Loathsome Re-Imaginings

Surviving grief is hard.
Looking forward, living forward, without any vision of who or what you might become - also hard.

The truth is, we all need a mentor.
Especially inside this wholly disorienting grief,
inside a culture that cannot and does not understand. We each need a guiding star, an example to live into.

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I am not ready to re-imagine myself. I am not ready to say goodbye to the woman I was on March 8, 2016. I reject the person that I could live into. I do not want to live a life inside grief. 

I know I do not want to be the woman who is seven years out from her husband’s suicide, with two attempts herself, three hospitalizations, and a vacant stare in her eyes. Neither do I want to be the wise and lonely daughter with a rose quartz around her neck and Buddhist prayers under her breath. I do not want to be the quiet widow with the old dog and the book club. I do not want to be the mother who organizes walks and wears t-shirts about suicide prevention, or the woman who people talk about “before” and “after” the “incident.”

This is unfair. I know. These women are surviving with incredible grace. I just didn’t want to join their club.

But, this is why we write through our grief here, because as I write these words, I feel the light that I push down, rising up. I do have guides. They are the writers of the heart. Mary Oliver, Joan Didion, Rumi, Rilke, Woolf and more. These writers have brought beauty and wisdom to their pain. Their work connects to their readers' sorrows and together they can share the burden of grief.  

Perhaps, I have a hope of what I want. A piece of the old girl carried into the new woman.

Some things about who I had become before March 9, 2016:

I serve.

In Ecuadorian jungles, I tried to understand the relationship between poverty and childbirth. In hospital rooms, I held the hands of pregnant teens in foster care. I’ve counseled women making the impossible choice between placing a child for adoption or raising the child they could not keep safe. In my personal life, I have always tried to be the 3 AM friend and have loved too many men with wells of darkness to which I hoped to bring light with my love.

I feel.

Deeply and acutely. I feel the pain and joy of others so much it sometimes hurts. And, I think about things. I watch the sunset over the foothills, and I think about the way a broken heart sounds in a lonely bed. I feel the pain of those I love, and I feel the pain of those I’ve never met but who I’m bonded to by a shared loss. I feel the joy of my niece running her toddler run through the grass to see about a bird and the feel of dew weighing down my eyelashes.

I write.

Words have been my constant companion. I find them fascinating. I enjoy the exercise of finding the right word to make intangible the tangible. I love the metaphors and myth making. They can be playful and pretty or ugly and hard. A sentence can dance in the breeze. A sentence can cut. Writing has wound me out through the knots of my youth.

I share.

I have felt alone with my thoughts so often. I drive around them in maddening circles until I have to reach out to make sure someone has felt the same. When I do, I have usually found someone who has felt just as alone. Each potential overshare has validated for me that living authentically and vulnerably is imperative.

While lofty guiding lights, I’d like to think that I may share some of these qualities with those visionary writers whom I admire so deeply. The serving, feeling, writing and sharing that is at the crux of the most moving of works. This is why I return to them over and over. I admire them deeply, aspiring to connect with the magic that exists between sharing sad stories with pretty words. If I could write this grief to make someone feel as if I could carry some of theirs and her some of mine, then I could maybe find some beauty living inside this grief.

But. Ugh.  

My skin positively crawls at these thoughts. It is hard to see the good left in me. It is harder to imagine the creation that could come from this destruction. I feel selfish. I resent myself for writing about myself when I was supposed to be writing about someone else. I am noticing how many sentences begin with “I,” so I just rewrote two lines. Maybe that will make me seem more likable, conceal this selfishness. Gross. I hate imagining another side where this is another story about me. My despair clings to me. She snarls, "I define you." Even more maddening is Sean's echo saying, "You'll be better without me." I can't let him be right. I know to prove him wrong may destroy me, but I am stubborn and like to win arguments. 

I don’t know what these things mean, but I know I’m loath to share them. That’s probably why I should.