My dog's been gone for 2 weeks and I have yet to stop moving, which essentially means I haven’t found the time to truly process or grieve, save for some drips and drabs in the car or in a very rare quiet moment like right now as I type this. For context, just 3 hours after he was put down, I had to play a gig and then wake up early the next morning to fly out to play another gig. After that, it was back to work, school and more gigs and practices and life obligations. Time doesn’t stop, I'm told. When we got home from said out of town gig,
and I knew going home would be uncomfortable and eerily quiet and unsettling, so we allowed ourselves, for the first time in a very long time, to go to the movies together. We saw Superman and I couldn’t tell you much else about the movie except how the scenes with Krypto made our arm hairs raise and our eyes well up with tears. As an aside, I feel shame for having feelings for a GCI dog, but I digress…Watching Superman, rather fixating on Krytpo, was the most weight I had felt since the day we put him down.
(Krypto, via Warner Bros.)
Just a few days later, I was in school and one of my classes this quarter involves a one hour weekly process group where we practice how to both lead and to participate in a group where feelings are shared and processed. After having brought up the dog in this group, one of the students asked me how I seemed so “cool and calm and controlled” considering how fresh it was and that “I can see your pain, but you’re keeping it all in so well. How do you do that?” This question got to me. Even in a situation that’s meant to be intimate where I'm supposed to express feelings openly, I still kept my armor on. Why? So I don't become a blubbering mess? So I don’t snot on my shirt? Or maybe is it that I can’t stand to be vulnerable in that way? I chalked it up to that I just have to compartmentalize and move on and take it as it comes.
This action is normal for me and has been a consistent pattern in my life to not stuff feelings down, but rather to run away when the discomfort kicks in. This discomfort can be explained as a version cognitive dissonance where my behavior is not aligning with what I’m thinking or feeling. I WANT to be crying and I want to be grieving, but my body stops it from doing so in most situations because I “have shit to do.” I have been known to jump from relationship to relationship and have also been known to jump quickly into something upon the loss of another, whether it be a band, hobby, etc. In another process group I was a part of, one client had said that their way of coping was to just “accept that this is the end of this particular chapter and to turn the page into the new one.” I thought that was a nice visual and I agree with life being not one chapter or one thing, but many chapters, phases and scenes. I was curious as to why they thought this way, but of course that was more a projection of my own thoughts, because that seems to be what I do too.
It’s hard to not to grieve collectively this year in Los Angeles. We’re in a weird time in which this city and its amazingly resilient people have dealt with catastrophic fires, losing homes, having masked vigilante’s take people from their work and their home, uprisings, watching a once booming and thriving local industry disappear like the snap of Thanos’ fingers, and if that wasn't enough, a looming black cloud of paycheck to paycheck living that seems to be getting worse each year. Grief is in the air and everyone is doing it in their own ways, because like Los Angeles, a beautiful stew of human beings, grief comes in different colors, different rhythms, different flavors and different timings. There is no right or wrong way to grieve and that nothing is that binary especially when it comes to a human being's feelings.
(50501 Rally April 5, 2025 Los Angeles : Pic by me)
Because time won’t stop for us, and that we will never fully get over tragedies or breakups or traumas, we still need to move on with life. That cognitive dissonance in which our values say “I need space and time to myself” but my actions are saying “I must jump to the next thing” is uncomfortable, because we never know exactly when the right time is to grieve. We just have to listen to our minds and bodies and hearts.
This active and knowing awareness is something that is relatively new to me. After my divorce and going into therapy, it was clear that the train tracks I was on were rusty, full of upward facing, protruding nails and losing traction. Something had to give and that was my need to run. As busy and constantly shark-like I can be, I try to be aware of my feelings and stop and face them when they come. This loss of my dog is making me confront this head on right now and that discomfort isn’t coming from the pain of the loss, it’s the fact that I am too over stretched to sit and face my feelings for more than 30 seconds. The discomfort isn't making me run away this time, the discomfort is making me want to stay, but I can’t.
It's all confusing and it's all weird but it’s safe to say that feelings will come and feelings will go and stopping to feel them is most important. I see so many people, inducing myself, run away from their feelings. The problem is, those feelings never actually go away, no matter how much they are stuffed down and hidden in the unconscious, so the more we run the stronger the dam will burst. I tell myself that I need to allow for some grace and not worry that my grieving time isn’t on a schedule and that it will come when it comes.
Whatever grief you are going through, whatever you've experienced that has hurt you, just know it's okay to stop and sit in those feelings, if not always, at least once in a while. It’s ok and in fact imperative to have an ugly cry, to ask for help or to take a day off to be with yourself, sit outside and do what the kids say and “touch grass.” If we hold in our feelings too long and sit in this constant discomfort, feeling this cognitive dissonance, then we’re closing off the possibilities life has for us. Like a book you haven’t read yet, each chapter should open up new worlds, new words, new people. For me, I’d get sick of the same old chapter over and over again, but it also doesn’t mean that the previous chapter is locked forever. We can move on, but find time to look back and admire what came before.
Thanks for reading and always supporting. Talk next week if I have time. :)
ETC:
- are back, baby! Our first show in a few months is THIS SUNDAY at Permanent Records Roadhouse in NELA. Tickets and info here!
If you’re into checking out where movies were filmed and you like to run, check out Los Angeles Cinephile Run Club. I’ve spoken about it before here, but may as well keep spreading the word. We did a run showcasing Michael Mann’s Heat last week and it was super fun! Our next run is Sunday, September 7th.
I have found that honoring a person or animal I've lost by lighting a candle and remembering why I loved and enjoyed them is powerful and cathartic. I think it's the focus on why they meant so much to me and thanking them for enriching my life while they were here.
Sometimes someone else's narrative is the conduit to feel one's own elusive emotions and this read was that for me.