Where ya been, Brenna?  Oh, you know, in my head.

A few weeks ago I stopped posting to this blog, though I have kept writing.  I felt disconnected so abruptly from my intended topic – the shadows of grief in my life since losing my parents this year – that I have hardly thought of anything but this interior schism ever since. Where once the mercy of connection between my heart and my world brought the grace of purpose to my introspection, I suddenly heard nothing inside but, “What’s for dinner?”

What happened was that I broke up with my job.  Though, if I remember the break up rules correctly, when the other party doesn’t notice you are gone,  calling it a break up is a technicality.  Having long since understood that my main client would never heed my safe word, were I to be able to squeak it out, I made my escape passively, by not signing up for another round of “Don’t call us child, we’ll call you at 6pm Friday to tell you we don’t need you Monday, 7 out of every 8 times we have you on hold.”  And no, no one else is waiting to take me to the prom.

At first, I thought the shift from the previously tuned in me to the suddenly blank me was due to euphoria, caused by hearing at my part time jobs that, you know, they liked me.  I worried to think that happiness or relief could be somehow to blame for this sense of isolation.  It has taken a few weeks to realize that shock, not happiness, had hip checked me off the field where, for once in my life, I felt I could contribute something from my heart to others, with no fear that my inadequacies disqualified me.  I felt so sure that grief was an equal opportunity.

To have come this far in life with so little to show professionally is my failure.  To have finally identified work that I loved, and want to excel at, so late in the game, and to have received such lukewarm response, so much indifference as I have, is my grief.  A grief I was trying to end by separating myself from its most recent source, but like an infinite nesting doll, I have only revealed yet another infernal grin.

I think when our own survival is threatened, big G grief takes a holiday.  The emotional airlocks seal up when it is our own death we contemplate, or in this case, the death of a dream deeply yearned for.   Maybe I need a little memorial plaque, or divorce papers – something concrete to cry over or set on fire.  But as sure as God made little green apples, friends, what I absolutely need is a Job.