This one’s going to be a bummer. I want to write about grief.
My blog post is late this month (again) because I was in LA for a little over a week, wondering if my dad was going to die. Sorry to jump right into it but that’s just how this post is going to go.
For days, I sat by his hospital bed for 8-9 hours a day talking to doctors, asking questions that made my brain hurt, feeding him, and overall trying my very best not to break down. I tried to be as hyperlogical and focused as I could be because, without getting too much into it, that’s what was needed from me.
I used to pride myself on being able to turn off my emotions. I used to call it “the switch” which is something I probably stole from some shitty vampire TV show. But it was pretty easy for me to just switch my emotions off, or more accurately, to hyper-compartmentalize. There’s been a lot of times in my life where it was just easier to not feel anything at all than to be overwhelmed with grief and sadness.
Lately, I wonder if that’s a good skill to have or not. I was able to tap into it, to push every feeling I had (and still have) deep, deep down. But…now I haven’t really been sleeping or eating. My brain is so busy pushing down the all the grief and sadness it’s not doing a great job at just, you know, thinking. My brain fog is worse now than when I had brain fog with COVID. I’m dissociating and just kind of drifting. And any moment I sit still or am alone at all, I cry. It sort of explodes out of me.
I never thought I was someone who didn’t know how to deal with grief. Before the age of 21, I had lost 3 close friends to suicide. I had many more friends attempt it. Death is something that kind of just seemed to follow me around. In 2012, my grandmother (who mostly raised me) died in June and a few weeks later, on my birthday, I was in a car accident that should’ve killed me. I feel like I’ve always been hyper-aware of not just my mortality but everyone else’s around me too.
But I’m realizing that being aware of it and knowing how to deal with it are two different things.
It feels a bit like my brain is breaking in half. My whole body hurts all the time. I wish I could explain to people (and that they’d hear me) just how physical grief and depression can be. For me, even just walking takes so much effort. I feel like I’m dragging myself through the mud just to end up in quicksand.
And that’s all compounded with my grief for what’s happening to the arts.
It’s hard to enough to wake up every morning wondering if I’m going to text that says “Rachel, your dad died” but now I’m also waking up to emails every day about the NEA pulling funding from some of my favorite theatres. Beyond that, some of the most important theatres we have. Apparently the orange wants to get rid of the NEA entirely by 2026. That plus knowing staffing jobs have decreased like crazy, down 1300 jobs…all of it has been crushing me.
There was a time when I said I didn’t know what I wanted to do and my therapist corrected me. She said I knew what I wanted to do (be a full-time writer), I just didn’t know how. I’ve been revisiting that a lot.
The how feels even more impossible than ever now. I don’t know what the future of the industry will look like. Any of these industries. So what now? Do I suck it up and get that MBA I’ve been thinking about? Do I just do the nonprofit job dance until the end of time? What’s even a safe job anymore? It feels like they’re cutting everything that isn’t finance.
I mentioned to my friend, briefly, that when it’s “your year” in the Chinese Zodiac, it’s also known as the 12-Year Curse. I cannot stop thinking about this. I’m year of the snake so I guess it’s my turn for the curse to roll back again but I’ve had a series of bad years. It’s been bleak since 2023. When is the good year coming? Is it coming or is this just life now? Is that yet another thing I need to mourn?
This is usually the part where I pivot. Where I say something like “and here’s how I’ve learned to cope” but the truth of it right now is I’m still figuring that all out. I’m getting out of bed, I’m showering, I’m making myself eat, and I’m trying like hell to focus on literally anything else.
But I have to believe healing is more than that. I have to believe that this year will not be what takes me out. There’s a book I read a few years ago called If I Survive You and I think about that constantly. The “You” being 2025.
Grief is tricky and messy and all at once, all the time. But I’m going to survive it, moment by moment. I have to.