Aspen

Grief has taken on many forms for me. I’ve felt like I’ve shape shifted for months. That I am one thing then another then another not knowing each day what shape I would be. Fighting some days to shift back to the day before shape while also wanting to be the next day shape. I have not been exhausted from grief itself but from the shape shifting it presented and I shifted through daily. The constant switch of emotions as if I was multiple people.

From grief I felt the strong desire for human touch. For interactions. To be felt not alone. I met a few people. I had to also un meet a few people. The grief made me feel desperate and that just any people will do. Like trying on sweaters. I felt I needed a sweater and I tried a few but then found that they pulled at my neck wrong or the sleeves weren’t long enough, the threading kind of itchy. Nothing is more bothersome than a poorly fit sweater, especially when it’s hot and no sweater was actually needed.

I am taken. I have been telling people this for years. As a way to make them go away. It’s am easy boundary. Just say I’m not available because my thoughts belong to someone else. Which was true except the someone else is not actually mine. No one is mine. I belong to me and they belong to them. I have used it as an easy out from avoiding the hard words of I belong to me. I am taken by me. No one wants to sound this ridiculous. Yet it’s the most not ridiculous thing to say. But my thoughts are still are for someone. He still doesn’t know. I won’t tell him from fear of him not wanting my thoughts to him and I won’t tell him from fear of him wanting them. A bothersome predicament for me since I do want a companion someday which means telling people things I’m afraid of telling them so I can hear back what I do and don’t want to hear so I can tell others the same and hear it back and then keep moving forward till someone says that’s what I wanted to hear. Then I will feel fear from this and have to face this fear next by hearing that’s what I want to hear and keep hearing it by actually listening and not really hearing so I can feel it. Just not during a signifiant time of loss.

That should be a grief rule. No big decisions while grieving. Such as falling in love. Or selling houses or buying cars, maybe no new puppy’s. Is it even a decision? Falling in love? Not the feeling but the process is. I feel love for someone yet I am not actively in love. I just feel love for him but I am not pursuing love for him. It is stuck love really. Which he also doesn’t know but maybe he does but I won’t ask or tell anyway. Love is as weird as grief. They may be the same sometimes or feed each other. I am grieving so much from no where to put all the love I have for my dad. Displaced love. But I am loving so much because I have displaced grief? I am grief loving? Not loving grief? And want to be loved because I am grieving and now I am confused by both. Like just now.

I do wander. He said I suffer from wander lust. Which I do? Or I can feel like I’m suffering if I don’t wander. If I am Unwandered I tend to feel restless. Like I am geographically displaced. Geographically, love and grief displaced? See how I could feel restless? Like the globe is spinning waiting for me to be dropped somewhere on it. That I am spinning independently from the planet. Just waiting. Which doesn’t sound like restless except I’m watching a spinning planet while also spinning in my mind of places I should be or rather be than sitting still spinning above a spinning planet while grieving and loving. Then I fall and land and find somewhere to be and make that the place I have to go and be so I’m not just spinning while standing still watching the world go by. Is that wander lust? I don’t have a strong desire to travel, I don’t like to drive and really even fly so actual travel presents a challenge unless I walk. I have to be driven and of course be flown since I don’t fly but I sort of want to learn to fly so I can be the one to fly me. I may love flying more if I am doing it? Otherwise I need to keep flying to see if I like it. I’ve not flown enough to sort this out yet. I have a strong desire to not be rooted in. A strong desire to not be stationary. Not tied down. Same thing?

I am not a very stationary person. I don’t really like the idea of planting seeds and roots in a spot and calling it my own spot. I had this once and then it all got uprooted and fell apart. I let it. Because I really didn’t belong there. I was spinning out of control in a place I couldn’t get away from from roots hindering me down. Then I got all tangled up on roots that I planted but never wanted to grow there. I have a large root system, that like an aspen tree. I am wide spread and vast. Across entire countries and land not owned by anyone. I can be burned to the ground destroyed from wind and storms and my network of roots are just below ground waiting to grow tall again across the planet. Very little can destroy me including myself. I’ve tried and others have tried. I just grew farther and stronger not deeper and more rooted but shallow rooted and flexible to move freely around. Less tangled. Free to spin when I’m restless waiting to be somewhere I can be not.

I am restless now. I felt my anxiety moving back in place after months of feeling a weird calm from the loss of my father. I break from myself to rest and grieve and not feel anxious for just a little while. My secret gift from my dad. I am him. He knows how restless and anxious I am because he was. He passed peacefully and I am certain finally felt relief not pain which for once in my life I felt peaceful and relief for him which gave me peaceful and relief from me and for me. Of course I am not saying I am relieved my father passed I am saying I felt his relief. All my life I have worried my dad was dead. Not home from work yet, dead. Not back from the store, also dead. I have no good reason to ever think this except I am wired to believe it. From the beginning of life I felt the safest I’ve ever felt likely in my moms tummy. Then out into a world of chaos while being full of chaos I was just born with. I was born anxious. Life makes me anxious and I get more anxious sometimes than others but I am always anxious even when I felt a little peace during grief as my mind doesn’t know what peaceful really is making me anxious even while at peace.

My dad suffered from wander lust. He woke us often and said let’s go and then we would go not knowing where we were going but we had to go. Just to go for a little bit. Then be right back after he found what he was looking for in himself and untangled so he could reroot his big vast root system that we share. He took us all over the country to see the country. He would have taken us all over the world but the world ran out for him. He called it stir crazy. He was stir crazy. I called it fun. Adventure. I couldn’t wait for a weekend just to see where we might go having my own stir crazy I needed to go to be gone to do so I could come back and be able to stay. And breath. Roots have to breath. Especially ones as big, shallow and vast as mine.

Man that was all over the place. I definitely have to write more often again so I can undo what I did these past few months. I have played with boundaries and rules and my comfort zone too much and now am uncomfortable and have new boundaries and some that won’t be followed still by others no matter what I say or do making me want to lose my mind. He is in my space and trying to make me think of him. If he only knew how big of a space I needed he would understand but I don’t even want him to know how big my space and roots are and to just get off of them so I can breath and keep growing bigger and stronger but he keeps trying to dig around in them and take them from me. I don’t have to explain myself to anyone. I’ve laid out where he can’t be and he keeps being in it making me feel stir crazy like my dad. Like I need to make my space so big he can’t find the edge. Land somewhere else. I have a desire to flee to avoid from a feeling so familiar I have to go. I am looking for someone to follow my new rules for me not bend them and break them. They are there from years of not being there and are new to me so new to everyone but to be followed until I bend and break them myself to allow room to grow big. Someone once tried to destroy me and I’ve spent years growing back to me and won’t be destroyed by someone again.