I Want You Back In My Life
November 18, 2005
From a letter to a good friend who has lost someone. It says more about my mind than anything else. Look quickly folks. It’s a limited time glimpse 
I understand what you’re going through , or rather my own version of it. This is the part when all the fuss has died down and friends, family, neighbours don’t want to keep talking about “it”. But you know what ? You’re still living with “IT”.
A couple of years ago. About 12-18 months (maybe less) after mum died…
I recall sitting with my laptop playing with gadgets. I have a digital camcorder and I was playing with editing the video. I had a whole bunch of tapes and was capturing the video and mucking around with it. I found myself drawn to video with mum in it and after an hour or two of this I became really melancholic and generally depressed but couldn’t draw myself away from the moving images and sounds. Mum’s mum (my nana) had just died and she was in the videos too.
Val reminded me that I was only setting myself up for this. Part of the mind wanted to watch all this stuff that would ultimately make me sad and part of me was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. For minutes I revelled in the misery of it. I was satisfying something inside me that wanted to play with the fire and get a little burned. Then for hours I burned in the sadness of it all : when this wound is so raw you can’t just get a little scalded by the candle flame. It draws you in and you are consumed by it. You can’t help it. Jeez mate you know better than I do that “you can’t help it”. Whether it’s an illness, a sexuality that isn’t “normal” or consuming grief… you can’t help it.
But try. Try to park it. There is no-one holding a gun to your head telling you to go through photos, letters, videos, flavours, tastes and reminders of a different way of life. Life has changed now and you need to get used to this different way of living before you’re able to cope with looking at that other way of living you knew so well.
Like I said. It’s not worse it’s not better. It’s just different. You need to give different some time. Fuck sake man – that other way of living had 50 something years for you to get used to it ? Like a well worn pair of jeans.
These new jeans are pinching in all the wrong places. You loosen the buttons and get a little more comfortable and there you are with your pants around your ankles in the middle of the shopping centre. Hmmm. Let’s move away from that image eh ? 😉
Like a diet. Why would you fill the fridge with milk chocolate cake when the doctor says that every time you eat a piece of chocolate cake you’ll die a little inside. Your body needs some time to learn how to digest dark chocolate. It’s still chocolate. But not like chocolate you’ve tasted before ….
Here endeth the lesson 
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blue eyed dressed for every situation 