Grief Out of Balance

She doesn’t want to major in accounting. Debits. Credits. A world of bewildering brain grief in numbers and columns, sums and amounts.

But she falls in love with the twelve-column ledger sheet.

Its pale green background and blue lines flip numbers into a puzzle she understands. If this $2.37 goes in this column, it also lands in that one, and everything balances all the way across the ordered frame.

She craves balance. She can’t sleep until everything matches up.

A ledger sheet is an ordered world she applies to everything: Recognition at work; diet and exercise; relationships. She’s especially rigid about relationships. Everyone has a column, and those debits and credits are supposed to equal.

As the years pass, she ignores the messy expanse of one-sided pencil strokes. Who cares if things don’t balance right now, she thinks. She throws another amount in, figures it’ll work out later. Karma doesn’t necessarily return by the route we expect. Give-and-take is an ebb-and-flow, right? She gets high from letting everything flow.

But she still keeps track. Tallies everything in her ledger. Takes note of the imbalances. Tells herself her petty little ledger will be a thing of beauty someday.

She drags out that ledger in her lowest moments, baffled as to why the corresponding columns remain lightly populated. Maybe if she throws more numbers on her side, everything will eventually balance. Or if she broods and gets angry. No, she needs to point out how things aren’t adding up, ask for help with the other columns.

Her unwieldy ledger becomes a taunt.

She dwells in a foreign room. Alone. She just pressed end on a FaceTime call, one she knew was coming but didn’t expect so soon. And she sits on her bed. Hugs herself. Realizes she’s just talked to the only person who truly cares how much everything hurts.

Because ledgers don’t lie.

And for maybe the first time in forever, she doesn’t tell anyone right away because she doesn’t expect a soul to be there. She throws her ledger into the corner where roaches used to die, and she lets herself cry.

When she finally puts her news out there, she doesn’t care about a single response, knows they just won’t add up. The world moves on in a blink, and she doesn’t mind sitting alone, crying when she needs to, showing a fake strength to the world. She’ll grow stronger with time.

Without her ledger, it’s just what do I need? and do I really want to do this? and I only have to show up for me. She finally has permission to pour all those numbers in all her various columns back into herself.

It takes sitting in traffic to rattle her. She’s running late for an appointment, another necessary hour in her new regimen of self-care. When she picks up her phone to let the other person know her ETA, she sees a voicemail message, the number unfamiliar. Absently, she plays it.

Hello. We’re calling to let you know we’re here to support you as you grieve. One month ago tomorrow, your aunt died, and we want you to know your grief isn’t forgotten. We see your tears. The simplest things are a struggle. We’re here if you need us.

She cannot see the highway through her tears. She has to pull over to compose herself, even though she is already late. Where is my damn ledger? she thinks. When did empathy devolve from a supportive human emotion to an output in the hospice industry flow chart?

And while she feels stronger after her session, her fingers still itch to pick up her ledger. Match up its shredded slivers like an identity thief goes through garbage for someone’s life to steal. She will struggle with this ridiculous compulsion for the rest of her life.

She never wanted to be an accountant, she tells herself for the millionth time.

And whatever it takes, she won’t be.

This post is a continuation of The Aftermath of Death and She Was Venus in Fur. ** Image courtesy of Lumen Learning.