On Oct. 5, 2017, I woke to find my wife dead.
On Oct. 27, 2017, my father called to tell me his wife had just died.
Just minutes short of Father's Day, 2018, the assisted living facility we had put my father in called to let us know he was gone.
Three people who had been at my birthday shindig in 2017 couldn't make it for 2018.
In my misspent, checkered youth, I'd wasted no little time, money, and energy thinking I'd wanted to be a counselor. Despite it not being the specialization I'd chosen for myself, I did have to sit through... I don't even remember how many seminars on grief counseling. Both during my time as a quasi-professional student and then as a professional career type when I decided I really should see what I could do about paying all these student loans back.
And, I thought... I really did think... I knew everything there was to know about grief, dealing with grief, helping others to deal with grief. After all, I had studied it intensely. Had even experienced it myself with the loss of very many people variously dear to me over the years, including my mother, prior to what would come to be marked down as "The Year of Hell."
Boy, was I ever fucking wrong.
Grief, it seemed, was not merely additive. It was exponentially cumulative.
Dealing with one loss with a stretch of time before the next was... well, it was a big deal. But, it was infinitely doable. Having another piled on before the last was fully grokked... I categorically refuse to watch any movie with the characters stranded in the middle of the ocean with no land, no hope of salvation, anywhere in sight. Because I know, all too well, just what the fuck that feels like. To peer around, looking for a shore, some sense of safety, to attempt to make for... only to see another giant swell coming at your bobbing head to sweep you under.
Oh, but wait. It just got better.
There was a person. No. A Person.
At the risk of stepping on anyone's personal belief system, I do happen to believe in Soul Mates. However, not exactly as Plato described. No. What he described is a Flame Twin. Which, I wasn't quite certain that I believed in. Until I met her.
My wife was my Soul Mate. I didn't just believe it. I knew it. There was a balls to bone resonance from the moment we first met that whispered, "this one is important."
We both fought it at first. After all, I was engaged to be married to another woman. One that I did not love. Not as I should have to be considering such a commitment. But, I was tired of being alone. And it was the next logical step now that I was a college graduate and career personage along the path to the white picket fence, 2.5 kids, and a dog.
And she was married to another man. One that she did not love, but she had been afraid of being alone and so had settled for the best she had thought she could hope for. Had raised the two kids, along with several dogs. But, the white paint was chipped and faded on the fence missing more pickets than it yet held.
I fought harder than she did. I left her. Some might say I abandoned her. I say I left because I loved her and thought I was doing the best I could for her to leave her to the husband she had chosen almost two decades earlier and the two children that were almost, but not quite, grown.
The silly wench packed her bags and chased after me. ***sigh*** Try to do something right for some people...
I can't regret that she did. Not even after living through the pain twenty-five years later of holding her still, cold, empty chrysalis in my arms as I screamed my rage and pain at the walls, at the Heavens, at her...
At the time, I told myself, quite firmly, that she had been my Soul Mate. That I wouldn't have another. I couldn't. Those came one per customer. That the best I could hope for might be a companion. But, even there... I knew the pain of holding the body of someone I loved after their soul had transitioned. Could I go through that again? Or, much more likely, could I be selfish enough to ask someone I cared about to go through that with me? If I really cared about them, how could I ask that? And if I didn't care that they suffered, if they didn't care enough to suffer as I had, then what was the point?
I settled in to wait out my own days condemned to this miserable ball of rock floating through lonely empty space. Not just believing, but knowing, that love was only ever to be a memory, a memory of the woman I nicknamed Love, for me.
Then, I met her. Or, rather, she showed up and wouldn't take the fucking hint and go away again.
And, ow. Fuck.
If meeting Love was a balls to bone whispering resonance, then meeting Little One was a soul-searing scream.
And it just did not make any fucking sense. Not one single bit. After all, I'd had my soulmate. I'd had my shot at happiness. So, who the fuck was this bitch that seemed to be edging her out as she nestled in to make herself comfortable amongst the shards of my shattered heart?
