Fear

Ok, so I'd love to say that my many-month absence has been tied into my inability to change the language settings on my Gmail account. I'd love to say that it's because I've been traveling. Or because I've found a new job.

All of these things are true. But they're not correct.

There's no good reason for me to neglect this space except one: I didn't know where to go. What on earth do you say while you grieve? "Hello, everyone... here's a post about how I'm still grieving..."

No. And I also felt the need not to write anything silly. Like how I don't really know what "business smart" means, as a dress code. How the centrifuge at the laundromat shredded my only appropriate pair of pants...

But tonight, I think I've isolated something that is both past and future. In as much as I want to think about either of those things.

I've been reading Nicola Griffith, lately. The most recent of her Aud Torvingen series. Let's nevermind the fact that I think of Aud as--that, in fact, she is-- a superhero. Let's not discuss how passionately I want her to simply occupy my couch; to feel her spring-coiled power, to look at the gorgeous expanse of her legs in my living room. No, that's all just good writing.

What I'm interested in is how deftly this novel explores the concept of fear. Fear in every tense.

My girlfriend and I don't, generally, discuss certain feelings. We don't much "process." We don't really know how to, not with each other. It's a strange state, actually. One that forces me to be far less verbal, and entirely more present. It's important that she gets my message right from the beginning; it's vital that I understand hers.

But tonight, somehow fear came out. The way we anticipate it, the way we hurt over what is simply a message. The way we worry it into a great monster. And my girlfriend--my weathervane and my lee--named her fear for me.

It's so simple in its brutality. I can comfort, I can soothe. I can open myself up and say, "Here I am. I'm just like you." But I cannot protect. It is not only me who has lost. Who is grieving. And who, again, will lose.

There is always a monster bigger than you.