I have found it difficult to write lately. It seems that I have lost the habit. I feel like I have nothing to say, nothing that I want to say. I have been trying to face everything sober, and am having to learn that that is not easy. Alcohol for me is not the problem now, it is cannabis. I can’t use it anymore, at least not at this time. My addictive tendencies are too strong, combined with the will to escape, these two forces together are too much. There is no ‘taking the edge off’, there is just complete annihilation. There is no stopping me once I have started, and the emotional toll it takes on me after is just not worth it. The most important thing I can do now is stay sober, in the sadness and grief that surrounds me like an unwanted fog. Even cigarettes, they are a means of escape. I am rewatching Stranger Things, and watching Hopper reminds me of this. He always smokes, taking from a smashed soft pack of Camels. He smokes to escape, to push down the pain of loosing his young daughter, a pain that forever changed him. There’s the few moments of escape that the cigarette offers him, to forget, or perhaps to remember in some part of his subconscious, an act of punishing himself, disguised as an act of momentary relief. I know this game, this deep psychological game of emotional resistance, of passing the time with the pain. It was why I started smoking again in California, to pass the time, to take a break from the emotional horror story that I was living. Yet I knew I was punishing myself, hurting my breathing, my breath. The refined act of living is breathing, and I was consciously making it harder for myself by filling my lungs with toxic smoke. Punishing myself for years of unresolved questions, memories, and problems, disguised as a break from the present, a present that was bringing all of these things to light. Will this awareness now give me the strength to stop? I hope so.

This morning I woke up late, the kids watching the TV at 9:30, and still watching, on a Sunday morning. The cat, the one that’s left, sleeping in the sunny spot on the bed, waiting for me to get up. Made coffee, with chocolate, snuggled on the couch with my daughter. It was lovely, just being present, enjoying the kids doing what they want to do. But then I went out for a smoke, and one turned into two. Now I don’t want to sit with them, so they don’t smell me, and I’m writing in the study. Even cigarettes, not only alcohol or cannabis, separate me from them. What if I were able to just be fully present? How much would that change my relationships with them for the better? I owe it to myself, to them, to find out.

I must find my strength, trust myself, to take one step at a time forward into the future, the new world without my mother in it. I can create my life now, gone is the source of panic, of the world ending, as it has already ended. Left over is me, my wiring, my own deep issues and fears, and I can deal with that now. The catch is that the grief is here now, requiring a new rhythm, one of much rest, and patience for myself. I must sleep early, sleep when the children sleep, so that during the day I can work, and grieve, and do good things for myself too. For the hours I have are short, and the demands form before are still there, and the desires to create good things in the world through my work. But I have to be honest with myself and admit that the grief is overwhelming. It must be allowed to overwhelm me, but in ways that don’t hurt me, or others. I must learn to live with it, to carry it with me, to set it aside gently when I must tend to other things, other people, and to not forget that it is there, so that it doesn’t surprise me at opportune moments, like an angry, wounded dog. But for now I will have another cigarette, let the kids watch another show, knowing that both will delay the inevitable, but for now that is ok. My silly, adolescent grief is still here, but I will put it to rest, let it go, with the end of this winter break that we have all spent together, watching too much TV and sleeping in late.