That was the point that I came to understand... to believe... in the concept of Flame Twin, what Plato was actually talking about. And came to a better understanding of Soul Mates. Plural.
I came to realize... to believe... that we each have many potential Soul Mates. Some we never meet. Some we pass by, unaware of each other beyond a snag of our attention that we don't take the time to fully investigate. Some we feel the pull of completely, but set aside for a variety of reasons. Perhaps because we don't believe. Perhaps because we are afraid. Perhaps because we are pledged to another and, unlike some (many, it sometimes seems), actually intend to keep the promises that we make rather than let them dribble from our fingers, an empty waste intended only to garner what we want before ignoring them when they become inconvenient.
But, the important point was that there is actually not just one soulmate to a customer, but many potentials, if we are only open to the possibilities presented by accepting the person before us as they are.
Flame Twins, now... Those are, whether fortunately or unfortunately, only one per customer. Fortunately, because Holy fuckin' Hell, the shitstorm, when you do find them, only to find they are still wearin' their runnin' shoes, or when you have to deal with the fact that Flame Twins are typically NOT going to be good romantic partners for each other very often only after becoming romantically invested, is a raging bonfire of soul-scorching pain. Unfortunately, because if there were more than one, as there are with potential Soul Mates, then... Well, what's the point in dwelling on that since there aren't. And, shit. If there were more than one, that could also mean more than just the one shitstorm. Never mind. I retract the "unfortunately" upon more mature reflection.
Through a concatenation of factors that are largely irrelevant to the point and purpose of this piece (as much as I ever have one), I turned elsewhere to meet the reawakened needs that this Person, my Flame Twin, seemed to be either incapable or unwilling to as she dabbled with people (and People) that may or may not have been her Soul Mates.
I found someone who whispered a resonance with my body. Someone I could use, but more often be used by, to sate the purely physiological needs. It was rather empty as there were no brains or hearts involved, but pure gonadal satiation.
I met another who strummed my heart. She had the potential to be more. She had the potential to be another Soul Mate. She felt it, even as I did, and both of us fought against it, for our own reasons. Yet, we were caught up in the swirl of the madness.
Yet another managed to captivate my mind, though my heart was safe due to not only my guarding it, but her refusal to give me enough of herself to wend her way between the shards to join the other two who had managed to find their way there.
And all the while the flickering flame of my soul's twin danced just close enough to almost touch before leaping further away once more.
Shit happened (as it has a tendency to do) and I lost, was abandoned by, all four.
Now, the curious thing... I was hit just as hard with the loss of each as if I were holding their empty shell in my arms and howling at the roof and the Heavens beyond.
And in a very real sense, I was.
I was mourning the person that they were to me. While they yet still walk this plane of existence, the person they were to me no longer exists. Not in my world.
I was mourning the passing of the person I was to them. While I yet still shamble around, tending to the four-footed roommates that often seem bent on disproving my belief in my Dominance in between tip-tapping on the keyboard as if I had something to say that might be relevant to anyone other than my own scattered mind, the person that I was to them doesn't yet live in this beating heart, in this mind. And won't again. Even if I were to meet someone else, were to become something to someone more than words in a blog, it wouldn't be the same person I was to each of them, any more than I was the same person to each of them, or to Love.
I was mourning the passing of the couple we were together, of us as an existent force that had the potential to shape the world, whether large or small. Although we both still exist, we are no longer "we." And whether the changes we might have affected would have shaped a larger world than just our own, "we" will no longer.
Now, some would say that I tried to move on too quickly. That I had not sufficiently dealt with my grief from losing so many people that meant so much to me just bam-bam-bam, each before I had time to do more than lick my wounds from the previous blow dealt. They would argue that I had turned my attention from my grief, had hidden from it, and allowed the wounds to not only remain unhealed but to fester.
