I M Perfect lady

I will not presume what grief of losing a love one in death is, but I feel like I can articulate the grief felt when leaving a family.

It is an odd sense of grief, almost self-inflicted, where you purposefully leave and walk into a field of sorrow and lonesome.

You continue to keep yourself there each time you choose to not participate, you segregate yourself to solitary confinement, yet knowing others gather and go on, you become a ghost in their lives and they in yours, living walking talking ghosts.

Your lives no longer intercede, nor are there new memories made, unless you count the new grief ones.

The relationship has died but the body lives on.

You become a silent witness, a ghost with a body.

We may all appear the same, unchanged, and many have kept up their same old routine, it is only I that have left the path, one that keeps us separated.

The separation is as complete as death.

And even colder, I feel, for there isn’t loving feelings flowing back and forth, instead stark obvious disagreement, irreconcilable differences.

The differences are what separate us, not death.

Death is final the ultimate trump card, there is nothing to wish, hope or try to change. Both sides agree.

In irreconcilable differences, sides continue to be haunted by trying.

Trying to reconnect and trying to move on, failing to articulate and stop even trying, there never seems to be a Game Over sign.

And you can be going along seemingly healing from the ‘divorce of family’ and a phone call comes in, a name is mentioned, a party gathers, a reminder once again of where you are literally standing, alone outside.

Where in death people want to keep the old memories alive, I feel that when the past comes knocking it sets me back.

Back to me having to decide again, is this a relationship I want, is this healthy for me, what has changed in their worlds, a ghost coming back to me…asking again,
divorce or not, dead or alive, with me or not, friends or enemies, sisters or strangers, mother or abuser, a choice to once again be made.

Nothings over, no final exit, just flowing in and out, shouting our glaring difference, daring me once again to not see, to turn away from the truth and get along. See not our mismatched selves and be a family.

A family of mismatched lives.