Raw

The thing about grief…about profound soul darkening, life destroying grief is that is scrubs you raw. It exposes your heart. You walk around with no skin on. Every breath of air, every friendship lost, every story of pain, every death reaches to the core. There is no distance, everything burns.

This world is a horrible place. Every single day there are stories, death, torture, pain, anguish, loss. It’s horrible. Before Damon died I was in such denial. I refused to see it and if I was forced to see it I refused to feel it. I can’t do that anymore. I’m held under the black water, absorbing the anguish I know the mother of a dead child in Afghanistan is feeling, the confusion of the fathers holding vigil in the cancer unit, the loneliness of the widow whose family just has no time.

I view the happy denial of most of the world with disdain… fully acknowledging just two years ago I was fully there. I get that it’s crippling to feel it all, to see it all, but I’m so tired of hearing how good life is, how good god is when all you have to do is turn on the news for five minutes to see clear evidence to the contrary.

I’m tired of the chosen few who have had the privilege of growing up protected and loved, who have had the means to have what they need, whose children are growing healthy and happy making the rules as if having survived a crap storm is some how inconvenient to their pleasant illusion. The thing is most of the world is living with some sort of gaping wound. Outside of North America most people are barely surviving. Mothers are watching their children starve. People are lonely. Hell, I know I am. The people who most need relationship are shoved to the periphery because their pain is inconvenient. Quite frankly, this is crap.

Until next time…