Winter

Sarah R.

I have spent every winter since 2005 in a wine drunk haze of bitter grief and fiery rage.

Twenty years confronting expectation and idealism…how doing everything “right” isn’t rewarded with everything “right.” How brothers can fall and hit their heads and die suddenly without warning, without explanation, without goodbye. The audacity of death.

I have spent every winter since 2019 in a wine drunk haze of self-righteous hate.

Six years confronting Divorce. A “legal Dissolution.”  More like, Dissociation.  From my reality.  From my home.  From my family…from everything I thought was true.  At least, it’s what I had been told, taught, pounded into my heart and brain until there was no more room for whimsy, wonder, or curiosity.  It was what I wanted, and wished, and needed to be.  Disassociated.  Divorced from the wishing and wanting things to be different.

So I left, then I arrived.  Into everything this is, was, and will be.

I have spent the last two years in a wine drunk haze of complacency, overwhelm, and longing.

Broken heads and broken hearts, I have prostrated myself at the foot of human grief and suffering.  I have looked at things I knew I could never stomach and the anger has burned.  It has burned a hole through and burned me out.  Completely burned me down.

This weekend.  Through the rising smoke, I saw my shadow.  Wicked and wafting, waving me to come as I am.  And she was so damn beautiful.

Six more weeks of winter.