Darkness

What? Two posts in one day?
I will be better eventually, but right now I am very sad. I want a fast track through the sadness. I don't want to deal with grief anymore. Grief and I are too well-acquainted.

I want to be one of those people who sees grief on a street and nods and keeps moving past it.

Instead I am one of those people who sees grief on the street, runs over to say hello, starts walking with it, even though it's taking me wayyy out of my planned route, and then I say yes to a cup of tea and we sit in a Victorian cafe and I get further engrossed and even though I want to leave, I can't.

And then grief asks me to come back to its apartment, just to check out, I don't know, its latest portfolio, or its music collection, or a memory book, or just to give me a heart stone it found, and so I go with grief and pretty soon I'm leading a double life, hanging out with grief in the daytime and then racing home to greet my kid from school, do the homework-dinner-tuck-into-bed thing, and then I run back to grief and spend the night with it.
Where, incidentally, I cannot sleep.
Sure, there's a pillow there, and nice blankets, but grief talks in its sleep or it stays up all night chatting like at a slumber party, or it haunts me with possibilities.
Then it wakes me up early and I have to run back home to get the kid up for school.
Yeah, I know grief.
I know it too well. "Hello darkness, my old friend." - Paul Simon

On the bright side, and thank goodness there is one, my painting is coming along well. I'm almost ready to submit this project I've been working on for ages.
Grief, come visit me later; I have work to do.