Sehnsucht

I want something but I don't know what it is. 

I have eaten. I drank water. I slept. 

But I am still ravenous. 

There is something inside of me that wants, and wants, and wants. 

Sometimes I am able to keep myself distracted enough that I don't hear its clamor and sometimes even when I do, I'm just too numb to care. 

But it's still there, growling,

"Is this all there is?" 

"You're running out of time."

"You are not enough." 

"You are LACKING." 

And I think about how old I am and what is happening in the world around me and I wonder what else I'm supposed to be feeling right now. 

There is so much beauty and love and suffering and despair in this plane. I want to absorb and absolve all of it, but it surrounds me like a vast sea that I'll never be able to drink. 

Someone died. Someone was born. Others just exist in the liminal horror of the 9-5. The cycle restarts at irregular intervals, and I watch with the eyes of someone who knows they are both part of something and outside of it. I am here, now, but for what purpose, I do not know. 

Is there something I need to do? Some way to justify my having been here? I feel a guilt for surviving, and guilt for existing, and most of all, a guilt for the hunger. The wanting more. 

I don't want to die. I am afraid of leaving without feeling like I am ready. But I've rarely ever felt ready for any change before it happens. And so much of the change in my life has been good. 

Death came close last week, and took someone only a few years older than me. She was a former friend, a woman who befriended me in my first year of college. Her smile both warmed and chilled me because I couldn't believe someone could possibly be so happy. And I found out later that she wasn't. She was uncomfortable just like me, and her smile was a mask. Still, the person behind that smile was incredibly thoughtful, generous, patient, and brave. 

She always made space for me, for my needs and my feelings. She was the first person patient enough to teach me how to crochet, a lifeline for my ADHD brain that struggled to focus during class. She fed me, let me take naps on her couch, laughed with me, and told me stories of her adventures as a missionary in India. Even though her body was a bit weak, she would still give the squeeziest hugs with her shaky arms. 

Rebekah fought cancer for years before she left. And even though last week her body clearly reached the end of its ability to function, I want to know, did she end too? 

Is Rebekah done? 

What about my Nana, my uncle, my cousin's husband? Are they just...nothing? 

Surely not, right? 

Surely all of that presence, that meaning, that connection still exists. 

And that makes me think, why do we mourn people when they die? 

What specifically do we grieve? 

It's not really the loss of their life because we weren't the ones who were living it. That wasn't something we had to lose. 

What we lose is the pieces of them that mattered to us. The things they did, the way they made us feel, the imprint of their body in our mind and on our skin. 

Each of these things mattered because our brains decided they did. So what is there to do when the encapsulation of all this meaning stops being and doing?

We try to stop thinking they mattered? We believe we will never find those pieces elsewhere? We unconsciously seek the pieces everywhere, believing maybe we can somehow put them back together. Then we realize we can't.

The finality of that "can't" makes me angry. But how is that reasonable? 

I wasn't the one who made the person exist to begin with. What makes me think that my missing them can bring them back? 

But still, I bang my fists against the glass, wishing I didn't care so much. Wishing the distraction and the numbness would take away the wanting. 

Wondering endlessly. 

Why? 

And then I know it's time for me to come back to my body, to name the things I can see, hear, and feel. I reel myself back in, hand over hand, focusing on the voices in the other room, the delicate clink of my earrings, and the tear balanced on the precipice of my cheek. 

And I bottle this feeling up into words that can't contain it. 

"I'm sorry for your loss."