2.5

Grieving People Who Haven't Died

February 28th is a really strange day for me this year. Today marks one year since I realized I was in love with someone. I could point out to you just about where on that Providence sidewalk it clicked for me. This is what I wrote when I came home that night: 

Friday I realized that I’m in love with you. The energy in the room was great and everyone was getting along so you were happy. You looked at me and smiled and I wish I was able to take 1000 photos of that moment. For a moment my world stood still and even sound hesitated to enter my ears. Though you weren’t dressed up I thought you looked beautiful. You’re beautiful simply because you’re you. You passed through me like sunlight in a dense forest and gently warmed my chest. The energy shot up to behind my eyes and I felt all my senses expand into another dimension the same way they do during the best part of a favorite song. I looked into your eyes and wanted nothing more than to be truthful when you said “You’re looking at me like you’re expecting something.” I wasn’t expecting anything from you, but from myself. I thought I was going to tell you how much I love spending time with you and how much I love your face but I held back. It just wasn’t the right time. 

My words aren't great there (was probably drinking with my old roommate right before) but it paints enough of a picture. The way I remember this moment last year clearer than yesterday says so much. I can feel the memory of that feeling in my chest. I looked up at the sky tonight and remembered how beautiful I thought the sky was that Friday. Realizing I was back under that exact same set of stars after my highly uneventful workday felt crushing but somehow still beautiful. That was the first time I've ever romantically loved someone and the fact that nothing ever came out of it, and how that person isn't even in my life anymore, hurts so bad. It's so hard because it's not like he's fallen off the face of the earth. This is someone I could call right now if I dug through my old messages and found his number, though I'd likely get a horrible response. I will see him in person again and again as long as we both continue to love our local hardcore punk scene, though we most likely won't talk. I continue to work towards moving on because it's extremely likely we won't ever reconnect, even as friends.

I emphasize the likliness of it all because that's the worst part of grieving someone who isn't outright dead or entirely off the grid: possibility. The fact that there's not a true 0% chance of ever reconnecting with the person you've seemed to have lost makes it harder to put things to rest. My brain (not just for this person, but many), loves to harp on this to me all hours of the day: "Despite everything, maybe it's not over." It's as if those words undo the shitty stitch job I gave myself after being torn open. Then some asshole in the corner of my mind who thinks this is all funny runs over and seizes this opportunity to pour salt in them.

It's really weird to feel an emotion that's usually reserved for death when I think about people who are probably just doomscrolling on their phones right now. I even catch myself talking about some of them in the past tense, depending on how long it's been, but I still always wonder what they're up to and if they're doing okay.

I still talk about all of them. I tell my friends stories about them and about the things they liked and disliked and all the stupid little quirks they had. I make the same jokes we used to make together and do things we promised to do. I'll see things and think to myself, "God, they would've loved this." They make me laugh as much as they make me cry.

Despite the copious amounts of shit I'll make fun of these people for to my buddies, there's still some semblance of love deep, deep down. I miss my old best friends. I miss that guy. I miss my dad. All that rotting platonic, familial and romantic love I've locked away is never not going to hurt. Part of me always wants to pick up the phone but I also know painfully well how important it is that I don't. Sometimes people are much better as memories.

2.4

 Blogger, things have been insane lately. I’ve been sitting here for so long trying to describe how I feel but I’ve been finding it harder and harder to convey my emotions at all these past few months. All I can really write today is that I was going through some old videos of my music scene and I slightly spiraled thinking about how everything ended between those people and me. 

However, I was also just digging through my old writings from 2025 and I found this abstract ramble from July that really resonated with me. I rephrased a few things to better fit me now but at least it helped me get the emotions out:

the clock strikes three as i, agonized, lay curled sideways on my bed. my organs creak mournfully, punished after all they’ve done to me. the blood pools to my heart, once lifted by air, now too dense to stay afloat. it sinks from my chest to the floor in one trembling sigh. it lands in a bath of moonlight from my window, feeling drowned by being seen. 

in my own eyes i’ve now misplaced my hope. and the tighter i close my eyes, the more dreaded colors i see. even alone all those faces are inescapable, so indescribable yet real. they recall my fears; so vivid yet shallow. the crowd reacts to my form so grotesquely. even with the ones that don’t walk away or gesture, their thoughts still bleed from their faces. maybe half of these scenes aren’t real but i can feel the tears take a walk from my eyes to the tip of my nose, where they finally jump to dissolve and die. 

my eyes open and can’t help but glue themselves to the stars out the window. as they ride the treetops their beauty further vilified me. i wish i was as emotionless; a blank stare until I fade. i dream beyond and remember every church pointing to them. beauty made their hearts into homes. 

yet i’m trapped here, no one’s star and my heart growing colder on the wood floor: undesirable. 

There’s a lot of people I miss and there’s also a lot of people that made me feel like I was difficult to look at or even listen to. Both are true for the some people somehow. It’s painful but that’s just how it is right now. Maybe I’ll come to you guys with more cleaned-up archives in the future because this was cathartic for me at least. 

