Tonight, we ended up watching Hannah Fry’s documentary on AI, or elements of how humanity intersects with it – in this case, it was on chatbots. They showed the case of a deeply unwell young man who wanted to shoot the Queen with a crossbow. He spoke with an AI chatbot who affirmed and encouraged him to the point where he was willing to show up at the Castle.
At the end, there was a segment about a chatbot you could use to call up your loved ones and “speak” to them after they die. And of course, Hannah’s reaction and mine were sharp and acute. The wanting to have this available to us, to me. To hear my mother ramble and sigh rather than the fifteen second clip I have of her asking my sister to call her. All the while, feeling the value that the pain of grief leaves behind. That it can’t be manufactured. As she said, I am more complete as a human having experienced this. I think that’s utterly true. The damned silver lining of loss. In making yourself capable of enduring it, you become resilient in so many ways.
Just Wanting to Say What Is
Because I’m sitting here next to someone I love and I can’t tell my mother about the day, about him, I can’t talk to my father about things in the house that he might know about how to adjust. I can’t tell them the tiny little things. And in some ways, I’ve been having the loveliest part of my life outside of their view. And I spent four decades wanting to know what the code was. If I could somehow earn their approval, do the right combination of socially accepted things. But the secret was that they only ever wanted me to be just living in my own happiness.
My sister has photos of her being walked down the aisle by my father. Photos of my mother and father dancing at the wedding. My mother seeing my sister trying on wedding dresses. Lately, my algorithms have been showing me all the old TLC shows. Say Yes to the Dress, Curvy Brides. You know the ones. The ones all about young women deserving to know they’re beautiful, to have that tearful moment with their mother. Ultimately, that earnest connection, validation, that ritual process of separation, of stretching the heartstrings so they can reach anywhere and everwhere.
Now, I have to do this work of self-love and move in the dark, blindly, and of my own accord. I have to have the handmade version of this imaginary wedding, full of gaps, stutters, cut out bits. The dais is going to have empty chairs. It’s not something an app can fix. In fact, nothing can fix it.
Walk the Grief Out
While I am always emotional, this degree of upet is unusual for me. And I know my period’s gotta be on the way. And I know there was no tiny dose of Lexapro to help. So I felt and I feel – moreso than I have in years. It feels very accessible to be upset in ways that have felt like I have had to go looking for it.
I’d made this new recipe for beans for dinner. after I’d been influenced. A little domestic goddess work. Lately, I’d also been trying to encourage myself – no chatbot required. I’d been wanting to go walking at least to the end of the complex. I’d done it exactly one day and was already ready to skip a day.
No Replikas
Truly, the break in my heart felt so damn keen. It hurt to miss them again. My grief was Alive. Dominant. So full of beans, sick with gumption, I went out in the street. My hair askew, rain jacket over capris, a madwoman climbing down from the attic, I just wanted to feel a bit of control.
I was looking for the neighbor’s regal looking orange cat to turn up and stare at me, hoping I could derive some comfort there and missing my orange cat. I was missing Colorado air. Nine months here and I don’t think I’ve had this kind of moment yet. Angsty and frustrated and just irritated by nothing at all: waves in the light, the matching tupperware, too much food made and feeling sick from not being able to say no. Feeling just beyond myself. Every song on the playlist seemed to reference my thoughts, a matching psychosis, Delta Rae’s “I Can Never Die”, Neko Case’s “Things That Scare Me,” Belle and Sebastian’s “I Don’t Love Anyone.”
But I made my way to the beck, the place and point I insisted I could get to. Just as I once insisted to myself I could write five hundred words a day, everyday and then just up and did. And now, I do feel better.
This is holding space for grief, letting it use my throat to keen. To cry out, to wail in lamentation. This is what I have to do in this post-lapsarian, post-parental reality and technology can’t comfort me, can’t roll back time. Breath by breath, I just have to find a way to believe myself strong enough for the next moment.
And tomorrow, we go to the beck.