--- layout: post title: "Prising open a deathgrip" date: 2018-07-24 --- ![](/img/1*LJDT9x9mGOXZfzdVLiDGqw.jpeg)Photo by [Oladimeji Odunsi](https://unsplash.com/photos/e-TuK4z2LhY?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/search/photos/grip?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText)I live in the present. What else can I do, when[ I have no memory](https://medium.com/frenetic-scribblings/flickering-like-candle-flame-in-the-wind-3ac0c9537402). Look to the future? Psh. I am indeed prone to daydreaming about what *might be *but there’s no inherent danger in that. Not while I keep it in check. No. My problem is clinging to the present. Not to the past, to the present. I do not give up that which I have. Not without a fight. Not without deep [clawmarks on every fading memory](https://medium.com/frenetic-scribblings/clawmarks-on-my-memories-4bcb9cdf49c5). As a result…I take loss badly. I flat out fear it. I don’t like to look forward too far, and I can’t look back so…I hold tight to what I have. There’s a damn good reason I fear death so bad. This is a — large — part of it. The thing about holding tightly is that it smothers… By nature, I death grip at slivers of life. It makes me possessive. It makes me…intense. It makes me suffocating. But without a memory, I don’t know how to let go. I’ve got to though, otherwise I always kill that which I’m trying to preserve. I refuse to let myself love like this. I don’t know how to love lightly. And anything else isn’t really love. Not the crushing fake-image attachment that I previously labelled love. I struggle with the ‘L word’ in general at the moment. Not least because [I’ve had it subverted before.](https://medium.com/myfuckingfeelings/an-acidic-introduction-to-hate-love-c275655eb869) Maybe I’ve learnt enough lessons…maybe I’m lucky in that regard…but that’s a story for another time… Now, a note that my insufferably sincere side refuses to let me omit. This is a public self reflection (standalone piece on the whys of that coming whenever it frees from draft hell) made while mildly tipsy. Caution advised. But I suppose, isn’t honesty the best policy in writing? I don’t know. I don’t know if I know anything anymore…Maybe that’s okay. Well, rambling now. Goodnight!