{"id":13307,"date":"2022-05-06T08:48:13","date_gmt":"2022-05-06T15:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/?p=13307"},"modified":"2022-05-19T18:55:39","modified_gmt":"2022-05-20T01:55:39","slug":"lines-and-shadows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/06\/lines-and-shadows\/","title":{"rendered":"Lines and shadows"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\"\"In Washington, you are required to give employees three days of bereavement time. My employer grants five, but we also have unlimited paid time off (a weird trap depending on your role, your boss, a lot of things, a discussion for another time). It amuses me to think of a government-defined mourning period, given the variable nature of grief. Jews have a long tradition of shiva, seven days of not working, not looking in mirrors (or taking selfies), sitting with your feelings while eating snacks, and letting people bring you, oh, is that a nice fruit plate? Thank you.<\/p>\n

Three days seems barely enough to sleep off the exhaustion of losing someone close to you. By the time a week passes you might find that you’re able to go grocery shopping. You’re supposed to sit shiva right after burial, tick-tock. Then, back into your worldly duties, whatever those may be. I believe shiva is meant to give you dedicated time to process while also making you aware that you’re needed in the world of the living. Take a minute, but not so long you forget how to live.<\/p>\n

After the blurry days of waiting for my mom to die, I wanted to work. It was a great relief to return to deadlines and checklists and marking out instances of passive voice. Work allowed me to not think about death, though it has taken me several weeks to stop checking my phone in the middle of the night to see if my mom died while I was sleeping. It’s not like I knew what I would do once I got that news. My failure to have a plan did nothing to diminish the low-key anxiety fits at 2:37 am every morning for nearly four months.<\/p>\n

To complicate matters, I spent the last several years shoveling away yard after yard of complicated grief. My stepfather, who was family for 40-something years, died in 2015, too young, of cancer. The 2016 election was no joke. I remain angry and unforgiving towards anyone who trivialized the administration and its wrongdoing. In early 2018, I was diagnosed and began treatment for severe depression. In 2019, I took my husband of more than 20 years to the airport and we have not spoken a single word to each other since. Can you imagine that?\u00a0 While my divorce is final, there are unresolved financial aspects preventing me from closing that chapter for good. In 2020, Covid-19 changed our lives in ways I could never have anticipated. In 2021, my aunt died, not long after I signed divorce papers. And here I am, a year later, with my mom’s death just weeks behind me.<\/p>\n

This is a lot for one person to bear. To complicate matters, I’m keenly aware that there’s absolutely nothing special about any of my woes. And while yes, there are no suffering Olympics, I can’t help but think that there are people going through this exact same mess while also raising kids, dealing with racism, managing chronic health issues, any number of things, in multiples, even.<\/p>\n

“You and your suffering, whatever,” says a voice in my head. “You have a good job and a safe place to sleep and you had coffee at the beach on a weekday afternoon, maybe stop whining.”<\/p>\n

“Why can’t you just let me be sad?” says another voice. “It’s not like it hasn’t left a mark. Look at the lines, the shadows. You look terrible.”<\/p>\n

It’s laughable that the state gives you three days for those two to work it out. I took myself to the beach for a week; that’s where I am at this very moment. I emptied my freezer of leftovers, bought a lot of snacks, and drove to the coast where I checked into a lofted little house with a gas fireplace for the Harley the Dog to nap in front of. I planned to work on my screenplay but I also gave myself full permission to do nothing but stare at the rain and eat chocolate if that’s what I needed to do.<\/p>\n

“Nice beach house,” says voice one, the one that won’t let me be sad. “Looks like you’re doing great.”<\/p>\n

“You need to moisturize more,” says the other one, the one that’s mad about how much this is all taking out of me. “And stop drinking so much coffee.”<\/p>\n

“Both of you, just fuck off,” I say out loud, and take Harley the Dog to run on the beach when the rain stops.<\/p>\n

We have to cross a two-lane highway to get to the beach. There’s a bluff with a stair climb. When I unclip Harley from his leash, he bounces off like a rabbit. Down the stairs, into the dunes, onto the wide-open sand.\u00a0 His nose leads the way; there is something 100 yards away, 200 yards away that he must stick his nose in. I see him getting smaller and smaller but if I stop and call him or change directions, he notices and comes flying across the expanse between us. He is such a flawed character, nervous and shouty and territorial but when I let him run free on the beach I can see who he’d be if circumstances allowed him to be his happiest at all times.<\/p>\n

“Figure out how to do that,” says a voice I don’t give the mic to often enough. “Those lines and shadows, maybe they’re marks on the page. You’re a writer, for crying out loud, can you see the value of letting those marks tell your story?”<\/p>\n

“Don’t get old,” my mom would warn.<\/p>\n

“Mom. What’s the alternative?”<\/p>\n

I call Harley the Dog and he races towards me, his front paws thrown out like he’s pretending to be a superhero. If he had a cape,\u00a0 it would flutter behind him. We head back to the stair climb and I clip the leash to his harness. The rain returns. We eat and sleep and wake up so early. I look in the mirror. I fuss with my camera and take another self-portrait. I do not always look this old, I think. I hope. But I make myself leave the lines and shadows. And then I sit down to write.<\/p>\n

\"\"Note: I replaced the original photo on this post. I realized that in being better to myself, I could use a photo that makes the point but doesn’t make me look my worst. Maybe that’s vanity, but maybe it’s progress, too.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s where I am. Geographically. Existentially. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":13314,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-op-ed","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13307"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13333,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13307\/revisions\/13333"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}