Others would question the efficacy of the attachment I felt to the four as they were Long Distance Relationships whom I'd never met face to face, never touched, never breathed the same air. How I could possibly compare the grief I felt at each successive blow to the grief I had felt when holding Love, the woman I had married, the woman who had worn my collar, who's skin I had touched (and much, much more) many, many times over two and a half decades.
I don't know how to answer those questions. Questions that I have asked myself repeatedly over the last four weeks. Perhaps "they" are right. Perhaps "they" are wrong.
Perhaps "I love you" is just another way of saying "you are my bottle of booze and I'm an alcoholic."
What I do know, what I had to come to understand and fully internalize is that the way I feel is just that; the way I feel. Right or wrong don't enter into it. What someone else may, or may not, feel or think of how I feel doesn't enter into it.
And the grief was real for me. Continues to be.
And no one else, no matter how well-meaning, can change that.
Some might say that I was unfair to the four because I couldn't really give any my full attention. Some might say that I was unfair to the latter three as I maintained Little One, my Twin Flame, as my priority... when she could deign to set aside her other people (and People) to grace me with her presence. Perhaps they are correct, despite my insistence to the latter three that the only way they could play in her sandbox was to acknowledge and accept that it was her sandbox. While she didn't care to know, and so I didn't waste her "precious" time and energy with the burden of knowing that she neither required nor wanted, the others all knew that someone else existed. Even if only one amongst them, the one who was/is/could have been a potential SoulMate, knew just how many.
The conclusion I have come to is that it was unfair, to not only them but myself, because there might just have been a point that the burden of my grief was already crushing me down from the height I might have reached with any, either singly or as things occurred.
But, however it all came tumbling down, I grieved. I grieve still. For Love lost. For Flame, still flickering and twinkling in the distance. For CockSlut who gave freely of her body even as she took as much as I would allow from mine. For Heart who still tests the sounds of my strings from time to time to check my tune. For Mind who found my garden too confining. For Father who isn't around to whack the back of my head with his college class ring. And for his wife with her constant badgering and harassment to forget a lifetime of conditioning to NOT bother my father and call him more often...
And each, whether they still breath or not, has required of me the same stages of growth.
Shock.
Denial.
Anger.
Bargaining.
Depression.
Testing.
Acceptance.
Oh, yes. In addition to quite a bit of time (and money... and energy) studying this shit, I've been fair innundated with books and pamphlets (not to mention sign up sheets for group therapy sessions for $$$) to deal with the grief from each of the three deaths.
But, I can be a tad bit slow... or at least fragmented and tangential. And it was only today as I idly thumbed through yet another book as I waited for the bitch who seems bent on disproving whether I'm the Dominant or whether she is my Mistress to finish finding the perfect blade of grass to shit on (despite my urging her to hurry the fuck up, shitting on command seems to be beyond our reach after eight years), did it dawn on me that I was having to go through the exact same shit for the people who were still alive but done with me as I was for the people who had died.
And proceeded to bang my head against the top of the dishwasher in lieu of a desk.
I don't know. I don't have any idea if anybody else on the face of this miserable ball of rock spinning through space has ever felt the dissolution of a relationship as if it were a death. I don't know if I would have made the connection except that I was sitting there idly thumbing through "Journeying Through Grief Book Three; Finding Hope and Healing" as Daisy checked out the current issue of "Doggie World" thinking not of Love, Dad, or Ruth, but of the precious flowers that had left my garden barren and weed-choked when they uprooted themselves.
And I don't know but what the people who might say that I tried to move on too fast wouldn't be right. That I am, in effect, grieving those four not only for themselves and what we were as a ghost, a spectral shadow of Love.
But, whether they are right or wrong, I do know a bit more on the subject than the average schlub. And from several different disciplines and philosophies. Perhaps even enough to maybe wreak a little order on the chaos now that the random number generator I got issued instead of a brain is a bit clearer.
First and foremost, I need time. Time to set my own house in order before I invite anyone else inside for so much as tea and biscuits. Or maybe chips and dips. Much less chains and whips. Time to tend my garden, to pluck the weeds and overgrowth. Time to till and prepare the soil that is me.
