Grief

I've written about grief before, when I talked about the death of my dog George, & I am still flabbergasted by how powerful grief is.  I know I wrote this already, but the night George died, I drank an extraordinary amount of whiskey - probably enough to put most anyone to blackout sleep - but my mind wouldn't let me get drunk.  It was so absorbed in the pain I was going through that it said "fuck you" to the alcohol in my head.  On Facebook, I wrote: "grief > alcohol," a mathematical equation I haven't tested since then.  Nor do I want to.

To a friend today I wrote this:

"I was walking the dogs yesterday & trying to understand why grief seemed to be the most powerful emotion I've ever felt.  I think it's because it's every emotion you feel for the thing you have lost - not just the love, but the dumb things, the frustration, the anger, the impatience, the worry - everything that goes into a living, breathing relationship with someone - & all the years are dropped on you all at once.  It's crippling.  You lose a little of yourself, & you know it."

It seems strange to me that we survive grief.  It must be that grief transforms us somehow.  Transforms us without making us colder.  If anything, it makes us more sensitive.  That seems counter-intuitive.

Despite the name of my radio show, I don't really read much self-help or even listen to those shows.  I've never seen an episode of "Dr. Phil," just clips on shows like "The Soup."  I am resisting reading what social scientists say about grief because at some level I don't think understanding it will help any.  Not when you're so deep in it.

Like every emotional battering, grief makes it hard to be logical.  But look at me, here, making a stab at it.