The Summer of Magical Thinking

Tomorrow, I start a new phase of my life as I begin a brand new job. This summer has been a blur. I've been reading Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and this book really does provide the best account of grief I have ever read. She describes physically feeling cold, exposed and raw, all emotions and sensations I am experiencing. After Teeks'memorial service, I became so cold that I started shivering and my teeth uncontrollably chattering. Despite our friend Hunter providing me his jacket (actually it was Teek's old jacket), I still couldn't stop shaking. And, nobody wants to hear anymore that I'm still feeling sad and exposed and I'm trying so hard to hide it, I sometimes I feel like I am going crazy.(Didion also describes this as well.) And, the thing is, sometimes I feel as if I've completed some major rite of passage and that my life will become more meaningful and purposeful. Today, I saw a little boy release a helium balloon in Father Demo Square. When I was a little girl, my mother used to get me a balloon when she dragged me to the mall. From the moment it was tied on my wrist, I remember feeling a sense of panic that I would lose the balloon, which I almost inevitably did before I reached the front door. As I watched my balloon float into the great beyond, I remember encountering feelings of lack of control, regret, sadness, loss and wonder as I watched the balloon float into some unimaginable destination in the sky. As I watched the little boy today release the balloon, I realized that those feelings I encountered at the age of 5 weren't much different than the grief I experienced thirty years later. So, tomorrow is a new beginning or one of my new beginnings and it's all going to be alright.