The Difficulty of Night

Surviving past sunset

The night is always a struggle. She does anything to stay awake. She smokes too many cigarettes. Watches multiple episodes of a show that is base and inconsequential.  Begins an obsession at 1am to sync all her devices. Struggles to remember all the passwords so she scours various excels files to find them.  Mostly unsuccessful, she spends hours resetting all her passwords and makes yet another list to contain the passwords which she will later look for on another sleepless night. None of this is helpful or healthy. She knows that. But she is owed something because in the daytime she is steadfast in evading all the land mines. She will skip the song that is too hard to hear. She will avert her gaze from the boxes in the garage that contain all the old things. She will ignore the memories from Facebook. She will take an alternative route to avoid seeing the freeway exit where she used to live. She can practice this vigilance in the day, avoid the memory bombs, but in the night when no one else is awake she indulges. She is owed a prize. She will scroll through photos and videos to remember the way her hands move. Hear how she laughs. Of course, this is not the best thing to do because she knows she could dream of her. This sounds nice. Many people wish their lost ones would visit them in their dreams. But not her because these dreams aren’t always good dreams. Sometimes they feel like genuine visits. Like a reconciliation where they both agree to do things differently next time. Where they forgive each other. Where they both accept their fates. Other times they are nightmares. Stress-induced dreams where they fight like they always had. Where they argue about eating. Where she tries to control everything, but never wins. Good or bad, she wants to avoid any dream at all. Which is ironic because in the daytime the uninvited thoughts come anyway. The regret, the guilt. Memories of the final hours. Her spiraling triggered by any number of things. The sight of a baby’s bare foot. The jigsaw puzzles in the toy section at Target. Her oversized pink mug in the back of the cabinet. Her favorite spoon still in the drawer. The clanking of a teenaged boy practicing kickflips and ollies across the street. The note of a song. A single note is all it takes for the tears to well up. For the day to suddenly become unmanageable. She doesn’t know how to live out all the clichés that are ramrodded into belief in support groups and therapy. That grief is love they keep saying. The memories keep her alive. But she is not alive. So these words don’t mean anything. Night comes. The clock reads 12am. Then 3am. The episodes of the show she isn’t watching keep playing on until sleep finds her and she has to face another morning and do it all again.

Dedicated to the Palestinian people who teach me what it is to survive.

I’ve been writing alot these past 6 months, but not sharing here or anywhere. I kept thinking that I would share when I had arrived at some certain place of healing. Not to say that I’ve not healed any, though I cringe at the very concept. But that I never feel like I arrive at any place where my words are final. When I write in the third person I can allow myself to write all the despairing thoughts and create a distance that is necessary to explore dark places. To create a more expansive space that is not limited by own grief and reaches into the experience of others. Collective grief and honoring our losses together feels necessary to get us all to tomorrow.