Hello,
…again. It’s me, Brooke, I’ve been gone for awhile now. And I’m about to tell you why.
About 4.5 years ago, one of my best friends died. She died at the peak of her life. Newly married, just moved to Paris, ready to learn more French and take on the world. She went on holiday, and in some freak accident of nature, she got pulled out to sea, bashed her head on a rock, drowned, and died. All in a moment. Just like that. Gone.
Everyone else I know seemed to get over it. I would say they did so in a reasonable amount of time. They grieved, processed, and, well… eventually moved on. But, for some reason, I have been incapable of doing that.
I tried to write on my blog here, I really did.
But everything came out negative, hateful, or “fake-feeling”. Trying to put a positive spin on life felt trite, juvenile, and untrue. I wanted to scream everywhere I went, “WHY DO WE DIE? WHAT IS THE POINT?!!”
I became numb. The usual stuff that inspired me that I wanted to share stopped working. It lost it’s taste. Regular positive stuff was too bland. I wanted more flavor, but was incapable of finding any taste.
Then, as if there was a succession of death planned, people I loved started dropping like flies. I will not be a martyr and make a list but let’s just say that in a rather short period of my life I lost a major part of my small but extremely important people circle. And, with every period of new grief, I felt a little less like writing. Maybe ever again.
I have some things that I have written, but they were dark dark dark.
My sister recently asked me why I think I was so affected by her death. I think it was because she represented the better parts of life. She was able to create fun and fantastic and add glitter and bubbles to everything to make life better. We need these people in our lives because without them, the colors of life all run dry. Even just knowing that she is no longer here brings a knot to my throat, a spasm to my stomach and tears to my eyes.
So maybe I’ll never get over it.
Maybe that’s not the point. Maybe we should never get over the ones that we have lost.
Maybe we never move on and just get a little more real and more broken every time we lose someone we are close to (and that we let get close to us). Maybe there is no right way to bundle up death and put a happy face sticker on it. It just hurts. And for a real fucking long time. It just breaks us, inside, deep where nobody else can see. A crack, with hot molten lava burning in our gut. Every. Single. Time.
I can try.
All that I can do now is try. I can try to get up every day and do something. I can try to write. I can try to find something to say through the pain. I can try to find something nice, or something funny, and put it here for you. In case you have the pain. In case you have lost something too.
