I'm not sure. So I've been doing all this experiential work between my meditation group(s) and the exercises I've learned to cope with the turbulence between my ears. Predictably, I'm feeling emotions again. As opposed to upset all the time, I am in a place where I can feel hopeful, fearful, sad, curious, and so on. This is uncomfortable but maybe that's okay. Discomfort is not pain, and pain is not suffering. What's painful is the creeping suspicion that what's been going on is that I'm always upset because I'm painfully, desperately, lonely, and in need of contact with dirt that has never been inside a parking garage. That's not even the thing, though. The thing is that I feel lonely because I'm very much missing the only person who put up with me in close quarters for 10 yrs or so. He would be really pissed at me to learn this. He wanted me to get an American boyfriend because the long distance thing was really hard on both of us. I'm looking back to the last time I was happy, and it was the last time I felt the warmth of his body. I want to honor his wishes, which would require me to get better.
Yet I still feel like I wouldn't mind oblivion. That's not my choice, though, as far as I can tell. I'm still agnostic with respect to whether anything exists "after" death. I'm not sure it matters. Nature is not linear, but runs in cycles. Everything has cycles - populations, seasons, sea levels, etc etc. Maybe, then, time is not linear, but cyclical. Meaning that we've all been here before and we will cease to exist but we still do exist in the eternal present "now" that is the whole of time because here we are. That and I'm procrastinate bedtime with philosophizing. To distract from my grief. Oof.