People like to compare grief to an onion, but I don’t think it suffices. An onion’s layers are plentiful, but they are too clean, too precise, too neat. I think grief is actually more like a head of cabbage. Heavy, heavy. Deep. Sharp. With twists and turns and knots. The center is almost impossible to find. The shapes of the leaves aren’t tidy, sometimes you have to break them to get to what’s underneath. The outside is dirty and soft and worn, the inside so raw it resembles a brain. That’s what my grief is like. It’s own nervous system.
Recently a kind friend, who brought me flowers and crackers and flavored sparkling water as the sweetest condolence, told me that you can only experience happiness to the degree that you can experience grief; as above, so below. If my love is an iceburg that stretched so far to the heavens it could block out the sun, imagine the depth of it’s reach underwater, spread so far and wide, so dark and deep that Angler fish call it home. I crunched on the crackers as warm sunlight beamed down on us from my front window and felt the truth of this. Not one day has gone by since the separation from my partner where I didn’t also feel sincere gratitude for something, or hope, or delight, or faith. Frequently I have found myself in the middle of mundane tasks suddenly stricken by fierce tears (I call it my micro crymate), and then, just as abruptly, giggling at the memory of something I saw or heard or thought earlier, or smiling at an inspiring idea that seemed to come out of absolutely no-fucking-where. These jolts were initially unsettling, as I thought that an emotion on one end of the spectrum might cancel out the other, might dull the significance of both. But, no, that’s impossible, because I also know this: grief is love with nowhere to go.
Grief is not the opposite of happiness, of love, of abundance. It’s the reminder of the existence of all those things, the absolute presence of them, the purest connection you have from where you were, to where you are. My grief at the ending of my 18 year long relationship with my best friend is joy turned on its face- there would be no pain in losing it if it hadn’t meant so much to me for so long. I cannot tell you how sad this loss makes me, I cannot tell you because I simply don’t speak enough languages. But I can tell you how our separation is forcing me to connect to myself in ways that have atrophied over the years. How this loss of connection to self is one of the reasons we needed to heal in the first place.
My partner, growing up in a family of means, was well traveled when we met at 26. People exposed to traversing the world when they are kids often turn into adults who are exceptional at traveling. Back then my partner was unafraid of the unknown, excited by the adventure of figuring stuff out. They are unusually adept at picking up languages, good with directions and geography- they would make an incredible contestant on The Amazing Race. I on the other hand had only been to Canada by the time I was 26, excited about the rest of the world, but intimidated by it. I was bolstered my partner’s enthusiasm for travel and with my access to work opportunities abroad, we began to explore the world together.
Our first trip was to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, a modest step into international travel, but it was still dreamy. We stayed in a boutique hotel that I chose for it’s designation as a “gay-friendly” spot and were surprised to find that we were the only woman and AFAB guests in the entire place (I ‘ve learned that the term “gay” usually refers to only one gender in the realm of travel). We were treated kindly. I swam in an infinity pool that overlooked the most picturesque sunset I had ever seen. I ate incredible tacos and also learned to never order Chinese food in Mexico. I splurged on an expensive special-made private candlelit gluten free dinner that was served to us in the hotel’s most expensive suite, which happened to be available for the evening. I don’t remember what we ate but I remember it was worth every penny I nervously paid for it (growing up poor means it took me years to allow myself to enjoy occasional luxuries like this). Our private chef, a young American like us, was so sweet that we became friends on Facebook and I sent him congratulations years later on the birth of his first child.
I ziplined! I was so proud of myself for braving the heights, which I am terrified of, and my partner cheered me on at each stretch as we climbed higher and higher through the jungle’s endless canopy. My experience on a several-hours-long horse ride up the side of a very steep Mexican mountain was much less amazing, as I was convinced that my horse, aptly named Fiesta, was gonna throw me off of her at any moment. I cried with relief when we finally tore out of the trees and she galloped through a stretch of shallow water on a long, isolated beach. Understandably, my partner could not stop laughing- I know I looked ridiculous. It was the most magical trip, not just because it was a new experience, but because I got to do it with someone who made me feel safe.
