Of loss and orphans and measuring sticks

♫ Then I heard you scream from the other side of the mountain / You saw a me I didn’t want to see… -Tori Amos, “Star Whisperer”

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“There is too much loss.”

I hear myself saying this, a lot lately. More and more.

They affect me more than they used to, the losses; big ones and small ones. Emotions are inflated, perhaps even unintentionally exaggerated.

At the office, I weep when coworkers leave on sabbaticals. I tear up when summer interns go back to school. Really?!

Aaron Sorkin storylines move me to the point of watching with a paper towel wadded up in my hand, at the ready.

Little boxes demanding the name and telephone number of my Emergency Contact sit blank with blinking cursors in them.

They’re staring back at me.

“Orphan,” my brain says.

Well-intentioned catsitters trying to gauge future business ask what I usually do for the holidays, do I go out of town?

“Mrrrm,” I hear myself say. I understand her question, but I don’t have an answer.

She’s staring back at me.

“Orphan,” my brain says.

It’s not a call for pity, it’s simply a new reality, one I am still trying on and figuring out. I imagine it will take a little while, or maybe a big while, who knows.

When was the last time you had no one to answer to?

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A friend and coworker lost her mother today. Cancer. (N.B.: Fuck you, cancer, you destructive piece of shit assassin.) She called me at the office, almost immediately after it happened. I heard that lost-ness in her voice, that tone from a new reality, the bubble of disbelief. I heard my own voice, calm and even, low and quiet, controlled, extending my sympathies but knowing full well they meant very little, grasping for something meaningful to say. It hit me hard, her mother’s death, like I was taking it personally somehow. Lee says it’s because I have a new measuring stick for grief, one I’ve never had before, and that sounds pretty accurate to me.

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But we shake ourselves off, don’t we? Get out of the bed, because the alternative is to stay in it and feel like we’re going to crawl right out of our fucking skin. Put our feet on the floor, one at a time; take steps across the bedroom, across the apartment, across the city, across the world. See things in a new way. Talk to a stranger, and share a laugh, even when we feel guilty for the chuckle we let out or the smile that crosses our lips.

Look at something beautiful. Look at ten beautiful things.

Get up tomorrow and do it all again.

Heal. Heal. Heal.

Flood the brain with new memories.

Let’s go.