“BUT…I Am Drowning"

"What is the worst outcome that could happen if you ran into someone you feel you've disappointed in the past?"

“I hear from a couple true friends, which helps me not fully drown....” I say to the best friend, Sam, knowing that human dynamics are impossible and everything (EV-ER-Y-THING) is a two way street, most of all ourselves. (So as you grieve, remember that You’ve reached out until the Rose/Jack ‘Titanic’ dynamic couldn't go further. You're dead in the water. Get off the door.)

“BUT…I am drowning."

The truth is, you've already drowned.

"But let’s be real," you say, after you both have talked at length about how the outside world will rarely ever be able to see its teachers or bosses or parents as humans (that doesn't mean we shouldn't always try to ‘Michele Obama’ as a verb.... but everyone still breathes the same 02, lies and tells themselves they drink enough H20, and does the poo things that children's books remind us we all do): "I am the fault."

(I don't pause in conversation to let her argue. My lips are already blue from the water and ice, ‘never letting go’.)

"No one can tell me otherwise", I say (rather, ‘you’ say?)…

"Yes it was money [because that is what makes most businesses and nonprofits and families suffer or fail].... and my own failures as a person too…

But in reality: We were ALL doing jobs we'd never been trained [because that’s how life goes], and had never done to that degree, and giving 100% to something with all we all had- all of us... but being treated and regarded and talked-about-behind-backs as if we were full time, paid employees."

Lately, I have come to believe that if we ask others, “How can I help?” and “How are you?” and check in with loved ones enough times - but they don’t communicate back what they REALLY want- then the blame we throw at others for not being subhuman really IS unfair.

It happens to all of us, at some point in our lives. And… it’s impossible to overcome, once it’s begun.

It’s unfair to those that are disappointed and doing the blaming without communication (which is human, to be clear; Human and not always intentional. Human and not always meant to harm)… and it’s unfair to those who can’t read minds but try. Who want to help but can’t if they’re left outside of the grapevine; the Secret Garden door so firmly closed to their inner Mary Lennox.

If someone really wants someone to do something better though… They would be doing it (better) right now themselves.

If you love to talk about people behind their backs… You probably should not be the primary person judging other people.

"What is the worst outcome that could happen if you ran into someone you feel you've disappointed in the past?" You were asked, shortly after the therapy conversation (and this somewhat dumb grief letter you’re now publishing).

"They wouldn't even talk to me…" I said without needing time to think, "They'd turn and walk away, even after all the love and laughter we've shared. I would still not be a person to them, as they are to me- I’d just be this rumor of a person that’s been perpetuated without ever communicating directly.”

I could write a thesis on what I loved about most people in my past.

I want to write my Grief on a tiny piece of paper and rip it up and throw it into a moving sea.

"And what would be the most ideal outcome?" the conversationalist probed, hoping we’d eventually get to somewhere in the middle. Not ‘worst outcome’. Not the ‘best’. But the ‘most likely’- when anxiety and dread (and, dreadfully most of all) grief are removed from the nonsensical, cyclical thinking.

"They would talk to me and let me listen to them...” I said, again without thinking.

"You're allowed to be hurt too," someone else added crisply, observing from afar as I carefully didn't name names, or deal details, or even dig into much beyond the same vague-ry that’s vaguely said here: "You're not ALL the fault in each thing you're grieving."

But aren't I?

Aren't “YOU”, You?

"So your most optimal scenario is not talking with the friends you've disappointed after getting sicker [and almost dying last winter]…” the conversationalist double-taked, blinking more times than biologically necessary: "It's that you’d absorb the ways they felt hurt by you not holding up against these impossible odds of the past?… And just listening to that? That is your most optimal outcome?"

Remember this, you, yourself and I: This letter has an unreliable narrator.

(76% of those polled had faults in their memory-facts, after the fact... So you're intentionally paraphrasing this genuinely-true phrasing into something much more lyrical for the page.)

"Yes," would have been my answer…

“Yes, that would be the best outcome possible.”

PART THREE. Continued tomorrow.

(Part One and Part Two)