So I don't forget...

I've heard that grief is a strange thing in that it hits randomly and without warning. You could be doing something completely mundane (such as data entry into a new database system), and all of a sudden, there's sadness staring you in the face (or anger or panic or some other emotion associated with the grieving process). As I've mentioned before, I've experienced some familial loss in recent months, and I consider myself to be in a grieving process for this now. So please excuse the following, dear reader...I make an effort to record memories when they come to me because I really don't want to forget little daily-life details from my life with my grandparents.

Maybe it's the fault of spending an hour or so last night going through old family photos and realizing that there are more photos of me with my grandma than with probably anyone else. This made me feel good more than sad, but I think it planted a seed to remember this random thing today as I was going about my work-ish business: as a kid, and even into teen-hood and early adulthood, I spent a lot of time hanging around in my grandparents' attic as my grandma worked on the sewing machine. She loved sewing up there in her little finished room with her plants and her paintings that my mom did in school hanging on the wood-paneled walls. And she would listen to the radio, a plastic, wood-grain-printed clock radio (I think it was a GE; I know it had the flip-over plastic numbers that were obsolete since the invention of digital read-outs), tuned to this bizarre "easy listening" station that played violin-heavy renditions of hits "from the 70's to today." We've all heard muzak played in elevators and insurance company phone system holds, but I swear this was weirder, though I don't think the station still exists in order to verify that claim. In any case, I HATED that music...it poisoned my dreams at night and waltzed around in my head like a soundtrack to my young life. If I had to hear Lionel Richie's "Hello" on those cat-fight screechy violins with jazzy soprano sax solo one more time, I was probably going to commit arson.

But you know, I thought of the lyrics to "Hello" a little bit ago and had to laugh at my juvenile rage over "grandma's radio station." And I just had to record that silly memory. I still loathe muzak (my hate fueled by many many years of musical instruction throughout my life), but the thought of it reminds me of my gram and her quirkiness. We dismantled the attic several weeks ago in the now-for sale house on South Hazel Street, but I will always see it in my head (if I can count on memory not to fade too badly) in the same warm, woody-toned way. The sewing machine perpendicular to the windows in the dormer and the radio (which was always perched on the top of an old black and white TV that was pretty much never on because it only got like one channel) at my grandma's back as she worked away hemming pants or whatever. The dangerous electric space heater plugged in near her feet in the winter, its coils glowing red just beyond a screen that you could easily poke your fingers through (and something she repeatedly warned me against). So funny and strange.

Sad. Tired.

I know that this blog should probably be called "Heartbreak and Crying" or "Sad Violins," or some such misery-evoking title. It seems all I do here is highlight my sadness and worry and desperate need for pity. For this I offer an apology...and a request that you don't pity me; my life really isn't that bad...I just have some sort of chemical imbalance, I think, that makes me sad a lot (especially when exhausted, as now). Just make me laugh now and then and I will love you forever (whether or not you really want me to). :-)

Anyway, so I am sad and tired today. Probably more tired than truly sad, but the tiredness makes me weepy, so it's hard to tell. (In case you don't know, I have two main stages of exhaustion -- the first is an inexplicable near-constant recall of random German phrases in my head. The second is weepiness, which progresses from a point of mild hide-able over-emotional reactions to full-on tears streaming down my face beyond my ability to control. Seriously, I am not making this up even though it probably sounds insane). There is good reason for sadness, I assume...I feel trapped in my job, I'm trapped in a living situation that continues to get more and more stressful, I lost two very wonderful grandparents within the last 8 months, and I have no money. Though it gets me in trouble to tie those all together, they are linked (well, some of them anyway) -- I think it's pretty clear. I realize that my life could be much worse, of course -- I could be on the street eating out of garbage cans or have some terrible disease or something along those tragic lines -- I could be fighting to survive. Instead, I am surviving. But that's all I feel like I'm doing most of the time...just numbly pulling myself along. And I am heavy...the effort takes considerable energy.

What does it take to feel like I'm actually living?