Grief & Grieving, whatcha got on that combo? Three in eleven? Gotcha covered my friend. Ain’t it a bitch when shit slides downhill on your life, again and again.
Sing it with me… It’s the most wonderful time of the year!!! Ok, now the commercialism bullshit can suck it and eff off. This is the worst time of the year for too many.
What the eff are you talking about, kastle? Aside from my obvious disdain for commercialism, my issue is with three events that I run through every year.
Well, it was only two until 2019. That shit fucking cluster fuck just added and made it the coup de grâce.
But, but… You might as well be saying “And then?“. Shibby! So effing funny, still makes me lol. “Chinese food mind games!” What an amazing movie.
Saw it twice in the theater way back, I still have the tix stubs, although one is pretty faded now. Funny movie, and to think back then, I was 100% sober. See kids?
Alright, grief & grieving. Three little things. Not piggies, little things. Not even These Three Things. What an amazing song.
For eff sake, I’m making excuses for dealing with mental pain and strife, deep-seated, long-lasting, and forever lingering in the back of my mind. That’s so kastle!
So, there are three things, and they aren’t so little. They should be enough of a kick in the balls to make me stop drinking, then start again but only Jäger.
- Christmas
- New Year’s
- Four January
It’s funny that the most painful of these things is the one I am most willing to type about, but not talk about in person. It makes me cry, no shit.
I have been grieving over those three things, events, in my life for years that it’s just there. It’s part of me, baggage, or some shit. And I cannot rectify them.
I don’t believe that I can. I can accept them, and swallow the heavy pill that they are. But that doesn’t resolve those issues. Solving issues with time or the dead doesn’t work.
I should know, I’ve been fighting that shit for 25+ years. Although, and I will be frank, each new fresh hell comes sooner and with more pain: much more grief and grieving.
It’s like I pulled the Grief Rune up in this effing place.
The silliest part of this post is I am not going to talk about two of these three things. You can figure out two of them with some searching. But…
Four January is real. Real real. It’s the kind of reality that you wake up in a sweat and not because you ate a 12-pack of tacos from some shit hole. Yeah, y’all know who you are.
Sorry, back on topic. The issue around grief and grieving relates to the essence of this topic, three little things.
And as I noted above, they are very distinct events that have happened in my life that have shaped me as a human.
The last Christmas that our family had was shortly before my father’s disability and from that point going forward, it wasn’t the same, mostly because I left New York afterward.
I’ve mourned Christmas since that time because of that fact. I do not celebrate Christmas because it was taken from me, and I’ve had no reason to revisit it honestly.
The second little thing is New Year’s Eve because I got married on New Year’s Eve Day, like a jackass. I own that because it’s my own god damn fault. Own your own shit.
When you make a clear and concise decision that is compelling and sound, and it doesn’t work out, then it’s nobody’s fault but your own, kind of.
Every year on New Year’s Eve Day, and subsequently New Year’s Eve itself, I grieve the fact that I made a decision that didn’t work out and cost me a shit ton of money but it’s my own goddamn fault.
In the third little piggy, well he was, kind of orange. He was a big kind orange and loved to sit on my lap. He was only 12 when I lost him to a cancerous tumor in his snout.
The sad thing was the bad feeling I had about the whole thing. When I was filling out the release forms that morning, for January, I commented to the tech that I had a bad feeling about it.
And throughout the day I was telling my sister that I had a really bad feeling about it. I then got a phone call from my vet, who personally called me, and said to come to the office.
That’s all he gave me, “come to the office”. And I said to him, “I’ve got a bad feeling about this!” and he just said you need to come to the office.
As I rushed to get dressed, I was texting back and forth with my sister and I reiterated to her that I had a bad feeling.
I knew something terrible had happened, and she also said don’t worry, it’ll be okay. And the rest is so traumatic to me that I’m not even going to finish.
My closest friends, the four of them, know what happened.
And the closest of them, Debo and Mrs. B, got more. In fact, Mrs. B called me while I was sitting there because she knew what I had written to her in a message was incredibly painful.
And being a great friend of 15 years, I answered the phone and we had a conversation. It was awful, not on her part, but for me and on my part.
That conversation could be the worst that I’ve ever had but from an emotionally destroyed point. And I love Mrs. B inside and out because of stuff like that for over 15 years.
I sent Debo a picture and for longer than you want to know that even when I close my eyes to concentrate on something it is all that I see. It’s a wide-awake nightmare.
That night helped shape me as a human with the incredible amount of pain it brought. I lost something that I had fought to have my entire life and as an adult for 20 years. Gone, in the blink of an eye.
Every year now, on 4 January, I pour out two shots of vodka. That was his drink of choice 😉 😉 (fucking emoji-less site) and I toast him at 5:36 PM, Phoenix time.
The first year I did my shot and I poured. one out for my homey. The second year, I took both shots. I don’t know what I will do this year but I know no matter what I do it’s going to hurt.
And those are three little things, three little things that make kastle, kastle. Through the pain of them all, I really have no idea how I’m still standing.
I owe it to my friends, I owe it to my family (ok, more good sister then not-as-good sister), and I owe it to the people I have established relationships with within the core of my life, to try to keep going.
And that was a problem in November 2020… But that’s a different story for another day because that would have been an extinction-level event. If ya dig.
Worrying about the past is like worrying about gravity, there’s not a lot you can do about it.
