Knives and Gravity

by | Apr 5, 2011 | 2 comments

I eat sweet rice cake and drink barley tea.  They are comforting and these days I have a hard time finding any food that comforts me.

I stand on the line between self-pity and healthy grieving.  I do not want the former.  What keeps me from it is thinking of all of the suffering- “how many unique kinds of terrible pain can exist in the world,” a new friend writes me.

I delete everything I’ve just written because I’m too tired to really puzzle it out properly.

The horror is fresh for some reason lately.  That piercing horror of what has truly happened.  I almost marvel now at how long one can stay in a surreal world.  (Or is this the real one?)

I wish Audrey didn’t have to catch me crying so much lately.  Oh God, please don’t let her need too much therapy from me, I think.

I can’t understand that you were you- walking around, talking, laughing, fighting with me, and now this is all over for you- and us.  We are like little universes- our bodies, walking around with no visible life source.  No battery- we’re not plugged in.  So loose.  So fragile…so vulnerable.  Vulnerable to germs and viruses, knives and gravity, chemicals and fire, temperature and water.

It truly did not seem possible before this- though I thought I grasped it intellectually- and worried about it– that you could be here one day, talking to me on the telephone from Switzerland, and the next day- just leave your broken body behind to be shipped home in a box.  I think I always thought there’d be some sign, some warning.

I am tired.
I miss you greatly.

JAC

April 5, 2011

2 Comments

  1. Ann

    🙁 i stand with you julia. i'm sorry.

    Reply
  2. Anonymous

    I lived in the surreal (or real) world for 5 years and all of a sudden just woke up (or went back to sleep). Now I'm suffering a different kind of suffering. I guess my physical body just couldn't handle being in that world for so long and it's breaking down. So, if you do have any physical ailments, I really do hope you attend to them as early as possible, even if you don't feel like it. He still frequents me in my dreams; and that is the only time when I feel most real.

    Reply

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