For an hour tonight I felt sorry for myself.

I know that sounds stupid, and my writing probably makes it sound like I feel sorry for myself all the time, but the truth is, I don’t. When I click around on blogs, and Facebook, and twitter, I am reminded over and over that bad stuff happens to people every day, and no one is exempt. Sometimes that’s a comfort, knowing it’s random, and that these other people keep soldiering on. But other times it’s so isolating, because sometimes I don’t want to soldier on. I want to have a long screamy cry where I reassure myself that it’s okay to feel sorry for myself because my pain is the worst thing that’s ever happened to anyone in the history of bad things. See, it’s very ridiculous and self-indulgent and not at all strong or inspirational. It’s Grief, in all its disgusting glory. Go away, Grief. I’m so tired of you.

I didn’t set out tonight to have a pity party. I was looking for an old picture to use for something, and I started searching the blog to find it. Other pictures and titles caught my eye, and the next thing I knew I’d spent an hour in the past, reading and crying and keening. Most times, reading my posts from my darker days makes me feel better in that I see how far I’ve come. Tonight they just made me sad. A few months ago I finally uploaded all my old blog posts, and then promptly forgot about them. It was jarring to stumble upon a post I’d written back in 2003; I was living at the beach with Jackie! and Bella, three more best friends living next door, and dating Mike. We were all so happy and innocent, having dance parties and water balloon fights. I never found the picture I was looking for.

God, I’m sorry you guys, I swore I was not going to be cryptic anymore, it’s so annoying and I hate it. But I do my writing at night, after Annabel is in bed, and night-time is when my surroundings are silent and my memories are loud.  I’m not always going to be so vague, and many of you in the comments of my previous posts have figured out what is going on. There are just things I can’t say aloud…things I can’t write. I literally cannot write the words explaining exactly what is going on, because I don’t want to read them. I don’t want them to be true. My fingers cannot, will not, write them.

I can’t have pity parties because they are so hard to come out of. I don’t feel better after. I feel guilt and shame but mostly I feel an overwhelming desire to fall back into wallowing self-pity, the way an addict fiends for another hit. It’s self-destructive and frankly if I’m going to do something bad to myself, eating a gallon of ice cream is a lot tastier and includes delicious toppings.