My Thoughts About Grief

 If you know anything about psychology, you probably heard multiple times about the 7 stages of grief:

• Shock and denial.
• Pain and guilt. 
• Anger and bargaining. 
• Depression. 
• The upward turn. 
• Reconstruction and working through. 
• Acceptance and hope.

I'm someone who the experts say is in constant survival mode.  One will track my childhood and try to pinpoint it but can't.  Even as a little kid, psychology and what makes people tick has always been my favorite fascination.  I took Psych in high school twice, as a sophomore and as a senior.  I almost wasn't allowed, but I convinced the principle to let me because they were both taught by 2 very different teachers, and I wrote a paper on the differences in teaching styles and what was different about the same subject being taught by two different teachers.  Of course I lost all of my old papers when my basement flooded 6 years ago. I could have made a killing putting it in my book. 

What nothing prepared me for during my young and full of hope, still in high school brain, was that I would be dancing around the mulberry bush all fucking day long for twenty years.  Even back then, we filled out a test in class that was a scale of anxiety  and it had seemly simple every day things like "change jobs", "losing a family member", and it said on there that a score of 80 was high and it indicated that a person was having a hard time and experiencing anxiety.  My score:  320.  I was 17.  I remember because I laminated it.  I like to joke that my life is a dumpster fire that's been sucked into a tornado, but lately it's not such a joke.  It's happening.  And I continue to willingly drown myself in the ocean for those who wouldn't steer me clear of a parking lot puddle.  

I have been finding myself experiencing loads of grief since I was a small child.  My parents were teens and I grew up nurturing and caring for my family.  I am an empath and sometimes I hate it so very much.  I remember constantly being worried about making sure that everything was perfect; at my grandparent's parties - was everyone having a good time, did anyone need anything?  Did I look cute enough to get attention from everyone?  Did I smile enough?  I have become very conscientious about how much of a people pleasing pain in the ass I was and have made huge steps to stop, but every once in awhile (at least once a day) I get sucked right back in to caregiver mode.  

I remember when I was 5 and my grandfather died unexpectedly.  He had a fatal heart attack while sitting on a bar stool at the local watering hole.  At 12 when my great grandmother died, my dad wouldn't let me go to the funeral.  He said that graveyards aren't a place for children and I was so mad, I loved her too and I wanted to celebrate her life - knowing what I know now about the spiritual world, I agree to a certain extent.  When I was 18, my great grandfather passed.  Then the daughter of my mom's friend died in her sleep and she was only a couple of years older than me.  I have experience so much loss that I could go on forever.  Most recently, my great grandfather a month ago.  I didn't cry about his passing.  I cry because he was 11 years younger than my Nana.  They met when she already had grown kids and he loved her until the end.  She died when my son was about 2.  Growing up, the adults in my life treated children as though they were not to be sucked into the grief of adults.  To a degree, I do agree with, however there is a certain beauty in being honest about how you're feeling.  That it's okay to be sad and miss a person no longer with us.  To celebrate their life and continue to learn about who they were when they're gone.  I was a baby.  I saw all these adults that I love crying and grieving, but I didn't feel like it was okay for me to do that because it was something that only the grown ups could do. I wasn't given an opportunity to talk to anyone about it.  When my aunts left home, one to go to Florida, and the other off to college in Pennsylvania, I missed them, and I was full of grief about the huge change to my life, and I was never allowed to talk about it.  

I just needed someone to tell me that it was ok to stop and feel something.  One of the biggest fights that I have with people is how I'm too much of a robot.  But I'm not.  I just look at things realistically.  I guess I don't cry enough or carry on enough for some people, but what they don't know is that I do.  I just do it privately.  Alone.

I think the hardest losses I've had to process were when they were everything that everyone has:  A perfect relationship, successful kids, and friends and all the things that seem to come naturally.  But they don't come naturally to me.  I have to fight every step of the way to have the bare minimum of everything.

I wish someone would have told me a long time ago "Grief is your new rollercoaster.  It will spin and drop you all over the place many times when you aren't prepared for that moment.  But like a rollercoaster, you have to ride it, and it's easiest when you go in the direction it's already taking you".  Translated:  grief is a bitch that will never go away.  Sometimes the emotions will hit you out of nowhere, and it's vital for healing to let yourself feel emotion.  Coping isn't even an option, fighting for survival is all you will know.

Also translated:  You can't make a vase out of a grenade.

Point being: growing up in my family, trauma, grief and anything in between were things to smoosh down like an ant at a picnic.  Enter left curtain: Me.  And I can't shake the feeling that I have spent my life surrounded by a bunch of assholes standing in the middle of an Italian restaurant eating spaghetti and wishing it was Chinese.  At some point in my life I had confused being kind and compassionate with feeling obligated to give more than I could spare.  I confused being understanding of people's circumstances with excusing their lack of respect. The gifts I would bring became an expectation.  The privileges I granted were confused as their right.  But I'm not confused anymore.  

