grief doesn’t merely sit.
it resides,
it burrows,
nests,
settles in,
envelopes.
heavy,
weighted,
ever-present,
suffocating my
lightness of being
that it has replaced.
once a raw
shocking stranger,
now,
a reluctantly
accepted
companion.
always present.
constant.
a part of,
yet no longer,
all of
my being.
Thinking over connecting a lot lately. With grieving and depression the last few years it’s something that has been lost, to some degree, in my life. It’s something that, when I reflect on the last year or so, it has started to creep back in, almost unnoticed to me.
We all impact each others lives, mostly in non-physical ways. We use expressions like “that touches my heart” or “I see you” when what is happening has nothing at all to do with physical connection but rather, it is different. Everyone can see me or hear me or touch me with the senses that we associate with those words. So very few persons though actually see me or hear me or touch me though in the ways that I have walled off and closed off these past few years. Connecting. Whether it has been for a few moments or seconds or for longer, I have started to connect again. A little reach out or a tentative reach back to a hand or a shoulder offered. A dance of me wanting to connect but wanting to push away and run at the same time.
There have been little connections here and there though, and I’ve started to see that lately. So small that to the other persons involved, they may be inconsequential and not even remembered. Yet they are, to me. Part of me seeing and celebrating the simple fact that I can still connect – and I am – is recognizing it. This musing is my way of honouring that I need to bring awareness to the little things that are actually massive things when living with grief and trying to slog out depression (which I am still trying to deny is even a fact for me 😉 ).
I meet someone and spend time with them and have a great evening talking and laughing and I walk away feeling lighter and with a smile on my face. I tell them I had a great evening. What I don’t say is how much that means to me.
My partner and I spend a few days in a strange city and we are welcomed and made
to feel like family almost by a couple of people that I barely know but who are
friends of hers already. We leave, hugging and telling them how appreciative we
are and I tell them how happy I am to have met them. I cry later thinking how
long it’s been since I’ve felt so open and comfortable with people. But I never
tell them that.
That is repeated in another city a couple of days later. Time spent in the private
spaces or persons lives and spaces. A card game leaving us crying with laughter. Easy and fun and simple…and good. More left unsaid but definitely felt.
We go out to a friend’s home for dinner with them and their children. We are invited in
and welcomed and fed and brought into the folds of their lives for a couple of
hours. It is open and genuine and beautiful and … good. We leave and hug and I
feel like there aren’t words to say how good it feels.
A crazy and amazing few days in the desert and little connections abound.
A shared moment laughing over an identical dress with someone who shares my introverted
stress and need to hide.
A quiet few minutes with a person I’ve seen around for years but barely know as she draws a design for me in a hotel room.
Sitting under a tree in the heat and just enjoying company with a friend.
Ridiculous sexy parodies of burlesque in a room that feels like a sauna shared with a friend.
Summer hours in sunshine and dust around campfires and lakes. Sharing camp stove lighters and laughing over outdoor cooking foibles.
Tears or giggles or both. Shared and felt.
Seeing and feeling friendships glimmer into being as walls start to be lowered. Sharing space and energies, however brief. They all have an impact and leaves ripples in their wake.
Experiences that show me that even the small steps are still progress.
Being able to give words to this awareness and to reach out and say thank you to the people in my life who are part of my life… this is the best small step so far.
They rest inside me, deeply, persistent in their demands for release.
Monsters of thoughts and emotions that are dark with the density they possess.
The weight of them suffocating me lately.
The days fly by in a flurry of avoidance and boundaries of sanity.
The evening hours tick grossly by – second by second with the heaviness of it all.
The monsters – the thoughts – the emotions – form into words, and then sentences in my mind.
Filling volumes of expression that careen around inside of me.
They exhaust me so deeply there that I have nothing left with which to give them voice.
So they continue their dance inside of me.
Ever faster and more frantic they dance to their drums.
Boundaried only by the confines of my weariness.
By my inability to let them find footing and leap outward in the words that they demand be written.
