The title of this entry, I didn't make it up.

It was something said on the show Heroes tonight.

No, I'm not in the habit of getting my deepest thoughts from television. I just thought that it fit something that I'd been thinking about lately.

Because the thing about grief, as I see it anyway, the thing about grief is that once it hits you, it sticks with you. Grief swoops in and drives a stake through your heart. And then, it's just there. It's a part of you.

It's convenient.

And when you need something to liven up your otherwise dull and pointless life, grief is there. It doesn't need constant reassurance, the way happiness does. It doesn't need compromise and commitment and honesty, the way love does. It doesn't need to turn a blind eye to the selfishness of others, the way friendship does.

Grief is simply there with you, beside you, inside you. Fucking fused with you.

Two days ago I observed the anniversary of my father's death. Yesterday I visited his grave, and next to it, the grave of my mother.

What I realized, while I sat on the cold ground and stared at the even colder granite of their headstone, what I realized was that the grief was gone. The sadness was completely gone.

I was alone with myself, for the first time in a very very very long time.

I once wrote:

Sadness didn't sneak up on me, it exploded all over me. Something happened to make me this way. Is it unreasonable to want something equally dramatic to change things back?

Anyone who knows me at all, anyone who's been reading this drivel for any length of time, knows that those words were not written about the grief brought on my the death of any person. Nope, that particular entry was born of a more recent and avoidable tragedy.

One that I caused. Not the death of a person, but the death of a friendship. The erasure of a potential that my mind still cannot quite come to grips with.

And now, it never will.

Because that grief is gone as well. It was my anchor, holding me steady even as the waves of time smashed against me. It was my fortress, isolating me from the ravages of existence. It was my shield, protecting me from the monsters of living.

It was also my cage.

Yesterday I sat on the cold ground, talking to the ghosts of my parents. I talked to them about grief. And I realized that, everything I said, I said in the past tense. No matter how much I tried, I could not become sad. Not for losing them. Not for losing her. My grim companion had finally abandoned me.

So I stood up. I brushed the dirt and the leaves from my pants, and I came back home.

Alone.

Some things seem too powerful to just fade away. Some things deserve an exit that's every bit as grand and dramatic as their entrance. Some things should stick with you forever.

I feel like I've been robbed.