Grief

I’ve been with my current therapist for nearly four years. Today I hung up on her…

Let me caveat that she is a fantastic therapist. We’ve worked through some of the darkest points of my recovery and I have never felt judged or that she didn’t genuinely hold compassion over what I was going through.

Today was a little different. She missed the mark. I’m a little off. It was not a good combination. Instead of trying to power through it, I called it. I tapped out. I simply said, I think I’m done today and I’ll see you next session. She asked simply if it was something she had done. I replied honestly that she pushed me to talk about something I didn’t want to talk about, and now, I don’t want to talk at all. Then I hung up. I’ll see her at my next session, she is far too skilled and has been far too valuable for my recovery to just let it all go after an off day…

Today she pushed. I dodged. She pushed. I ducked. She pushed. I dipped. She pushed a little more. I dove. Then she pushed a little different. I dodged. Then, without skipping a beat she came from a different angle. At that point I left the game. After all, therapy isn’t the place to play dodgeball. That’s not why I’m there.

On August 1st I lost someone. I lost a friend who I first met in some awkward conversation and during some type of wild shenanigan I was partaking in roughly 30 years ago. Our friendship wasn’t what I would call average. In our mutual group of misfits, nerds, and hooligans; we were both veterans. We both served during times of government spiciness. We both had a lot of deployments and the marital problems that go with that. We also had an intimate familiarity and mutual respect for what being in the combat arms really means. We bonded in a different kind of way and talked sporadically about a lot of different things over the years. Checking in when we saw the other struggling. Checking in just to say hi. Talking about the way our government left Iraq… then Afghanistan… then all the stuff surrounding Ukraine. We talked kids. VA frustrations. Fears. Wants. Desires. Dreams. Hopes. Crushing realities. Life. And love.

He loved video games, gaming, movies and shows related to games and comics, legos, StarWars, and everything in between. Most of all he loved his people. Above all else, his wife, his kids, and his tribe.

Maybe in another blog I’ll talk about the last weekend I was with him in the hospital. The hilarity that ensued when you get a group of Gen X nerds together in a hospital on a weekend and even on good behavior there’s all the food you’re not supposed to have brought in a hospital and a code blue. The last memory I have of his beautiful face was with a beaming smile, head back starting to laugh when I mentioned the Code Blue.

We lost an amazing human being that most of the world didn’t know existed. But for a group of people, he was a major part of our world. For his kids, he was their world. For anyone who knew him, knew his personality; the world lost a light that day.

So when I dodged… it’s because I’m still processing the darkness that now lingers where a light once beamed in my life. Like when you stare at a bright light and suddenly it turns off and you’re left with the colored halos of where it used to be. Left blinking until it disappears, then not knowing what to do because you’ve only known a too bright light in that place.

We had this ongoing conversation that we’d pick up randomly every few weeks. It was his turn to respond…

Eric Vincent Jablonski – June 23, 1973 to August 1st, 2025

‘Til Valhalla brother.