You are, in a way

Lewis wrote a beautiful post about his friend, read here.

Today has been declared a public holiday by the office of me, but it is not quite as relaxing and nice as the normal public holidays I occasionally grant myself for long and/or labourious service to the general upkeep of the five hundred thousand commitments I have taken on during my short life, simply because I took the day off uni to do uni work. The only difference being that at uni I would be playing a lunchbox in our free improv for percussion class, and at home, I eat Weet-bix while writing a jazz solo on melodica. My priorities have become fiercely more existentially-based over the past few days, which has resulted in a definite lull in productivity and overall politeness (many apologies for my concrete frown of late!).

'Just gotta roll on', said my friend on the weekend. That's true. Things just happen. Watching those around me lately I've noticed that you also have to let waves of missing someone sweep you under sometimes, because some things are just impossible to fight. Every realisation of the multitude of the things you have lost forever hit in their own way and often things do get worse before they get better. I've never lost anyone the way my love and his friends have recently and let me tell you, the fraction of how sad it is for me, compared to how sad it must be for them, is absolutely tiny and miniscule. My sadness seeps in from theirs, refracted, echoed; their devastation sweeps through my body and it's confusing, who am I 'saddest' for - for the one they lost, or those who have lost? Who deserves the sadness more?

I know there's absolutely no answer to that. In fact, I am always rather shocked by the amount of love my small body can hold, full to bursting - so there is no reason why the same vessel couldn't be filled with sadness either, for those who have lost, and for the lost ones.

Here's my point though. I think that maybe the sadness that fills me to the absolute brim whenever I see the grief of my friends and my man is quite definitely in sync with the love that I, and any human being, am capable of providing. There is not one without the other, I think. I'm sad because I care for these people, and I care for these people because I love them. They are sad for who they have lost because they loved him, and they are sad for each other for who they have lost because they love each other dearly. So I guess if you think about it that way, all the sadness seems worth something more than just hopelessness, crippling and strong.

It's hard to think about anything else right now and it feels good to write about even just a few of the things that I've been thinking about, trying to sift through the feelings in my heart and head.

Sorry to be so full of sorrow!