Good Grief.
They say that if you want to hear God laugh, you should tell him your plans. Down here on planet earth, disappointed expectations are far from funny. The word “grief” does not get applied often enough, considering how much time it spends in our knapsack of emotions. It seems like the only appropriate places to employ the word “grief” are in hospitals and funeral homes. The actual grieving, though, does not really start until after the black veils are returned to the top shelf of the closet and the casseroles stop showing up at the doorstep.
When my father passed away, there was more laughter than tears in the immediate aftermath. Friends, family, neighbors—we were all devastated, absolutely. There was just no way to talk about my father without laughing. Every story, every memory, every existential detail and fact about my father demanded an uncontrollable, guttural show of hysterics, and we let it loose because that’s what he would have wanted. A few weeks later, the laughter faded to bereavement for me, and I took a trip to Charleston to distract and reminisce concurrently.
Early one morning, I took a walk down the pier at Waterfront Park and I was greeted by a singular dolphin. The creature wasn’t playing or showing off, he was just dipping in and out of the current in circles, frequently exposing his slick back to prove his continued proximity. I had never seen a dolphin alone before, and I had never seen one move so intentionally and unhurriedly. I don’t generally believe in signs, but that felt like a sign. I knew that in death, like in life, if my father could be anywhere in the world, he’d be in Charleston Harbor and he’d be with me. After a self-deprecating giggle about how I thought that a sluggish dolphin might be my dead dad, my laughter evolved into procrastinated tears. I realized my relationship with my father would, from then on, only exist in signs, metaphors, and hypotheticals: what he would have said, would have done, would have thought about the things that I was saying, doing, and thinking. I had planned on having my father in my life for many more years, but God laughed. And maybe turned him into a decelerated dolphin.
I think that people are afraid to use the word “grief” as often as it occurs because it undermines the level of grief that we feel over the death of a loved one. In its definition, “grief” simply means “the sorrow one feels over a loss.” People lose a lot of shit—car keys, debit cards, track of time, bets, profits, reading glasses, remote controls, whatever falls between the car seats, things they “swear they just saw,” and their minds… My point is that grief occurs in degrees. The intensity and circumstance may vary, but the origin is the same. Something is lost.
But what if the thing that is lost is something that never “was” in the first place? What if the lost entity in question was merely a dream, or a plan, or an option? It’s one struggle to adjust your heart to fit a life where something no longer is, but its another strain to steer your heart away from something that never can be.
I consider myself to be pretty adaptable. When my lifelong plan to stay booze-numb to the world failed (epically), I made sustainable plans to deal with my issues properly. It was impressive how quickly I went from white-and-bloody-knuckling all day and imbibing all night, to regular, intense exercise, constant therapy, monitored medication, daily support groups, and precise decision making about everything else. With every success came a craving for more success. For the most part, I did succeed at the things I took-on: I lived on my own for the first time, I earned a 4.0 GPA, I fit back into my high school wardrobe, I improved my ability to translate Middle English, (I’m not bragging, I’m more surprised than you are,) and I did it all while staying sober.
Of course, some things on my to-do list did not get accomplished as planned. Instead of finally rereading Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu in the original French, I watched an ass-load of true crime documentaries on YouTube. Instead of memorizing every soliloquy Shakespeare wrote for a female character, I memorized the microwave cook time for two Hot Pockets and, also, for one individual Hot Pocket.
Did I achieve everything I intended to? No. And that’s ok. The point of the therapy, and the exercise, and the support groups is to learn how to take care of yourself in the ways that keep you stable. The times in between bouts of success were times I spent balled-up in bed, sobbing, and licking my wounds. And that’s ok too. Grief is more of a verb than a noun, and I had to let go of the minor plans that got away from me so that I could productively mourn the major plans that had been erased from my list.
Addicts have a unique relationship with grief because our grief almost always involves our personal choices. How did we become addicts? Because we used drugs and alcohol to avoid grieving. What do we grieve because of our addiction? Everything—because that’s what our addiction cost us. What do I mean by “everything?” Addicts grieve what they had before addiction, because it’s gone, and addicts grieve what they cannot have in the future because of how they spent their past. So… yeah. That’s everything.
