never really gone long without some kind of depressing thing happening in their life I’ve spent a lot of time thinking back, like puddle jumping back in time trying to find the first time.
I think of Jennifer, she was a childhood friend, her baby sister had a hole in her heart and we played detectives with the twins from a block down. She was the first person I knew that died. Jennifer was always the adventurous type, she was the girl that made the boys run off not because we had cooties but because they were scared of her. She was fearless. She died in a car accident. Her dad let her drive their van while sitting in his lap, her foot got stuck on the gas; they hit a tree, she went through the window and he ended paralyzed from the waist down.
When my mother told me about her dying, I just thought that death was a “see ya later” kind of thing… like when she would go off to summer camp. She never came back and I kept her obituary in a diary for years.
SO many other things happened after she died and for the longest time I thought I might have been cursed. It started with busting my lip on the driveway after getting my shoelace stuck in the peddles of my banana seat bicycle I was learning to ride, continued with being raped by my babysitter’s son and continuing with the twins turning violent enough that I carried around a rusty blade I found in my backyard.
That was all before 1st grade.
We moved and with a new school came new friends but I still remember feeling sad. I think even then I was depressed but no one thinks that an elementary school kid can be depressed. They are just kids, what do they have to be depressed about?
The summer before I started high school my brothers best friend died in a house fire set by his sister.
Brandon was 10 years old and had two sisters, lived with his great grandmother and aunt who had custody because the oldest and middle children showed up to the hospital multiple times with broken fingers and other injuries.
I think a lot of people feel like they should have seen it coming. Jessica, the middle child, had just gotten back from a 72 hour psych hold because she had cut the inside of her leg from knee to pelvic bone with a pair of sewing scissors. But hey…what do kids have to be sad about?
It was the screams that woke me up, when I looked out my bedroom window I could see the house on fire, flames licking the window frames and then the sirens and lights but I could still hear Joyce screaming.
Brandon was dead before the fire department arrived and for a week after the fire his mattress stood like a burned out monolith in the front yard.
That night I crawled into bed with my mother and I begged her to stay awake with me because I knew we wouldn’t wake up the next morning.
We went to Brandon’s funeral and all I remember is my brother putting Pokemon cards on his casket and Jessica’s smile.
High School was a fucking nightmare, I had identity issues both physically and emotionally. I bound my chest, I wore my younger brothers hand me downs and even tho my hair was super long I never wore it down.
I fell in love with a girl and although my mom was pretty supportive of my feelings I didn’t talk to her about them, I didn’t really talk to her about anything because she had so much going on herself that I just didn’t want to add to it…. but when you are so confused, so sad and so hormonal all you do it ADD to IT.
I graduated high school but I spent most of my senior year couch surfing, mostly sleeping on the golden brown couch on the second level of the coffee shop I worked at after school. I did lots of stupid things during this time period, including but not limited to a LOT of drugs and then I went off to college.
Time has a funny way of mashing itself together when you’re trying to numb the pain of its passing and I thought I might have reached a new beginning when I was finally able move into my dorm at UNT.
I had my own room, my classes were amazing…except for math, my professors seemed to enjoy my company and helped when they could when it came to getting books for class. I had friends that I went dancing with, classmates that worked with me…. and I finally felt like I could be some small part of the real me.
When I got the call I was on the sidewalk out front of my favorite coffee shop joking with my friend Cassie about some silly life event.
“Mackenzie? Chez is dead. She jumped off a building.”
I know I screamed, but all I really remember was the seam in the sidewalk and that my tears were making puddles in the cracks.
“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”
With Chez dead it was hard not feeling like things were yet again crashing down. I wasn’t allowed to visit her grave so I buried a Queen of Hearts playing card where she landed. Morbid, yes. I lost my mind in the time that followed… and in response, on my 18th birthday, I hopped on a bus and headed east.