It's no secret that I've been my children's only parent. They are now the same age I was when I was going through the hardest times of my life, and being forced to figure it out entirely on my own for the first time. When I turned 18 in February of my senior year, my mom told me to come get my stuff and had me start living with my aunt full-time because she needed a babysitter. I had my daughter a month before I turned 20.  My daughter is 3 months away from being 21, and up until six months ago, I thought that she was never going to be able to leave. She has some disabilities and isn't on the same level of her peers.  There has always been all the bargaining in the world, hoping and praying that she would reach the same level of her peers, crashing into the pits of grief at the acceptance that it may not happen for another 10 years. Sometimes there's a glimmer of hope, only to have the air sucked right out of the bubble that I hoped I'd be able to wrap around her.  The world looks like an entirely different place from the perspective of a mom trying to help her child wrangle the special hell that is being seen as "other".  The sting that come with your child not being invited to birthday parties and having friends.  The constant advocating, meetings, emails, appointments, exhausting.  The feeling of all the air leaving the room when she cooked dinner but forgot the pot holder in the oven with it still on;  realizing that she is never going to be able to live on her own.  Even when I feel like I'm drowning standing up, I don't know how to do anything other than fight, for all of it.  I see my peers with great relationships with their family and a ton of friends and I feel so lonely.  Whether single parenthood has caused me to self-isolate or if I'm excluded on purpose, I have had to wake up and rally every single day by myself.  It's just easier to stay away.  I'm so tired of hurting.  Social media is just the sad reminder of how alone I am.  When my sister was up in July for the first time in four years, I couldn't process so much.  My nephew was 9 months old and I was just meeting him for the first time despite repeated attempts on my part to come visit - only to be told "not now", but there were pictures all over the place of everyone else getting to meet him.  My entire life, I've looked forward to being an aunt.  My brothers live in the same town as me, one two miles down the road and the other fifteen minutes away.  And that whole week, I was finally able to get to do that.  And every single night, I cried myself to sleep knowing that it's most likely never going to happen again.  Most recently, I got to see my entire family getting together at my grandparents house for a BBQ/bonfire to celebrate my grandfather's birthday and see my brother off on his expected deployment - and not a single one of them invited me or my son.  Rather than make a big thing of it, I unfriended every single one of them.  It was easier to admit defeat and accept that I'm not going to have the life that I have longed for;  to just quietly go away.  None of them have said anything to me.  They most likely don't even care that I'm gone.  

Rather than being able to be excited to help them through these milestones, because there isn't a snowball's chance in hell that I would ever allow my children to be put through what I've been through, if I really let myself sit in it for a minute, I am swallowed by a black hole of sad.  I freeze even trying to help them.  Most recently, my son wanted to apply for college and he was so mad at me that I didn't even know where to begin.  There are so many things that nobody taught me that I have been stuck figuring out on my own, and I am so sad because I want them to be able to have the mom that I didn't.  I am at a time in my life where I realize that my life has never been about me or what I want, and I'm at a crossroads where I have to figure out what that is.

I've said it before:  I was born with my big girl panties permanently welded on.  I cannot pull them up any higher. 

I do such a good job of just powering through. I like to joke that I'm healed person, that it's just times like these that it becomes evident that we never really heal. One of the most common questions I get asked:  "How did you stay so strong during all your struggles?"  I guess it depends on how you define strength.  Sometimes strength looks like barely rolling out of bed and accomplishing only one thing;  choosing to stick around.  Sometimes strength looks like crying in my bed while everyone is doing other things downstairs because I realistically can't do it all on my own.  But here I am, every day.  I have struggled every single day for 40 years.  Looking back, I get really sad.  I shouldn't have to have been put through all of this.  I don't know what it's like to be able to truly relax.  None of my relationships have worked out for one reason or another.  I don't know what it's like to not be alone.  I have never had another adult to delegate anything to.  Even when I try to enjoy myself for five minutes, I have a child at home that I'm struggling to keep alive and another one that, up until recently I believed to be completely self-contained and doing great.  I would never want anyone to try to unpack me that wasn't getting paid for it, this is why I'm in therapy.  I am like a Rubik's Cube with a Chinese finger trap inside.  I really don't think anybody understands what they're getting into when they try.  I have come to find that they like the idea of me; what is on the surface.  They peace out the second they see how I struggle to survive when I feel like I'm drowning just standing up on dry land.  None can handle the reality.  Especially on the days when silence is louder than thunder.  

And I get it.  NOW.  This inability to receive support from others is a trauma response.  My "I don't need anyone.  I'll just do it myself" conditioning is a survival tactic.  I needed it to shield myself from abuse, neglect, betrayal, and disappointment from those who couldn't and wouldn't be there for me when I needed them the most.  From all the situations when someone told me "I got you" then abandoned me, leaving me to pick up the pieces when shit got hard.  I learned that if I don't put myself in a situation where I rely on someone, I won't have to be disappointed when they don't show up for me because they always drop the ball.  Extreme independence is a preemptive strike against heartbreak that always, eventually comes anyways.  I don't even trust myself to choose people.  

But no matter how I dress it up and display it proudly to make it seem like I chose this level of independence as if it's what I always wanted it to be, in truth my heart is waving the white flag. 

Wounded, scarred, broken behind a bullet riddled brick wall.  I guess on some level I understand that in order to have good things I have to feel like I deserve them.  And to some degree I still don't.  The older I get, the more I realize how much time I spent believing the lie that who I was wasn't good enough.  I find myself fighting back.  All of the moments I wasted hiding who I was, all in the name of making other people happy.  So as I sit here now, with years of living and learning behind me, I want so badly to go back in time to that little girl, who happened to develop before the other girls, to tell her that not only is she good enough, but she is extraordinary.  I want to go back and tell her to be kind to herself because the world needs exactly who she was made to be.  

I have slowly learned that you can't truly appreciate your life wallowing in "Yes, buts."  It should be about the "Okay, and".  Greif is an asshole.  Feel free to tell it to fuck directly off and allow yourself to experience joy for once.  And of course you'll know you are by how much it kills you inside when it's happening.  True story, because sunsets and pausing kill me.  

The world fed us all a lie about what strength looks like.  It's time to start telling yourself a different story, a true story.  That if you are still here despite how hard it might be to still be here, if you are showing up for yourself and your life despite how exhausting it is, then you are the epitome of strength.  But it's okay to need to lean on someone sometimes.