How “Am” I?

A poem for the grief peepers, leeches, and attention seekers.

Grief is disorienting.

It’s like a 3am barroom brawl after someone slipped a Xanax in your drink.

Small snippets of memories crocheted together by the design of my brain to enter into self-protection mode.

Blackouts.

Nothingness.

Feeling numb and overstimulated at the same time.

Claustrophobic yet alone.

A sea of sadness and primal rage that constantly swirls through ups and downs waiting for you to let your guard down.

A dirty sucker punch to the gut.

It’s being on display.

Living in a fishbowl where every movement is judged and discussed by people who don’t know you. Or him.

Living in the public’s fixation on gore and gossip in real-time.

Its blinding fury seeing grief leeches attach themselves to your person while inserting false narratives into the situation wishing you could Will Smith slap a bitch.

It’s a testament to those who show up.

And a cutting away of the ones you thought would.

It’s cracking a smile to get through social interactions with outsiders when all you want to do is set the world on fire and laugh as it burns.

Dodging unhelpful death clichés, crude comments, and so sorry’s from the unconscious.

The bleary-eyed sleep deprivation and unintentional anorexia.

A physical marching on of days but you’re frozen in time.

The tornado of depression and anxiety.

The Ukraine? Vaccines? Your cliché gender reveal? All trivial. Don’t care.

For nothing of this human world truly compares to what it feels like to be on the brink of the afterlife.

Sifting through the human experience while awaiting your turn.

Take it or leave it.

This is how I am.