it really is something especially miserable when a part of you is miserable every day no matter how incredible and wonderful and special the day's circumstances happened to be. there is something especially miserable about how the joy of seeing a newborn moose calf or holding a bear or helping catch an eider just never, ever ever ever overrides the sense that your whole life has suddenly gone wrong and that there is no fucking fixing it. i have to grasp both in my hands. i must hold the joy and wonder and excitement close to me, the knowledge that god i am so so incredibly fortunate, that i worked for this and i would be worse than a fool to take it for granted today. and in my heart and my fist and my chest and my throat i must also hold this feeling that somehow, without good reason, without real warning, a part of my life is over. and i can't fucking reckon with that. i just fucking can't. i can't look at it straight, i can't accept it, i can't live with it -- and so it lives in the corner of my eyesight at all times. i look at it, perpetually, sideways. it lives in my dreams, and in my sleep when i waken without quite remembering them. and so i find myself living a half-life. i wrote a poem about how to navigate your life as a dead animal. today was one of those days when i not only came home feeling like one, but smelling like it too.
