One of the things I’ve realized in grieving is that for the first time since I was a child, I’m completely codependent on others to take care of me.
I grew up saying “I’ll do it myself”.
Sucking at receiving because I was so stubborn that I was able enough to do it alone.
I haven’t ever lived with a boyfriend. Hell, I’ve never even thought about living with a boyfriend.
I remember telling my only long term boyfriend from years ago “I think I’m going to move to BC” and he said “I could live in BC” and my brain went “Oh, I meant alone.”
I don’t see marriage in my future.
If I do we will all be naked, and donate the money we would have spent on flowers, wine bottles with our names on them, fluffy dresses, a ten story white and pink cake to orphanages, or nonprofits who work to educate women.
I had my astrology read in Guatemala and he said, “You aren’t really spiritual.” With a cocked eyebrow and then began,”You don’t prioritize marriage or family. I see you ending up with a man who is grounded. Who will cook you meals, and take care of you.”
My track record of broke musicians made me laugh out-loud.
Stability could be nice, I thought.
Since being hit by grief–I’m unable to take care of myself alone.
There are two kinds of people on this earth—survive to eat, and eat to survive.
I would happily take a pill for nutrients and sustenance each day.
I’m a creator with an abundance of ideas—there’s not time to cook for hours each day, even when I’m at the best of my self care.
I’ve cooked three meals in the past six week (eggs, toast, cereal and low maintenance foods don’t count as cooking).
I’ve paid people to make me food.
I eat alone in restaurants every day.
“You’re our newest most dedicated regular” the server replies cheerfully as she refills my coffee.
Go death, debilitating our ability to function therefore feeding the economy.
I’ve camped out with friends and family.
My mom forced plates of beautiful food in my face as I try play catch up on life, making me feel like I’m six and I’ve been at the playground too long.
“Eat, little.” She says.
I think in moments of pain and turmoil our appetite is either liquidated to 5% or sky rockets to act as a vice.
When my heart is broken and I am in pain, lacking enthusiasm for living—this manifests in my appetite for life.
I avoided booze, men, sex, and any companionship for the first month of grief.
I was aware of how nice it would be to collapse into someone and also how I didn’t wish my emotional garbage bags I was pulling around with me, on anyone.
I believe when we sleep with someone we get naked, in entirety—meaning we take off our emotions and play around in all of them, too.
Sleeping, sex, shopping, eating, TV, drugs and alcohol are all vices we turn to in depression, sadness or lows.
They all provide endorphins, escapisms and shut offs.
After the first month passed I met a really beautiful man.
It was my birthday.
I drank champagne and ate oysters before going out dancing.
My friend and I stepped over grief and talked about love and sex. We ate oysters, of course we talked about sex.
I met Andre while crying—literally.
I was on the dance floor, at a bar some friends were playing at.
I had tried to celebrate myself wildly all day—with the presence of death came the immediate knowing of the fragility of life and urgency to live.
Yet as I blew my candles out on my chocolate mousse cupcake that morning—I felt sadness. I felt it was like me blowing out a light.
Any metaphors for death brought me back to the sadness alive in my heart.
So I stood, crying on the dance floor—in my white birthday skirt. No longer giving a damn about celebrating—feeling my still broken, fresh open, grieving heart.
I felt a big hand on the small of my back.
The night ended watching a sunrise on the white sandy Mexico beach of Victoria. There were orange and yellow splashes of golden light across water that held its breath.
We sat on a grey blanket and I was held.
I let myself collapse into arms that were capable of holding me.
The next day I went to go move into a place.
I found out some last minute deal breakers on the space, and wound up sitting in my car at dusk, with a car full of my belongings and plants—with no idea where to go.
My fight or flight kicked in.
I almost drove to an airport and bought a ticket to New York—to drown in blues and drink heaping glasses of wine in dark bars. To Costa Rica—to wake up and drink salt and smell wax as I dropped in on the waves and let mamma earth heal me. To Greece—to visit my father, sit on the chairs he made from his sunned brown hands and drink coffee as thick as soup and listen to Led Zepplin on his small radio that cuts in and out from the mountains.
I picked up my phone and called Andre.
“Come here, I’m buying you dinner and a bottle of wine.”
So we ate fine French food and cold Chardonnay and talked about how unpredictable and fucked up life was.
I knew two people in Victoria, both were out of town.
“You can stay with me. In the guest room.” He said.
Every bone in my body said, “No, I’m fine.”
But, I wasn’t fine.
I was grieving. I was without a home or a clue of where to go. My car was full of boxes. I was tired.
So I brought my plants into his apartment on the second floor, my white suitcases that are hip and beautiful but too heavy.
I couldn’t find my toothbrush—so I just used his, for a week.
Yep. Codependent.
In the course of eight days—his friends helped move my things into storage, he emotionally supported me through my story being misrepresented by a large magazine, moments of pits of grief, a situation turned sour that became one of the most mentally abusive things I’ve experienced yet to date..
He helped me find a filmmaker for some extra footage I needed for a project I began in New York.
He made me coffee every morning.
He made me five star breakfasts of grilled broccolini on hash browns and poached eggs.
Halibut crusted with wasabi peas.
He went with me to buy thank you flowers, get groceries.
He let me use his laptop and phone to do business.
He let my clothes demolish his apartment while I chose what to wear for the video.
He ironed my clothes at 11pm while I flailed around in my creative blur.
Filled the coffee pot up the night before, and left a green MEC canister beside it for me to wake to at five am to go shoot.
He would wake me up, say “Let’s go” and take me to wake up in rose gardens, the morning after I stayed up until 2 am crying.
He would send me ads for house rentals, while he was at work.
Call friends about cabins too rent.
He would pick me up after a long day, all one hundred and five pounds of me and put me in his lap and put on a movie about Gustav Klimt—after seeing my care and love for a print of his I have.
He tenderly took my clothes off and loved me—touched my skin, kissed my body and held me close.
Let me sleep in while CBC radio played and his day began.
And I knew it was codependent, and I knew I wasn’t yet able to carry my own mountain, let alone another’s—but I stayed.
We talked about it, too.
Before we kissed. Before I brought my plants upstairs. When I tried to leave after three days, five days.
He had just finished a six year relationship.
I washed my hair with his ex-girlfriends pink Kevin Murphy shampoo and blue ouchless brush.
He dove into the distraction that I was.
I collapsed right back.
I left the slice of time we spent together telling him I needed space to continue to heal, to be able to carry my own mountain.
“Fuck mountains”, he said smiling.
Relationships take energy, they take output.
I’m still just inputting. Squeaking by, speeding up, taking large steps back.
Grief is a wrecking ball that hits you from all sides.
It’s so important to me that I show up able and well in relationship.
To walk beside someone, and give energetically equally.
I am continuing to walk forward and to heal.
I am continuing to check in and know if I encompass the capacity to be in relationship.
The answer right now is no.
I am so grateful for this experience of codependency, and also aware how more efficient love is when we are walking and loving on our own two feet.
It’s where I will always meet my lovers and partners.