A Deep Dive Into Grief

"I sat with my anger long enough 

until she told me her real name was grief"

~C. S. Lewis

If I have learned anything this year, it is that I won't ever be ready for what life throws at me. I won't have the right words when it counts; I won't know what to choose when fate itself is staring me down. But now I know I don't always need to have the right answer. I didn't always feel that way. 

I don't feel like this is the place, or rather the right time - avoidance being my superpower and all, to go into details with regard to exactly what has transpired, but to put it as simply as I can, I watched in slow motion the losses I knew were going to be catastrophic, and suddenly they happened together within less than 90 days.  To say what I'm about to, is coming from a place I never knew I would access within myself. And I'm not sorry on one hand, and destroyed on the other. I guess it's fitting for the Pisces in me.  An Irish one. Stubborn until I process, realize what I've done, and depending on who you are I still won't apologize until the day I die. 

This is me, apologizing. To everyone in my life.

I've chosen to grieve privately, and that's not good enough for everyone. Unfortunately, it'll have to be. I got hit with the stunning realization that I don't know what to do,  for the first time in my life.  I have never been shown how to deal with loss.  Sure,  I have all this training, mental health and psychology are my jam.  But there's learning, experiencing, and the ocean in between.  My healing journey has taught me, if nothing else, it's that I must stop drowning myself for people who wouldn't dip their pinky in a teacup for me. And this has historically proven itself as fact. I'm always the one drowning, and I'm not even asking people to blow the life raft up before throwing it to me, I just need that tiny effort of throwing it in my general direction and it's still too much. 

I've always been the one who everyone relied on to swan dive directly in the middle of their chaos and make it all better.  And now, I find myself completely unable to be there for anyone else when I haven't been able to be there for myself.  I simply don't know how to be sad and do life at the same time.  I'm finding myself having visceral reactions to interactions that I fear might be taxing when before I could deal with anything and take anyone's shit that they wanted to throw my way, my safety coating is gone from my nerves. And even in my best efforts not to bother anyone with my emotions and what I have going on, it has cost me. And I realize that, now. It was wrong of me not to explain honestly what was going on to those within my house. I was trying so hard to push away all negativity that in those efforts my child needed me, and I couldn't be there for them. And then as a result of a stupid misunderstanding, I also lost the one person who has come to mean everything to me. I can be stupidly impulsive and found myself to be very reactive to the needs of others. One phone call where I was impulsive with my emotions with my daughter was the catalyst for the amazing path we're on now. Perhaps it needed to happen. We've been sad about the same things, however caught in a cycle of avoidance and crashing. I was seasoning a cast iron skillet in my oven and because my living room and kitchen are so open, I didn't realize how smoky my house had gotten down the hallway.  She was sick in bed with a migraine, and she called to request that I open the hall windows.  I yelled at her to do it, forgetting that this wasn't one of her usual attempts to run my life, she was really in distress.  However, after getting off the phone, I realized that she was right, that they did in fact need to be opened and I felt horrible. I still feel horrible that I was so quick to react and that I didn't have the emotional foresight to just pause and assess.  And then I made things even worse by thinking that I was making it better. That person has been cut out for half a decade, and in my thoughtless panic I reached out. I cannot explain what on earth was happening. This is absolutely not like me, and I am so disappointed in myself. 

I would give and do anything to rewind time and go back to 11:13 am Sunday, July 28. I was so happy, a day out of a storybook. I'll leave it, vaguely, at that. And you, I know that asking you to come back might feel like a lot right now and I have no leg to stand on to ask you to trust that things are better, but they are and a life without you in it just doesn't make sense anymore. In my defense, I wasn't trying to tie up your evening by wanting you around, I was trying to tie up you.  (**insert wink, I've got jokes for days, but you know you love it) Seriously, at least please come take away the 2 dozen muffins that I baked for you.

I've learned I can go on waiting for something, sustained by hope and nothing more — and have, for years.  Or I can put it aside and shrug my shoulders. Bravely, radically even, accept the fact, despite my best efforts, that I can't keep my heart safe anymore than I can stop love from taking everything from me.

I am learning (changed from my previous "learned" because I definitely am a work in progress) to stop saying yes when I don't mean it — to live as authentically as I know how. To allow the tips of my fingers to skirt the darkness, as long as I remember to keep my eyes fixed on the light. We know how much I like my hidey holes. And as one door opens and another closes, I will move forward with the knowledge that unlike so many others, I have another year ahead of me, another shot at making it all the way around the sun, and a chance to get it right this time round.

Be good to each other. And if someone tells you that they see the universe in your eyes, maybe don't be a dick to them on a regular basis. It was a compliment they were vulnerable enough to tell you, not a marriage proposal.