I come upon discoveries in the middle of the night.
Maybe it's the stillness of night, or the fact that talking with friends over IM just necessitates better word skills than I require of myself throughout a day of mindless work that brings out the clarity of thought that makes itself known. Or perhaps it's simply the fact that I still play silly little kid and hate to go to bed, so I come up with excuses. Whatever the case, I think better at night, and when I have the presence of mind to write down what I think, the results are often better than anything written during normal daylight hours when practicality reigns.
So it should come as no surprise when I find myself better able to express how this whole grief process feels at night. It happened tonight as I was talking with Natalie:
Nat: you've said before how it doesn't seem real still
me: yeah, I'm wondering when it's going to
Nat: does it when you're missing him?
me: sort of?
me: I don't know. it's all just so stinking weird
me: like, when I was telling people that my dad died back in May, I felt like I was lying
me: and that hasn't really gone away
me: it feels like a random plot twist in a book I'm reading
me: not really real, but shocking nonetheless
Nat: wow
me: and that's the first time I've expressed it right
me: cuz that's exactly how it feels
Nat: hmm
Nat: so maybe
Nat: instead of what everyone thinks or says about grief
Nat: maybe being able to express how it feels is a big deal.
me: for me, anyway :-P
me: I don't know
me: it's a mess
Nat: I don't know, that seems like it's fairly significant, especially with how much you express things through writing
me: mhmm
That conversation led to talking about how writing itself is overused and thus despecialized in the culture we've been dunked into (ie: homeschoolers turned leaders not so anonymous, or HSTLNSA) and the fact that making writing and words and the like so commonplace, it's almost as though a language - a love language - has been prostituted and turned to profanity. Unfortunately, there are limits on even late night thought, so that conversation didn't flesh out quite as much as I would have liked. I guess there's always tomorrow morning...er, night.
These are the sorts of things that I can express in the dead of night when I should be asleep. Just why I can't seem to get them out when I'm actually awake, I have no idea. Hopefully this will change, because, in all honesty, staying up late just so I can think is getting to be a bit old. I think all day long, just never get the chance to show anything for it.
And on that happy note, I am signing off and heading to bed.
