When I started this website, I never anticipated wanting to talk about death or loss as part of it. I know in previous posts I’ve referenced how your circle of friends and supporters might change as you start to change your lifestyle, and I think that’s applicable to the topic of death and loss too, because for each person that exits your life - they leave a hole.
I spent my life believing death is around the corner.
Some of my very first memories are of my father’s parents’ funerals. Or maybe it’s because they’ve been talked about. Either way, I find at times I can linger or back track through every death of a friend or a relative I've lost...
I’ve always been acutely aware that there is another side to this veil. Some darkness lurking around the corner and an end to this life.
At times I’ve been in such despair I’ve questioned my own right to live. Another story entirely and not a place I'm at now.
I have already outlived family, friends, a parent and a sibling. In my short 30 years I can almost feel the next loss coming based on the lapsed time from the last, and I can count into the 50s how many funerals I’ve been to. It’s as though quarterly, or maybe even monthly, someone exits my life by theirs ending. If not death, then a change in life circumstances has one party peacing. Every loss or death breaks a fragment of my being. I have to fight the belief that I am totally alone because everyone will always leave me in this life.
Perhaps our social media explosion has allowed me to know to a further extent what happens with those you even loose daily touch with. I see old high the loss of acquaintances and people I used to know but still hold fond memories. These losses are still a reminder of the end game and mystery of what comes next.
I love so deeply when I love. When you make your way into my heart, you become carved into my rib cage. Then for whatever reason, I feel every bit of hope and despair all at once. I think it’s because I feel the weight of all your tragedies too. Too many lives matter too much to me, and too many of those same lives have been lost. At the same time I worked hard to love far and wide but never too closely for a long time because the closer I am, the more it hurts to lose you.
Don’t even get me started on the need to kill off parts of yourself to become who you really want to be. That one’s still fresh - as I feel as though I’ve recently cut ties with every cliche thing about myself I used to love. I've lost touch with those I know longer share similar interests with also. Maybe that’s what happens when you truly transition into adulthood. That doesn't mean I didn't love those parts of myself or those people.
Rebecca Soulnet basically says you’re a kid in your 20’s because all of your history and experiences are from growing up, but by about 30 childlike things have become distant as life can harden you in your 20s. The realism of things sets in as you grow and the curiosity and wonderlike stages of development fade.
I think I missed that stage of growing up or did it backwards because growing up for me happened fast. I felt and saw things as a child that I drank to numb as an adult. I have always felt heavy and weighed down by life’s deadline. I definitely attempted to numb it in my college youth. I realized it all the more existentially when I sobered up and grew up around 24-26.
I carry with me the memory of each loss. Each death. Each part of myself I said goodbye too. As a writer I carried a false belief - that I had to keep in my back pocket all my sadness. That great writing was born from great sorrow.
I see now that state of mind means I’ve lost most of my hope. I’d like to continue to change that. My ability to see glimmers and rays of gold in a mostly gray landscape is a thing I love about myself now. I believe I can seek contentment, or better yet happiness in enjoying however long my human experience is. Learning to grieve loss when it happens but be at peace with the inevitable.
There is so much beauty in writing about what’s beautiful.
I’ll meet death when I meet him. I’d like to not obsess. That doesn’t mean that I won’t still feel the anguish of longing. I’ll still wish for any of those that have left this earth before me to be back here on this planet alive and well today. Because I still, and I will always, miss them. Some things are just too heavy to ever set down. I will find lighter things to carry with me though, to balance the load. Sunshine, feels like it’s making me stronger already.
Apples, spread love now. Let’s not hold ourselves back. Speak our truth and do it often.
K Sullivan
