October

I don't do things by halves.  When I am happy I am deliriously, uncontrollably, completely happy.  When I am angry I can do nothing but grouch around the house.  When I am excited I dance around, singing, and bouncing, barely able to contain my joy.  When I am sad I don't talk to anyone.  October was a bad month here in Texas.  Some of the things were big like my best friend getting in an accident that totaled her car (everyone was okay and walked away from the accident... except for her eight month old who could not even crawl at the time) and some were little such as finding a gallon of near exploding, rotten milk in the back of my car (I had to spear it so it wouldn't explode- after I relocated it to the grass... far from my car.  It exploded still).  I could go on and on about how very EXCITING last month was but I'm not sure I could make it funny so I'm not going to try.

In college I was in a few bands, one of which was made up entirely of indecisive women.  The week before a band competition we were trying desperately to come up with a band name and after several days of really STUPID suggestion I screamed in frustration, "Just come up with SOMETHING SERIOUS!"  It stuck and forever afterwards that was our name.  It was cheesy- we were in college- don't judge.  The irony was that we never performed anything serious.  We did a rendition of Dance with me Daddy that made everyone want a hug, and round of I Need A Hero that made every roll over laughing, and a song that we wrote called Set Me as a Seal (cause everyone needs a stereotypical love song) but we were far from "serious".  The real irony that since my band disbanded (pun intended) I've been far more serious.  I don't really share my emotions when they are the hardest to deal with and most of the worst parts of my life I don't talk about until years later.  My silence this last month is the only way I can express how very hard it was and how scared I was.  For the first time since I was five I cried in public and for the first time since I was eighteen I left a message on my brother's phone that was incoherent because I was so close to tears.  I felt guilty having a birthday and I even missed Wilfred Owen's death day too!  (For those that don't know- I LOVE Wilfred Owen... bordering on obsession) I won't show anyone what I wrote the week after we lost Jon but I will try to explain what I was going through.

Grief
You wake up screaming
When there is not a sound
And you think someone’s grabbed you
When there’s no one around
It is the echoing silence
That’s so loud you cannot think
And you are scared to miss
What might happen if you blink
When you can talk to strangers
But not your best friends
And you keep hoping you’ll wake up
But this hell never ends
You feel guilty when you laugh
Because it means you’re still alive
And you wonder what he would have done better
If he hadn’t died.