They draw in all the energy I have, consuming it entirely.
All the energy that it would take for me to set them free.
So they stay where they are.
Thunderous in the silence they create.
A gathering lately of friends – people who are, oddly, not necessarily closely connected yet are also,more close than can be explained. Tribe. Family. A weekend that words don’t really do justice.
Words that still elude me trying to bring essence to the awareness of my experience. A soft knowing that happened in a moment when a smile broke out instead of tears. When I knew that, at that moment, healing meant laughter and silliness and the elation of flying and sharing space with a few amazing women. An oddly secluded and intimate space of time, safe, secure, simple and easy and just… yes. No words. Just feeling.
Feeling that in welcoming joy in, it wasn’t going to be with tears and pain. The wind blowing in my hair and ruffling my skirt around my legs as I giggled and joked and connected – with my Self – and more importantly with the people who I was blessed to be with during that time. The wind and the sunshine, the calmness and the joy in the women with me, the water, the trees, the dirt, the rock that brought me back to my senses even, all of it bringing feeling back.
Words try, but they can’t tell what has to be felt and seen with the heart instead of the mind. Sometimes it takes something so deeply in your body to take you so deeply out of it.
I want to be free. A simple thought and one that overwhelmed me today. Not just that though…an accompanying thought instantly flashed that what I want is to be free of the fears that bind me.
The irony is that I’m not a fearful person… I’ve worked hard in my life to live my life not guided or limited by my fears. A childhood of debilitating shyness – shyness that impacted my actions to the point of anxiety and terror at new situations and people – bringing me to a decision in my early twenties to make a conscious choice to do things in spite of my fears…many times because of my fears. My choice of career at the time -personal trainer and fitness instructor- was one that truly terrified me to even consider. Which was part of the reason I did it. I was tired of being ruled by my fears. Tired of not doing what I wanted because of my fears.
Each fear I found I conquered and left in the dust. Scared of heights… Zip lining in whistler turned that into a thirst for more, more adventure, more that I was frightened of but would not only do, but love.
It’s not that I’m not still afraid and scared , but it doesn’t stop me. Feel the fear and do it anyways.
So my shock today when I had that thought that I want to feel free … And that I don’t feel that….because I’m afraid. It was as if my Self just simply shone a light on something I haven’t seen in the past couple of years…
The deeply internalized fear that has been so buried that the surprise hit me hard today.
A fear of feeling. If I allow myself to feel good and to have joy and love and passion then that means that I also am opening myself up to the potential to feel the pain of loss and the hurt of emptiness.
I lost my son and that pain sparked a fear beyond any that I could process. The fear that I would ever feel that pain again.
A fear so big that I wasn’t even aware it was there…affecting my actions and my choices these past 2 years.
A fear that fights with my nature and my Self on the most basic of levels.
My nature, my core Self is one of connection with others and my Self. Sincere, genuine and intimate connection. This fear of feeling pain has been, and is, causing a struggle and fight that is tearing me apart.
As the haze of the initial grief burns off leaving me finally starting to move forward I’m able to see clearer.
Able to see that in some altered rationale in my mind this fear has a hold that I don’t want it to have.
That the fear of feeling pain has translated to a course of action that has brought me where I am now. A constant dance of drawing near and pushing away. My core, my Self, yearns for that connection and wants to embrace what I need and want. My fear has caused me to pull back every time anyone gets close enough that I feel that connection. So a dance ensues… With the fear , unknown and without my awareness until now, adeptly carrying me expertly away from the click… Because the most assured way to not be hurt by loss is to not have anything to lose.
So here I sit today and I ponder and I confront… And a conscious decision is made and this fear, like all the others, will fall as well…because I want to be free… And that means free of this fear.
It means letting people in and not pushing them away or pulling myself back. It means that the fear that has stopped me from intimacy … The fear that I’ll feel… Has to be faced and overcome.
The freedom starts now even, before actions. With awareness and intentions that will fuel and drive actions.
