Grief has made it tough for me to properly listen. To listen to myself and to listen to anyone else. If you are speaking to me I can hear you, but I can’t absorb what has been said; it isn’t lasting. I think I may have lost some feeling. I desperately want to be part of what is happening, life is all the more attractive now I really understand how fleeting it can be- but I feel like I can’t be reached. I am trying.
I am usually the kind of person who luxuriates in the details of the lives of others. If you know me, I will probably be thinking about you often and wondering about you; rooting for you; wanting to make your life better in some way. All of this thinking fills me up- I am useful and I am loving. I am worth my place on the planet. Now, the way my thinking is inhibited feels very self centred. I remember being in my twenties and really having to make an effort to properly listen when in conversation, life was far more enriching that way. It helped me to see past the end of my own nose and not constantly be in a state of considering what folk thought of me- total life immersion.
I think the noise of my sorrow is just so loud and constant, even though it seems at the moment I am doing anything I can to avoid thinking deeply about it. It is like my brain had undertaken the task to seek out a vox pop from everything that makes me up. From film and tv, music and people. It is dissecting every relationship I have. It is unpicking the ones that didn’t work out. It is looking at my home and questioning the emotional value of everything in it. It is avoiding him whilst being surrounded; he is covered in balm, he is oil in the water.
I have been spending time with all of his belongings. His collections and his trinkets. Every love letter he ever received- every mixtape. I have stopped wondering about the back story of these girls; the Christmas card with just a name and a kiss scrawled inside. These were the things that made him real. I have stopped thinking about whether I was deluded in thinking that our marriage was as good as I believed it was- because I wasn’t. I wondered if trying to sully the past would alleviate some of the pain, dial it down a bit. Our dial did really go up to eleven- it was one louder.
There is correspondence I must reply to- to grab the arms of those who have reached out. When the awfulness happened I knew what to say, I could describe the feeling and my tone made it clear. People knew where they were with me. I am not here to unsettle. I can’t tell what I’m going to do next. I think wild things. I will write back, I just need to take it in first and to remember how to listen.