Elephant

I’ve pretty much spanned the emotional spectrum this weekend.

Friday found me in great spirits, intoxicated with the relief of the week’s end, and also literally intoxicated with one too many jumbo margaritas.  After all, it was Cinco de Mayo, and what do white people love more than eating Mexican and getting hammered on the 5th of May?  The Guadalajara near the Downtown Mall was overflowing with these predictable Caucasians, our co-worker crew adding to it at about 6pm.  We were later joined by some of my friends, and I honestly can’t remember what happened after about 8:30pm; I am slowly being filled in on the details.  Sounds like I was only a little boisterous and eventually self-conscious in that way only induced by inebriation.  Or maybe they’re just being generous.  Maybe the evening went a little more like this.

Saturday was, in a word, fantastic.  One of those days where everything just fell into place without much effort.  No wait at Bluegrass Grill (that’s unheard of on a Saturday morning) and we got on the road with the perfect amount of time to get to the trail head at St. Mary’s Wilderness Area.  Ok, I lied -- I got a little lost on the way out, but that just meant going the back way in via 13 miles of gravel road.  No biggie, and certainly the only snag.  Greg, Heather and I hiked out to St. Mary’s Falls, something I haven’t done since the summer of 2003.  It is my absolute favorite hike and it felt just as good yesterday as it did almost three years ago.  We even had to do some crazy ninja-like maneuvering in spots where the Tye River’s cut-bank had eroded away some of the trail.  We got back to Charlottesville right about dinner time and headed over to Lime Leaf to see what all the hoopla’s about.  Though they did have a seafood dish that was quite delicious, Downtown Thai’s tom yum kung and green curry have ‘em beat.

Today has contrasted a good deal with the beginning of my weekend.  Since moving everything from my mom’s house to my apartment in November, I have done little to sort through it.  A pile of boxes, furniture and miscellaneous items is currently consuming about a quarter of my living room, stretching up and almost touching my ten-foot ceiling.  An elephant in the room if there ever was one.  And though part of me thinks I should have dealt with it by now, I have been avoiding it in every possible way I can.

When I was trying to decide what kind of blog this should be, I had played around with the idea of a “grief” blog of sorts.  In the months right after my mom’s death, I did a lot of searching for support groups/forums/chat rooms for loved ones surviving suicide victims.  I was frustrated because one of the only things I found was a chat room where everyone talked about a lot of stuff unrelated to what it is to have a loved one take their own life. I thought that maybe I could set up some sort of forum where people could have that kind of space to do what it was I had desperately needed then.

I’m glad I didn’t set up such a blog, though I have no intention of refraining from that kind of writing here, nor will I discourage it from readers who might want to comment.  My need for that immediate source of support has lessened dramatically and I have also found other means of dealing with it.  At any rate, today was the first time in quite a while that the intensity of my loss has been overwhelming.  In theory, the task of sorting through that pile should only take a few hours.  Instead, the idea that this shouldn’t be happening -- these things should all be tucked away in special places in the house where my mom had put them -- absolutely knocks the breath right out of me.

I didn’t get very far today.  But I will do it in little pieces.  I wouldn’t have been able to even start without Greg’s help, I think.  Not today.  He helped me keep it together enough to focus on it as purely a task, but was also comforting when I couldn’t do it any more.  (Thank you, Greg.)  And as Sunday is rounding off into Monday, I am feeling better.  I am able to be optimistic about the idea of finally getting my life back together, but I am making the concerted effort from here on to not be frustrated with how slowly the process is taking, but rather to adjust my progress according to how I happen to be feeling about it.