See you next time. -G

2.3

Professors, Basic Human Decency, and Emotional Trauma

Skipping so much context, I am estranged from my father. He was emotionally abusive to me growing up, and after being on and off with him for a few years, I stopped talking to him entirely in August.  The final chance I gave him was to have a conversation with my brother and I about how he's treated us for our entire lives. The two-hour conversation started and ended with the exact same sentence: "I don't know what I've done to make you two treat your father like this" (yes, in third person). The lack of an apology (besides maybe one "I'm sorry you feel that way," aka not a real apology) or any accountability at all got to me worse than anything he ever said to me growing up. The moment I realized he repeated himself, I said, "This conversation is over. We got nowhere," and drove off with my brother to Chili's to at least try to make my brother feel better. My brother is younger than me and still wants to believe that my father will eventually redeem himself, so they still see each other. The last time I saw him was in September when my mom had him and my brother (they're divorced if you're wondering) bring a TV from her house to my apartment. My mom hates this whole situation because her biological father was a deadbeat and doesn't want me to also not have a dad. I believe she sent him to my place as a final attempt to make us bond. I briefly thanked him and had him leave immediately after. I haven't spoken to him since. 

Despite the fact that having an estranged father is a big deal, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about it. It was a long time coming. I get a little sad when I see kids spending time with their dads, but that's about it. However, an incident today caused me to discover I've developed a pretty backwards trigger since giving up on my dad.

I have a really good relationship with a few of my professors, one of them being my audio theory lab professor. I've been taking labs with this professor since spring last year, where we hang out in the college's recording studios and learn how to mix and run sessions. The studios become pretty cramped when there are eight people per lab section, especially for four hours straight. Therefore, we've all been forced to get to know each other pretty well. We're probably way closer as a whole than any other major at the university because of this, which is how everyone, including me, has become pretty friendly with this professor. I even worked a gig with him over the summer where we and some of my other peers ran sound for a music festival out in New Bedford. We all hung out for a bit after that and just had a really great day together.

The single downside with this professor is that he tends to misgender me. I'm not upset with him over this because I've never told him my pronouns, as I'm not about to embarass the both of us and correct him in front of his other students / my friends. He does know that I have a different legal name because of the paycheck for the summer festival, but I don't expect him to know my pronouns from a pretty gender neutral name (we didn't talk about it, but the festival manager did give him my paycheck). I get a bit bummed when it happens strictly because I have gender dysphoria, and that's just how that thing works. I try not to show that it bothers me when he calls me a 'she' but I have a horrible poker face despite my best efforts. 

For more context, the dude is my dad's age, and the misgendering is absolutely not malicious. He's very outspoken about being left-wing and pro all things human rights. It's just common for Gen X-ers and older to not be used to pronoun stuff because people were less open about it when they were growing up. And I also wouldn't expect him to remember my pronouns if I said them because (I say this with only love in my heart) he is horrible at remembering personal info about everyone he meets. I think he only has my name down because of the gig, since he tends to change so many people's names to Damnit and Fuck when he can't find the attendance sheet. He's also half convinced that my classmate Ben's name is actually Rich, and we all just go along with it because it's really funny.

I don't know what changed today. He must've recently realized that everyone else in class refers to me as a dude while he doesn't. Me and him were setting a bass amp DI up down the tracking room's halls alone when he totally stopped what he was doing and was like "by the way, I'm so sorry about the pronouns. I noticed myself fucking up today and I feel terrible about it," and wanted me to know that I have his full support and that he's entirely for me "living my truth." He also added that he didn't correct himself when we were upstairs with everyone (getting our mics for the session) because he knows it's more embarrassing when people do that. 

This conversation right here is the trigger. You're probably thinking, "He's going out of his way to genuinely apologize to you over something that you never expected or needed an apology for. Why are you upset?" This is all I wanted my dad to do. Ever. Over much more serious and traumatizing things that I demanded an apology for. It's super surreal to realize that your professor gives more of a shit about your wellbeing than someone you share half your DNA with. I managed to keep myself together to finish the conversation with my professor, pretending that tears weren't welling up as I was assuring him that I wasn't upset with him. I eventually went to go 'look for another cable' and had to half-run across the building to the lobby's single bathroom to sob for a while (which the folks in the lobby absolutely heard). I'm kinda worried that he noticed I was about to cry, and thinks that it's his fault when it really isn't. 

It's so insane when you leave assholes behind and have decent people as friends, peers, and mentors. You realize that this was how people are always supposed to treat each other. 

There's really no satisfying conclusion to this post. I just think this is a really bizarre and sad yet interesting trigger to have. I wish so horribly that my father was a good man and that I didn't cry whenever someone his age treats me like I'm worth something. But that's just how it is and I'm sure I'll learn to handle these emotions better over time.