Grief (A to Z Blogging Challenge, Day 7)

I was diving headlong into a post about grief earlier. Here's the list I'd compiled before I headed out to lunch:

• For the relatives that my family and I have lost, including an aunt to cancer, grandparents to the after effects of strokes, grandparents to long-term health issues too many to name, and a cousin to suicide. For the waves of sadness that roll in all these years later.
• For the 2009 layoff that radically changed my life and the lives of so many others, including my father/former boss who had to eliminate most of his staff because of the fallout from the 2008 economic crisis.
• For the 2013 mindfuck boot in the ass from the tech start-up for whom I worked for two very, very long years. I’d still like to see the company burn to the ground. I won’t light it on fire or buy the matches, but I’ll bring marshmallows to the roast.
• For the anger, pain, depression, resentment, hurt, and every other feeling that completely overwhelmed me and ruined my week at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival in 2009, which would end up being the final time I would attend the gathering before its final Fest in 2015.

It was good that I had to stop writing because I had managed to upset myself. It's important that I acknowledge these feelings -- obviously things that are several years old continue to deeply affect me -- but I wasn't moving through the grief. I was swimming it and, oh this sounds like a lesbian cliche, and I didn't have time to process it.

It may have been a better idea to lean in to the tears that filled my eyes and, ever so dramatically, spilled down my cheeks from behind my sunglasses, but that little, tiny cry made me feel better. Not enough, though. I snapped a little at a new friend when I got my feelings hurt during lunch. The person who did the hurting made a comment in jest that rubbed me the wrong way and before I knew it, I was finger-pointing and snipping in their direction. The moment passed easily and quickly -- it was easy enough to laugh it off -- but I was still a little like Where the fuck did that come from? It's the third time in the past couple of weeks when words have been all the way out of my mouth before my brain could register I was even speaking. Which is good for standing up for myself and definitely a result of being 40+ and giving no fucks but also OOH SORRY ABOUT THAT. Didn't mean to get that vitriol all over you.