How do you handle grief?

Thanks, grief.

Thanks for making depression look like the buzzing little bully it always was. Depression is the tallest kid in the 4th grade, dinging rubber bands off the back of your head and feeling safe on the playground, knowing that no teacher is coming to help you.

But grief? Grief is Jason Statham holding that 4th-grade bully's head in a toilet and then fucking the teacher you've got a crush on in front of the class. Grief makes depression cower behind you and apologize for being such a dick.

If you spend 442 days completely focused on ONE thing you can achieve miracles. Make a film, write a novel, learn a language, travel around the world. Fall in love with someone. Get 'em to love you back.

But 442 days at the mercy of grief and loss feels like 442 years and you have shit to show for it. You will not be physically healthier. You will not feel "wiser." You will not have "closure." You will not have "perspective" or "resilience" or "a new sense of self." You WILL have solid knowledge of fear, exhaustion and a new appreciation for the randomness and horror of the universe. And you'll also realize that 442 days is nothing but a warm-up for things to come.

And...

You will have been shown new levels of humanity and grace and intelligence by your family and friends. They will show up for you, physically and emotionally, in ways which make you take careful note, and say to yourself, "Make sure to try to do that for someone else someday." Complete strangers will send you genuinely touching messages on Facebook, or will somehow figure out your address to send you letters which you'll keep and re-read 'cause you can't believe how helpful they are. You'll wish you were of a kid's age, because the way they embrace despair and joy are at a purer level that you're going to have to reconnect with, to reach backwards through years of calcified cynicism and ironic detachment.

Lose your cool, and you're saved.

It's been 442 days into this.

I was face-down and frozen for weeks. It's 442 days later and I can confidently say I have reached a point where I'm crawling. Which, objectively, is an improvement. Maybe 442 days later I'll be walking.

Any spare energy I've managed to summon since that time, I've devoted to quest for true knowledge. With a lot of help from some very amazing people, I'm sure I'll make it to where I want to be someday.

And I'm going to start cracking jokes again. And writing. And exploring in stuff and making things I like and working with friends on projects and do all the stuff I was always so privileged to get to do before the air caught fire around me and the sun died. It's all I knew how to do before I that golden time.

Okay, I'll start being funny again soon. What other choice do I have? Reality is in a death spiral and we seem to be living in a cackling, looming nightmare-swamp. We're all being dragged into a shadow-realm of doom by hateful lunatics who are determined to send our planet careening into oblivion.

Hey, there's that smile I was missing!