My heart has been breaking for over a month now. Sometimes all at once, sometimes a slow throbbing ache. Sometimes I feel a pain in my gut like I’ve been stabbed. Sometimes I can’t think a full thought for a full day and I can’t place why. I forgot to take off my grandmother’s costume earrings for three days and they gave me a rash on my earlobes. My parsley is in the trash, since I left the pot on the ground and the rats nibbled the edges overnight.

One thing I haven’t felt is empty.

Death has been whispering to me for a couple of months. More doula work than I’ve had in a couple years, more thoughts of the infinite than usual.

It’s like being told three months in advance that you’re about to be punched in the face. It didn’t surprise me, but it still fucking hurts.

In the last month, I’ve had two people come to me for death doula work. It felt good, having conversations with people in the worst two weeks of their lives, trying to make sense of the decidedly inexplicable. My capacity for great feeling, handicap more often than not, being used to its greatest potential.

I’ve gotten a little better at keeping a little for myself. Maybe that means I’m a little closer to being ready to do this regularly again.

I’ve missed thinking of death. It wore out its welcome for a while (as it so often does), but it hurt more to know I was running from the thought again. I’d rather face it now than wait until there’s nowhere left to hide.

I woke up at 6 to write 8 pages for work today. I finished that and got in a horror movie before noon. I’m waiting at the beer garden for Charles (perma late).

I can be alive for a little bit now.

I usually say Pablo Honey and Creep and “what else have they really dooooone riiight?”