Getting back to basics, one particular discipline that I was a one time student of held that the head should rule the heart and together guide the body.
I only sipped the kool-aid, however. But, didn't inhale.
Why in the hell should the monkey-brain swinging from the cage bars of neurosis, fears, anxieties, and "thou shoulds't not" get all the say?
Not that listening to the hedonistic body with it's "if it feels good, let's do some more of that shit" is much better.
The heart... ***sigh*** The heart wants what the heart wants. And sometimes what the heart wants isn't going to be any better for us in the long run.
So, no. I came to the conclusion long ago that each has its part to play. The ability to fight lies in the body. The will to fight, in the heart. The knowledge of when, where, and how best to is (or should be) in the head. The trained head. Trained to ignore the Monkey Brain that says we can't do it, okay we can do it, but we can't do it right, okay we can do it right, but we can't do it good enough.
But, as Tina might ask... What's love got to do with it?
Sing it, Anna Mae!
Well, that answer came from a musician who stopped by to check the tune of my heartstrings.
I had made a mistake... No. I had made The Mistake when I tried to quench, quell, ignore, or otherwise deny love. The love that I felt, the love that I still feel, is real.
I admit that several times in the last year, five months, and twenty-two days if I'd had it within my purview to raise the dead, I would have chosen Alfred Lord Tennyson purely for the pleasure of kicking him in the nuts.
Hey, Alfred! Why don't you peel apart my ass cheeks and lick the gooey chocolatey center? "...better to have loved and lost..." Fuck you and the printing press that churned out your drivel! Try it, motherfucker! Talk to me from the center of a scorched plain where you are the only fucking survivor!
***cough***
Um... yeah. So, those stages of grief? I have found that they aren't necessarily in any order and just because I've managed to wend my way down to bargaining, testing, or depression doesn't mean I can't get whipsawed back to anger in a heartbeat if triggered.
**blush**
But, what I was saying before MonkeyBrain slipped out of its cage and ran amok was that I had made a mistake in trying to deal with my pain and grief when I tried to attack it by choosing to see love as a weed that had to be uprooted from my garden.
The love Love taught me to experience, to really feel for the first time was real. Still is. Is still present. It isn't a weed to be plucked from my garden. Nor is it in any way spectral, despite her transition from this existence to her next reality.
I can grieve her. But, it would be a mistake to grieve that love since it is still very real, still very here. It is part of me. It was essential to me becoming who I am. While I might still exist as some me, I wouldn't be me sitting here if not for that love.
The love I felt for Little One, that I still feel, is real as well, even if I sometimes question if she was. I can grieve the loss of her, the loss of the me I was with her, for her but it would be a mistake to deny the love, to try to uproot it as if it were an unsightly weed. Even if it was... is... only a form of addiction, still I wouldn't be the me I've grown into without it.
I sit and look across my garden, at the delicate flowers that yet remain amongst the bramble and weeds... the flame rose, the lily, the tulip, the daisy, the... okay, so the pitcher plant looks a little more obscene, but no less beautiful for that, and belongs no less.
I yet have work to do before planting season. But, I know... I understand... I grok that the flowers that remain, even though they are no longer the people they symbolized, belong there.
And perhaps... just perhaps... once I have done the necessary work, once I have pulled all the weeds and mended and tended the soil, made it fertile once more...
But, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. Or, at least, of myself.
Any road, that's what is on my mind tonight as I sip my Carlo Rossi Sangria and puff my way through packs of Djarum Blacks.
***shrug***
Not sure there was any point in publishing a weed-choked garden of such mixed metaphors.
Only, maybe... just maybe... somewhere on the other side of The Cage there is someone who is, even now, wrestling with just how they let go of their love, or maybe their addiction, to some Demoted Dom or sacked submissive. And maybe, just maybe, something in my bramble-filled ramble might give them an inspiration, or at least a glimmer of an idea, to tend their own garden.
Or maybe I'm just full of shit.
Then again, shit does make excellent fertilizer...
