Letting go

For the last week I’ve been feeling awful. The mix-up with my medications last week has left me in a constant state of crappiness. I’ve spent the last week in bed in a perpetual drug-fucked haze. Funnily enough, it’s at these times when I have the Deep Thoughts. I sit in bed, tongue lolling out of my mouth, alone with my muddled thoughts, running off lines of dramatic and eloquent prose in my head—as Deep as ever thoughts were—which are promptly forgotten before they can be written down here.

This week has been a week of letting go. It’s something I don’t do easily, nor (as recent events will attest) consciously. Dad and I went down to Pop’s house this week to continue on the massive clean-up. My aunt and uncle are still living there, the house becoming more and more empty as Pop’s things are either distributed among his flock or sold. He was a pack-rat (as my long suffering mother reminds me: I must have gotten it from him); there is so much stuff.

Three months ago, I reflected in a letter to Pop:

As an abstract concept you are still here with me. I still love you; I always will. No amount of death or distance can take that away from me. Even in some small tangible way you have left vestiges of yourself here; you're on top of my television in a blue frame and on my filing cabinet, being held in place by two butterfly magnets. Your house is full of your life. But as an object (as opposed to a concept) you are gone. It does my head in thinking about it. Like poof, you just went away. Now all we have are relics and memories.

Packing boxes of books and maps, destined for ebay and eventually new homes, scattered to the wind like a spent dandelion flower, I felt a jolt of sadness as I participated in this ritual of deconstructing a life. But then, quite out of the blue while I was listing the items on ebay, the sadness was replaced by another feeling. I can’t think of an adequate adjective to describe it other than saying it was the feeling of “letting go”. If I had have been doing this three months ago, every book I picked up would have wounded me as I remembered its connection to Pop.

Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am home again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am whole again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am young again
Whenever I'm alone with you
You make me feel like I am fun again

Tomorrow, the 9th of July, is the anniversary of my Grandma’s passing in 2003. I remember the funeral as a white dreamlike haze in which memories are at the same time blurry and starkly vivid. I didn’t cry before the funeral—in fact I didn’t cry until right at the end when my aunt read a poem and said (and I remember this part with startling clarity) “now it’s time to let go”. I realised as I saw that cold coffin at the front of the chapel that never again would I kiss her goodbye as I left her house, that I would never feel her warm touch. And I lost it. I let go, let it out, let the floodgates open, and began my grieving then and there. With Pop it was different. I don’t know why it’s panned out this way but I didn’t start letting go at the funeral. Nor anytime soon after. I swam in my grief, enjoying the slick feeling of almost drowning.

I still miss him—I always will—but the keen longing has disappeared, the happy memories bring a smile to my face and only a glimmer of sadness sits on the horizon as I bask in the glory of him in my memories.

Tomorrow is also the anniversary of the first real post on my blog. I wrote one on the 6th of July which basically said “here goes nothing” (and is now used as a post in which I put all the images used on the website). The post of the 9th, “three years ago today”, was about my Grandma. I remember typing it in Pop’s glacial lounge room, my frozen feet in football socks atop an oil heater, the grass green shagpile oppressing my vision of rooms beyond. So much has happened since that day, namely my coming out, but it’s more than that: I have learnt to be comfortable being me.

Back then, the thought of telling my parents, sister or the family-at-large that I’m gay filled me with such dread. I had only told Liz, Lala and Cal six months ago, so I was still getting accustomed to them knowing. In a way I was clinging to the coat-rail of my closet for dear life; truth, after all, isn’t truth until you tell someone else about it. While I could be myself around my closest confidants (I should say more myself, because I still wasn’t comfortable with it), I was still hiding myself around the FAL. Now, I’m sitting in bed watching Queer as Folk with the volume at a reasonable level rather than the clandestine viewings complete with earphones as if I were watching some extreme hardcore smut. I can’t tell you how liberating it is. I feel so free.

At that time, the doors of the closet now propped open slightly, I clung to the coat rail, wearing various coats in shades of grey (straight) in public. I had admitted I was gay but I still kept a careful eye on my wrist lest it go limp, and I made sure that I sprinkled my speech with the manly interjections mate and dude rather than the more flowery fabulous and sweety. As time wore on, and the doors to my closet remained permanently propped open, I let go of my cushy closet with its various straight coats. No longer do I cling to the coat rail when my parents or sister walk past. The only ones yet to officially open the closet and behold the rainbow coat I now wear is the rest of the FAL. I know it will happen soon—on MSN I’ve been plugging the GetUp campaign, which means certain family members will see it and finally put two and two together before scuttling off to tell everyone as fast as technologically possible, European families being second to none in the efficient transmission of juicy information stakes.

But I don’t care; I’ve let go of the coat rail, shed the grey conservative manly coat (which, I should add, is an illusion anyway) and am beginning to step out into the big bad world, finally colourful, fabulous, and free.