Current Contemplation: Grief and Melancholy

Bowie in his 2013 "Where Are We Now?" promotional music video

So recently I've been meditating on melancholy, sadness, and overall grief.  In particular, I've contemplated how I'm not really good at any of it.  After reading a Brave New World, I realised that I, like Lenina and so many other denizens of "civilization", am not very good at being "unhappy".

Whenever I feel remotely uncomfortable - melancholy, heartache, sadness, upset, the whole lot of "unhappy" emotions - I immediately seek to remedy it with something else to "numb" myself to the sensation.  Anything from diving into a comedy like Good Mythical Morning to a novel to doing almost anything else I can think of to make the sadness go away.

However, in particular, I think that my psyche is trying to make up for me not grieving properly (as in a spiritually and emotionally healthy/constructive outlet for my manifestation of grief, rather than a particular type of manifestation) by making me feel (occasionally) sad about Bowie's passing.

Case in point, I was watching the music videos for "Love is Lost" and "Where Are We Now?" tonight and I became dismally melancholy.  It's the same sadness that made me stop watching his 1987 Glass Spider Tour part way through because I got so upset that he's dead, and the same loss that has stopped me from watching the wonderful documentary The Last Five Years for over a year.  Yet, whenever I think about processing my grief for my favourite artist (the mentor, friend, and companion I never met), I instead tend to distract myself with other pieces of his work (or something else altogether) when I get too upset.  For example, I became so distressed tonight that I immediately sought out a different music video of his from the 1980s ("China Girl").

This really drove the point home to me tonight that even for someone I've never met I am still unable to properly grieve.  I haven't really processed the sensation of loss I felt for him and his work almost two years ago.  Instead, I've shoved it into a darkened corner of my mind and firmly denied that he ever died (most of the time).  Indeed, if you've ever heard me talk about him, my tenses are usually a weird mix of present and past referring to Bowie's likes, dislikes, work, etc.  In short, Bowie has been a part of my mind trying (and failing) to properly grieve for a larger array of things in my own life from changing relationships to actual loss to new beginnings.  Since I have refused to take on more "personal" aspects, I think my mind has attempted to channel a lot of my grief into one vehicle (ie Bowie).  However, even in that I still find it too difficult and "silly" to grieve for someone that has inspired me for the past two years.

In sum, I do not "do" grief very well (if at all).  I'm not sure where to go from here, other than to (occasionally) let myself feel melancholy and take the whole journey one day at a time.