The nugget of my grief

[Trigger warnings: loss, death of parent, grief, sorrow.]

Yesterday afternoon around 5:30, after having spent most of the morning and early afternoon running errands and exercising, I finally sat on the couch to relax with a cup of tea. 

And then, I started sobbing. 

And I curled up with my favorite blanket in the corner of the couch. 

My housemate’s dog, who was resting in his “usual armchair” and is generally very good at leaving me alone on the couch, slowly stretched and got up as I cried curled up on the couch, and then came over to me. But I did not tell him to go back to his “bed” this time. This time, I invited him up on the couch with me and, as soon as he had made himself comfortable, I got a big cushion and just lay myself down beside him, hugging-stroking him as I cried my heart out. 

This level of grief cannot be justified by the breakup with the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I had hooked up or even by the more general and still painful sense of disappointment or estrangement with he chorus as a whole. 

Yes, being part of this chorus meant, and still means, a lot to me. And yes, the connection with the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I had hooked up was quite deep on several levels — intellectual and emotional as well as physical/sexual. And yes, I put a lot of time and effort and hope into both of these relationships or dynamics over the past six months. But still, the chorus is not the only community I have to whom I feel close & connected — on the contrary; and the relationship with the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I hooked up lasted, from the very beginning to the very end of our direct communications, approximately four months, effectively hanging out together in person only half-a-dozen times. 

So where does this extremely deep and intense grief stem from? 

It’s from the loss of my father. And not simply his death in July of 2023. It’s from the loss of affectionate, playful, physical connection that I had with him as a young child — a loss that started when I was somewhere between 10-12 years old. 

I have many wonderful, close friends and solid, intimate relationships. There are two types of connection, or relationship, though, that I still crave and seem unable to get: on the one hand, closer, more committed or more present adventure buddies (platonic); on the other, relationships involving more playfulness/fun and/or physical touch and/or some sexual intimacy (even if in an aro-ace setting). The latter types of connections are what I was hoping to get through the chorus as a whole, for some aspects, and from one or a few members specifically (e.g. from the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I had hooked up) in some other ways. 

My double disappointment or loss with chorus members is hitting on the nugget of my grief, by (re)activating some pre-rational, emotional, even physical memories of my father — of him as loving and present and playful with me when I was a young child, before my mother became overbearing (both emotionally and physically) and my father absent or withdrawn. 

Those pre-rational, emotional, almost physical memories are starting to resurface for me now, in this new wave, or layer, of grief. They come up unexpectedly, like when I cried on the couch and felt the need to hug my housemate’s dog yesterday afternoon, or as I lay in bed this morning slowly waking up from a very late night out dancing, or when I started crying the other day listening to Noah Kahan’s song Stick Season and knowing, instinctively, that the sorrow the lyrics were stirring within me were beyond the breakup with the gender-expansive gay guy with whom I had hooked up (& in me had no romantic nor sexual connotation). 

The memories that are coming up for me are more like feelings, something at a pre-rational, emotional, and physical level that must be very old, dating back to when I was a young child. While the feelings and memories are old, though, they’re just as real for me now as they were back then. Maybe now that I’m an adult they have taken a different form, but they’re still just as compelling and painful.