Finding Wishes Instead of Stars

"I wish there were an easier, softer way, a shortcut, but this is the nature of most good writing: you find out things as you go along."
-Anne Lamott

The halfway point in a journey - or an adventure, or a long slog through crap - however you're feeling about it today - is a good time to stop and look around...Have you learned anything about yourself, or your grief, or the ways things live in you? Has anything surprised you? Disappointed you?
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I wished I was smarter

Wished I was stronger

I wished I loved Jesus

The way the my wife does

I wished it'd been easier

Instead of any longer

I wished I could've stood

Where you would've been proud

That won't happen now

That won't happen now

 -Patty Griffin

Here’s the shit of it.

Those first thunderstruck days were brutal. I didn’t know you could get stabbed in the gut repeatedly and still live. The grief consumed me and that was allowed. Then, it shifted over the weeks to months—alternating between paralyzing panic and zombie’d gaze. Fragile and labile. It was like the pain was too intense. I couldn’t stay in my body. Stay with the loss. I’d loosen the tether and float outside myself only to inevitably have the tether snap me back into the searing vat of grief that lived inside me. The tetany would seize my hands, and I didn’t know how I’d ever breathe again. Blurred vision and gumby knees. Till I could escape again, self-eject into the ambient ether around my body. This was bad. So very bad. I had never experienced trauma like this that bounced me in and out of myself—violently and unpredictably. But. It was so immediate. It was demanding and overwhelming. I didn’t have time for much else.

But this. This grief that moved in several weeks ago. It isn’t getting easier. It’s getting longer. This is a different grief. I still have some panic and some dissociation but mostly. I’m just here in my body, and it’s fucking terrible. This is the shit of it. It’s getting worse. I know. A therapist or well-intentioned, obnoxious friend might call this progress. But. I don’t care. It hurts. It is settling into my bones. It’s an aching, lonely grief. A persistent grief. It is childbirth in transition, one contraction on top of another, except no one can promise me a bundle of joy on the other side. I imagine instead I will walk out of the gates of this dark horror of an amusement park to find a wry smile on the face of a man in a cheap suit as he hands me a certificate that simple reads, “you’re alive.” Woo-fucking-hoo.

I expected that this would come in waves. I had other griefs. Deep griefs. And no. They weren’t linear. But this is very different. I’m not swimming to the surface only to lose a little progress to a strong tide here and there. This time, I was tossed violently into the ocean, I fought the riptide for a bit, and now I’m just floating out on the rolling waves, watching the shoreline recede. I don’t think anyone’s even noticed yet. How I speak to them at such a distance. How hard it is for me to hear them from out here. It’s quiet here, and I feel close to him when it’s this quiet. But. Fuck. It hurts. This lonely persistent grief.

That’s a bunch of metaphors for three small paragraphs to carry, but it seems I can only talk grief in metaphors.

And this writing. I came to this writing as I began this embodied drifting. As I began to feel so hopeless and overwhelmed out here. I once read something about putting things into perspective. It asked you to interrupt a moment where you feel devastated, or angry or generally terrible. Ask yourself right then. How will I feel about this in five minutes? Still bad. Try five days. Then weeks, months, years…

It has worked for me. Imagining five minutes works for the car that cut me off. Five weeks for the fight with my friend. Five months for the bad break up. Five years for my sister’s unexpected death. But this one. I look at five years and can’t imagine. For this to be a thing. Simply, “a thing that happened.” Do I need to imagine myself in five decades? I smoked a lot of cigarettes in my younger years, don’t think I’ll make it to 81 years old when this could be “a thing that happened.”

So. I walked into this writing with this. This grief settling into my bones and my hope slipping between my fingers. The writing lets me observe where it pools and where it slides, where it eddies and where it rushes. I want to be clear. This does not feel good. It’s not moving it, but I can find this grief and all its different shades with these words. In particular, I find how this grief makes me wish. Makes me wish it’d get easier. Instead of any longer. I didn’t know how many wishes one could wish in 986 words. I didn’t know how badly I wished for him still. How many things I had left to say, songs to sing, smiles to kiss. Or how about the wish that this wasn’t me? Wish that I wouldn’t have to find someone new between these lines, write my way to a new me. I know. “There are more wishes than stars.” We used to sing that line to each other in lieu of saying, “get over it.” It could be gentle or scathing depending on its delivery. I’m not sure which one it is here in my head. But I do know how true it is. I’ve tried not to wish because it only brings disappointment, but disappointment seems to be the softest of this new dark palette of emotions.  Without these words, I wouldn’t let myself find these wishes. I find these wishes and more.

Because. I also walked in to this writing feeling very isolated. While it is still lonely out here, I feel like I’m writing my grief on paper airplanes that I can toss like illicit middle school notes to my fellow lonely grievers. In turn I catch theirs. We can’t touch. We can barely talk. But. We are touching each other, and that is an incredible gift. I want to be clear. This does feel good. It feels good to know that others know what it’s like when you wished it would get better and it only got worse.