An important lesson is learned, however. Some losses are just losses. Whether you believe in God, Cher, Bill Belichick, Lizard Jesus… whoever’s office you think this bar-globe is displayed in—he giveth, and he taketh away. Any loss auxiliary to natural mortality, however, is a direct result of our choices. Not just our big choices, but our miniscule “every minute, every day” choices. Cause, you know, us addicts, we thought we had all the time in the world to keep making poor choices as long as there was money to pilfer and our livers held out. Then one day we looked around and realized we were all alone in a room that was dusty from a combination of idleness and neglect, ashes from the bridges we’d burned, and loose baby powder from cutting cocaine. Its not a fog you ever want to find yourself in and its damn hard to navigate your way out if you do.
If you make the right choices, you grieve a lot less. Don’t get me wrong, I’m always going to be grieving the things that poor choices— made in my addiction— have cost me: years of my life, people I loved completely and never meant to hurt, a marriage I wanted to keep, the option of having my own family, the comfort of stability, and, of course, concrete plans. But, you know, when I had those things, I did not have choices. Picking up a bottle and putting it to my mouth was a choice, yes. It was a choice every time I did it, and I did it a lot. Being numb, being disconnected, being untethered to reality… that was an austere, non-negotiable need. Alcohol was just the facilitator.
A “need” like the one I had to drink myself away from, well, myself… is not a need that manifests out of nowhere. It’s a result of compounded poor choices—which is why I don’t make poor choices anymore. Ok, ok, that was a too-broad statement. A poor choice still slips by every once in a while— every few months I decide to trust my strapless bra, despite the fact that it has only ever failed me. Also, I ate chocolate covered marshmallow eggs for dinner every night in March. It’s major poor choices that I avoid now, and that makes all the difference.
The other day I was driving my sister’s SUV so that I could pick-up my nephew, Steele, from daycare. I stopped by the grocery store to grab some stuff to make dinner, and I realized that I had forgotten to bring a mask. I tore through her glove compartment and dug around in the toy covered back floorboard, sure that somewhere in that behemoth was a mask I could borrow. When I opened the center console, I found a mini bottle of Patron (my sister is not an alcoholic, so she’s entitled to emergency tequila.) Seeing it and realizing what it was startled me, like trimming the hedges and finding a Copperhead. It wasn’t fear or temptation that I felt in the proceeding moment, though. I was overcome with gratitude and joy. I looked away from the car tequila and back to the empty car seat behind me, and I praised Lizard Jesus for letting me be exactly where I am today.
Where I am, there is grief. There is regret. There is hurt piled so high that when I stand on the peak, I can look down and see the rooftop of the Burj, Dubai.
Where I am, there is love. There is honesty. There is thankfulness pouring out to everyone who has stood by me and stretching all the way out to the unknown entities of the universe who must’ve had some hand in helping me—cause, let’s face it, fixing me was a bigger project than constructing the Burj, Dubai.
I don’t know if any of you have noticed, but I’m not perfect. However, my choices are my choices, and they come from a place of responsibility and positive desire. Not from the stagnant trenches of liquor and panic, like they used to. I make my decisions the way Steele harvests a strawberry patch. Some fruit goes in the basket for later, but some looks so delicious that we bite into it right off the vine; dirt, pesticides, inch worms, and all (RIP Judy Inch). We’re indulging in pleasurable moments as they happen and investing in the ones that are guaranteed, but yet to come.
No, I’m not where I planned on being in my life right now, and because of that, there are some things that cannot be. I did everything I could to get back on the track I had hoped to travel ‘til death, but that was somebody else’s choice to make. I hate it, but I trust it and I respect it. More importantly, I’ve finally learned to trust and respect my own choices. I don’t know how much this means coming from me, but you can trust that wherever I am, at any given time, is where I genuinely want to be. I make the good choices because I want to be at the playground, I want to be at the softball game, I want to be at the wedding, and I want to be there for others when they have their own tough choices to make.
In the midst of all this chosen happiness, there will be loss and there will be grieving, that’s an inevitability of life. The least I can do is guarantee to others that they will never again have to grieve me while I am still alive. I can also guarantee to myself that any grief that I am forced to feel going forward will not be because I made bad choices. It will be because Cher giveth, and Cher taketh away.
