It's been about ten weeks since Liz passed and I feel so confused about it.
Like, genuinely, confused is the only way I can describe it. I don't feel particularly sad about it. I could, I think, if I tried. Of course I understand that it is a very terrible thing and there is so much grief there, it's just that it's locked away somewhere I can't - or don't want- to access.
Now when I think about Liz not being there in years to come, it just doesn't feel real. It feels like she's just on a long trip somewhere, but she'll come back and then life will go on as normal. Because I don't feel sad, her being gone doesn't feel impactful, it's just like, yeah that's a thing.
My friend Orion and I were talking about her on the train the other night. Well, he was, he brought her up and I didn't know what to say. I told him I can discuss her completely emotionlessly. Who knows what he thinks of that, considering how important it was to me that he and everyone understood how desperately important to me she is as she was dying and after the funeral. It's just true though, I feel like I just took all the emotions out of dealing with her death. It only makes me uncomfortable when I have to say 'death'. I just tried taunting myself then, telling myself that she's dead and her body is in the ground and that freaks me out and if my mind didn't automatically shy away from all of that completely, I think that would make me feel something.
I don't know. Even when I got my dress for the funeral, it was when I was shopping with Jen for a friends birthday present and we just stopped in at the clothes store because she mentioned she needed a new black dress (in a 'every girl needs a little black dress' type way) and I was like, yeah I really need one too, for the funeral. That didn't make me sad, I just did it. Maybe I wanted to shock her a little bit when I said it because I wanted to talk, I don't know, I have no ability to deal with talking about Lizzy in an emotional way with other people. Not in real life. I could say, with no emotional investment, that I feel sad, but I couldn't feel sad while talking about feeling sad. It's like I'm too chilled out. I don't have a trigger to release all the bottled up feelings. I think of her because of a lot of random stuff but she still just feels so present, because I'm doing so many things that she did and loved, all my friends are people that she knew and that we talked about, so much of the gossip and drama is stuff that she was still around for, and the TV shows I watch are shows we watched together. When I condition my hair I remember conversations we had about conditioner, when I think about my hair I remember that she helped me dye mine, the only time I dyed it. When I think about a movie I just watched, I remember that we watched it together, a long time ago. When I listen to Hilary Duff's new album, I think about how many times I forced her to watch the Lizzy McGuire movies and how she must have known all the words to 'This is what dreams are made of'. When I stumbled upon Nikki Webster music, I cried because I remember her suffering through me watching DVD's of the music videos. She commented on all the fashion choices and because I knew nothing about fashion, I took everything she said as legit and never forgot. I remember going to the Easter show and listening to 'Never Been Kissed' on what must have been my Walkman, with her.
Her being really sick and dying feels like a dream, like a story.
I barely believe it, that's the problem.
Like I said, thinking about that just feels confusing because it doesn't seem real. It's like, why am I focusing all this mental attention on her, she's fine, you can just text her if you want to talk to her. Only I can't, and I haven't really worked that out yet, not deep down.
It's frustrating to feel like I'm not doing this right, that I'm both feeling too much and too little and in the wrong order. If I could just... I don't know... have a long cry and feel devastated for awhile, maybe that would help, but I cry all the time already. I've been to her grave. I wear her ribbons every day. I don't know how else to grieve to make things seem real. It doesn't matter what small choices I make, because it's all supposed to be in reaction to the ultimate thing, death of a loved one. I have to react, because I'm human but I only know how to react in human ways, with changes of behaviour, and no action is big enough or loud enough. Even killing myself doesn't seem like it would be a big enough gesture. Nothing I do feels like symbolism, it all just feels like one of the millions of small actions that we make every day. Move this limb here, perform this action, speak to this person, eat this, get through the day, it doesn't matter what action you take in the aftermath of a death, it's all still action, it's all still proof that while everything has changed, not everything has. You still go on. It should be a binary switch that when one person dies, everyone dies and all feelings, and hopes and behaviour ends.
Every act of behaviour I do, even the stuff that is supposed to commemorate her or express my devastation just feels like a tiny action in the face of the universe, that I'm belittling the sacrifice.
I can't explain it better. All actions just pale in comparison to dying and anything I could do would fall short.
I don't know what to do apart from keeping on keeping on, especially because as concerned as I am and as convinced as I am that the truth is in focusing on my feelings and whatever else I'm avoiding in my noggin, I don't want to do that. It's hard to explain but it feels so exhausting that I can't manage it, truly.
