“WTF!” my grief screamed. Holding on for dear life to a stop sign pole, an uncontrollable storm attempted to tear them from their safety and into the turbulent unknown. “I can’t let go. I don’t want to leave. I like it here. It's comfortable here. I don't know how long this storm will take hold of me. Will I be torn apart or land safely on the ground? Will I be thrown around indefinitely in the storm of my grief stricken heart? What happens if I surrender to the whirlwind? What lies on the other side? To accept this pain, to let it move through me, feels like a slow and painful death. It feels as if I'm being pulled deeply and continually into myself until there is nothing left and I disappear into a black hole. I’ve already lost so much of myself. I don’t want to be floating in the darkness forever. Will I be lost forever?”
My rational mind wants to get in the way of the aching in my heart. It wants to push its way in, to make sure I know and everyone else too, that I intellectually understand I won’t be lost forever. I know there can be joy, even in the middle of this devastation. I know. I know. I know. But knowing and feeling are two very different things. I push down what I feel and run to what I "know" because it’s safer in the land of self-induced ignorance. It doesn’t ask me to bare the parts of my soul that feel self-indulgent and irate.
Then my childhood screams at me, "Your complaining needs to stop. This pessimism reveals your lack of trust and deep lack in faith in the goodness that lies ahead." But what good has come from that kind of pretending? Easy answer, nothing. Only more grief, only pain that has seeped deeper into the marrow of my bones, requiring even more healing to restore. Restore isn’t the right word. That implies going back to a previous state. There is no going back. I despise that I can’t go back. I hate that I wish I could. Resistance lives intimately with me these days. So closely that I can’t tell the difference between its existence and mine. It feels like my nature now, like a toxic friendship that needs to end.
Well, I guess it is the beginning of a new year. That time when we attempt to release the ”worst” of our nature and embed something new in its place. But my grief, this deep resistance, isn’t something to be cured, healed or replaced. It will be my companion my whole life, I assume. Thankfully, I know it will change, morph, just as I do. Hey, maybe even some ease may join as we change. At least a girl can hope.
If my grief could speak it would say, “It sucks, I know. No rush.”
andie