The Way This Feels

Chapter 9: Incense

When someone dies, the grief is all consuming. It is weighty, like trying to carry around a sack of flour inside your chest. But it is thick, and sticky, yet somehow intangible. It feels as if it will never ever leave. You wake up in the morning with that crushing weight inside you. It drags you down, so all your actions have to be done slowly and with great care, as though completing them under water. It is fragile, the slightest thing, or nothing at all, will make you crack. It makes you forget things that need done, things like eating, and bathing, and writing people back. It changes time itself, sometimes time is sluggish, and days seem to stretch on forever. But sometimes you lose great chunks of it, hours just gone, lost. It is the last thing you think of before you sleep at night, if you can sleep at all. And then you dream about it. It is the first thing you think about when your eyes open again.

I have grieved. I have grieved for one dog, and one grandparent. When my grandma died, my mom's mom, our house became filled with flowers. Flowers on the doorstep, flowers on the counters, flowers in the living room, the halls, the bathrooms, some even found their way into my bedroom. And we were given food, lots of casseroles, and carbs. Relatives of my mom sent Vietnamese comfort food, some of it I had never even had before. That time, it seemed as if the grief was tangible, I could find the outline of it in every room. I was disconnected from it, although I still felt it. That time, it felt as if a sudden emptiness had occurred, but it didn't take over my life. I could see other things besides it in my line of vision. It didn't make me feel like screaming, or hyperventilating.

Apparently, I didn't know real grief. 

...

There was shock, an inability to see what truly transpired, but that's all gone now. The party where all my friends were noting my absence for the last couple of weeks, Micah's presence seeming to prod uncannily into my emotional life, the alcohol, and most importantly, seeing Echo for the first time since and never interacting with him... It all hits me the following morning as I wake up feeling grimy with cigarette smoke and my mouth tasting awful from the beer. I fly out of bed, convinced my bad dreams are real, and for a second thinking I'm about to throw up. I hover there, all the blood rushing out of my head so I wobble on my feet as the room swims and disappears behind a curtain of black. My room slowly comes back into focus, or as much focus as my brain will allow. 

The ceramic pot is wedged against my house in the weeds that grow there, and I smoke one two three cigarettes, as I go to grab a fourth, I realize there's only 2 left in the pack. My hands spasm, casting the pack a few feet away from me as though the realization was startling. Maybe I should eat, not smoke.

All the food in my house makes my stomach turn. Eggs, no. Salad, no, too insubstantial. Leftover chicken, no. Fruit, no, too acidic. I end up staggering out of my house, my feet seeming to carry me of their own accord. I do my rounds, feeding the cat, which makes me think of Micah, who makes me think of Echo, who makes my stomach writhe like snakes, which I clutch at beneath my striped T-Shirt. When the rounds are done, I start to head back to my house but end up walking straight past it. There's a corner store about half a mile up the road, I head there, hoping against hope for something. Anything to make the electric energy surging through my veins slow down, or the raw wound in my chest that Echo left to ease just a little. 

Inside the corner store is nothing. All the sugary drinks make me nervous, the colorful packaging of candy bars, chips, even protein bars, give me jitters before I've eaten them. My stomach is rolling so much, I'm afraid to put just anything in it. I turn and walk back out the doors gasping in the fresh summer air, and head blindly toward Main Street, searching through my pockets for money as I walk. Maybe I'll find something suitable to eat there? But I don't have much, and as my eyes glaze over storefronts, I find nothing of any help.