pulling teeth

ive been thinking a lot about grief lately. i didnt really have the free time to grieve these past couple of years due to being too caught up worrying about others. death just kept happening over and over with no time of grace. no funeral, no wake, no toast, no requiem. i have only been to two funerals. i wasnt allowed to go to the ones of those i knew who had them a good amount of the time. i didnt go to my childhood best friend's dad's funeral because i was sick. i got dressed and everything, sitting next to the door in a dress shirt and tie. i coughed my brains out and my mom put her hand on my shoulder and said "maybe you shouldnt come with me". i havent spoke to that friend since. i was very close with his dad. i have one of his shirts that he gave to me after i came out of the pool because i didnt have a change of clothes- it still smells like pool water

clothes, material, items- they play a big part in grief. after my grandmother died me and my dad broke into her apartment to take some of her stuff. i thought it was him being nice, but it was actually so he could pawn off a bunch of her shit and not get charged too much by the storage company. she had this fleece purple zip-up jacket she wore all the time. it hung on the closet doorknob right next to the front door so she could put it on before she left the house. i kept staring at it and asked my dad if i could take it with me. he told me no. you dont need that, you have enough jackets. but i dont have hers

thats sort of what this all feels like in general. im surrounded by so many things, but not theirs- not them. i have photographs but its not enough. they are frozen in time and i would do anything to crawl into them. to be six years old again embraced by my grandfather, dressed like a fairy for the ren-fair. to be sitting with him on the deck while he helped me draw green day's dookie album cover on the bottom of my skateboard. theres so much they dont know about me now, it almost feels like im keeping secrets. they dont know the man ive become, the terrible man my father became, the music ive written, the people ive loved. god if my grandmother knew what my father did... she wouldve done something

when i was around seven years old my dad let me jump on the bed for a little too long and i slipped and hit my face on the corner of the radiator underneath the window. i had a giant nasty black eye for a while. he didnt allow me to leave the house for a bit, but when we went to visit my grandmother she looked at me with so much fear in her eyes. she turned to my father and went "matthew... what did you do?"- i didnt know what that meant at the time. i know now. she assumed the worst. i grieve her inability to do anything about the terror he enacted upon me but also i can understand that she died loving her son, and thats all that matters

my uncle sean died of AIDS. he was so skinny and frail and weak, but still cracking jokes and asking for an ice cold beer on his deathbed. his boyfriend comes to family gatherings instead of him now. my mom told me if he lived to see who i am now, we would be best friends. she said, letting out a laugh through poorly disguised tears "you wouldve ran away with him by now to live in a cabin in maine". he was one of three queer people in my family. me, my cousin will, and him. will came out as gay after he died. he would be proud knowing me and will both are in love with our respective men unapologetically and wholly. i do it for him in a way. i will love in the ways he wasnt allowed to, didnt get the time to. he was taken by something that takes so many of us

when you grieve someone else, you grieve yourself. you start to get sick at the thought of them getting ripped from you before you were entirely you. they never got to see who id become without my father, outside of being actively abused, outside of being that quiet child too ashamed to live. i want to speak to them for just a minute, all in one room. sitting around a coffee table rolling cigarettes and talking shit about my father. i want to sob out "look who i am now! im a man! i am not perfect but i am good! i am whole!" 

ta-ta for now!

-k.s