Over the next several years, the Redwoods, Yellowstone, The Badlands, various islands off the coast of Vancouver. Colombia. London. Amsterdam. I got to spend my 31st birthday in Paris. It was a work trip that I extended so that we could have a proper celebration, and on our first morning exploring the city we landed smack dab in the middle of the marathon! My partner had suggested we take the city bikes to get around, and we parked them on a bridge that gave us the perfect vantage point to see all the runners and cheer them on below. I wore a bright yellow knit wool skirt and a polka dotted silk scarf in my hair. The sun was bright, the day was crisp and clear. I felt like I was in a dream. It’s the most spectacular birthday I have ever had.
I took more work trips, but by now my partner had a job they couldn’t leave on a whim and was unable to join me. On these trips I never extended my dates, never felt compelled to see more, to explore. I didn’t have my partner-in-crime with me, and without them, I felt scared, uninspired, incurious. It’s one of the ways my codependence started whispering itself. Why tool around a foreign city on my own, feigning excitement about being out of my comfort zone? I only wanted freedom as a couple. As a single person, I yearned for the familiar, for what was easy and defined and controllable. I flew to Madrid begrudgingly, traveled to Dusseldorf with even less muster, managing to leave my hotel for only one afternoon, dropped off in a city center and then returned immediately after some window shopping and lunch at a tiny Thai restaurant (thankfully less perilous than Mexican Chinese).
The pandemic only saturated the fear of travel for me and I continued to stay put unless work forced me away, but after a few years I felt a small, gnawing need to expand, to stretch out, to see and feel and know more. My partner, highly (and understandably) anxious about the rest of the world’s resistance to Covid protocols, rarely joined me, so I started visiting my family in Florida on my own. Accepted an HRC award without my partner with me. Went to Puerto Rico for work, alone. And then I took a trip to NYC by myself. It was strange; even though I feel like I still know NYC intimately, I was surprisingly anxious to be there on my own. My partner was whom I relied on to keep myself rooted and safe, but there was a growing part of me that longed to feel free in ways that used to feel terrifying. What I am trying to say is this: I found security in our relationship, and now I was noticing how badly I wanted to feel that security in my own self. To not have to rely on someone else to feel it. To know it was inside of me, always.
Now here I am, so many months later, single and muddling through this grief that I am learning to sit with instead of avoid. I’ve made friends with it. It is memories. It is pain. It is despair. It is a swelling of love so big I feel like my body will burst open from it. It has a sense of humor. I know that the more comfortable I get with it, the less frequently it will want to visit me, in time. Or maybe it’s that it’s visits will become less powerful, more like drizzles than torrents.
A friend posted a story on IG trying to connect her Parisian friend to a house swap in LA, and my first thought was this seems so cool, too bad I can’t do it. I spent the next few hours sending it to my friends who are braver than I and telling everyone about how this thing that I couldn’t do seemed so cool, too bad I couldn’t do it. I thought my therapist’s eyes were gonna roll in the back of her head. I had an easy excuse to say no, though- I had requested to renew my passport only a couple weeks before and it was estimated to take another 4 to 6 weeks to get to me, too late to match the Parisian’s travel dates. Less than a week later, my new passport showed up at my door (a privilege that has much more weight now than it ever has before). Seemed like a sign. 12-step has taught me that if you pay attention to the universe, she will speak. I reached out to the Parisian today about the swap and he said his dates have changed a little, which actually gives me more time to prepare for the trip, negating using the “It’s happening too fast!” excuse that I’m sure would have been up my sleeve next.
I’m working on an ambitious writing project, an illustrated memoir woven together through the memories of my clothes throughout my life, the ones I was forced to wear as a kid, the ones I chose to help me “fit in” with the white kids and the black kids, and finally, the ones I began making for myself, which ushered in a self discovery more monumental than I could ever imagine. Paris seems like a serendipitous place to work on a story about the sensuality of clothing and it’s connection to identity.
Wherever I go, I know my grief is coming with me. But at least we might have some new scenery.
You're a spectacular writer. I felt every bit of this with you.
This is so beautiful. And sad and hopeful.
I also hope your book has a publisher (aiming to want that) because it sounds like a really great and special project.