Like, genuinely, confused is the only way I can describe it. I don't feel particularly sad about it. I could, I think, if I tried. Of course I understand that it is a very terrible thing and there is so much grief there, it's just that it's locked away somewhere I can't - or don't want- to access.
Now when I think about Liz not being there in years to come, it just doesn't feel real. It feels like she's just on a long trip somewhere, but she'll come back and then life will go on as normal. Because I don't feel sad, her being gone doesn't feel impactful, it's just like, yeah that's a thing.
My friend Orion and I were talking about her on the train the other night. Well, he was, he brought her up and I didn't know what to say. I told him I can discuss her completely emotionlessly. Who knows what he thinks of that, considering how important it was to me that he and everyone understood how desperately important to me she is as she was dying and after the funeral. It's just true though, I feel like I just took all the emotions out of dealing with her death. It only makes me uncomfortable when I have to say 'death'. I just tried taunting myself then, telling myself that she's dead and her body is in the ground and that freaks me out and if my mind didn't automatically shy away from all of that completely, I think that would make me feel something.
I don't know. Even when I got my dress for the funeral, it was when I was shopping with Jen for a friends birthday present and we just stopped in at the clothes store because she mentioned she needed a new black dress (in a 'every girl needs a little black dress' type way) and I was like, yeah I really need one too, for the funeral. That didn't make me sad, I just did it. Maybe I wanted to shock her a little bit when I said it because I wanted to talk, I don't know, I have no ability to deal with talking about Lizzy in an emotional way with other people. Not in real life. I could say, with no emotional investment, that I feel sad, but I couldn't feel sad while talking about feeling sad. It's like I'm too chilled out. I don't have a trigger to release all the bottled up feelings. I think of her because of a lot of random stuff but she still just feels so present, because I'm doing so many things that she did and loved, all my friends are people that she knew and that we talked about, so much of the gossip and drama is stuff that she was still around for, and the TV shows I watch are shows we watched together. When I condition my hair I remember conversations we had about conditioner, when I think about my hair I remember that she helped me dye mine, the only time I dyed it. When I think about a movie I just watched, I remember that we watched it together, a long time ago. When I listen to Hilary Duff's new album, I think about how many times I forced her to watch the Lizzy McGuire movies and how she must have known all the words to 'This is what dreams are made of'. When I stumbled upon Nikki Webster music, I cried because I remember her suffering through me watching DVD's of the music videos. She commented on all the fashion choices and because I knew nothing about fashion, I took everything she said as legit and never forgot. I remember going to the Easter show and listening to 'Never Been Kissed' on what must have been my Walkman, with her.
Her being really sick and dying feels like a dream, like a story.
I barely believe it, that's the problem.
Like I said, thinking about that just feels confusing because it doesn't seem real. It's like, why am I focusing all this mental attention on her, she's fine, you can just text her if you want to talk to her. Only I can't, and I haven't really worked that out yet, not deep down.
It's frustrating to feel like I'm not doing this right, that I'm both feeling too much and too little and in the wrong order. If I could just... I don't know... have a long cry and feel devastated for awhile, maybe that would help, but I cry all the time already. I've been to her grave. I wear her ribbons every day. I don't know how else to grieve to make things seem real. It doesn't matter what small choices I make, because it's all supposed to be in reaction to the ultimate thing, death of a loved one. I have to react, because I'm human but I only know how to react in human ways, with changes of behaviour, and no action is big enough or loud enough. Even killing myself doesn't seem like it would be a big enough gesture. Nothing I do feels like symbolism, it all just feels like one of the millions of small actions that we make every day. Move this limb here, perform this action, speak to this person, eat this, get through the day, it doesn't matter what action you take in the aftermath of a death, it's all still action, it's all still proof that while everything has changed, not everything has. You still go on. It should be a binary switch that when one person dies, everyone dies and all feelings, and hopes and behaviour ends.
Every act of behaviour I do, even the stuff that is supposed to commemorate her or express my devastation just feels like a tiny action in the face of the universe, that I'm belittling the sacrifice.
I can't explain it better. All actions just pale in comparison to dying and anything I could do would fall short.
I don't know what to do apart from keeping on keeping on, especially because as concerned as I am and as convinced as I am that the truth is in focusing on my feelings and whatever else I'm avoiding in my noggin, I don't want to do that. It's hard to explain but it feels so exhausting that I can't manage it, truly.
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