Yesterday
I was really trying to be all right today. And emotionally, as far as I’m conscious of it, I’m okay. A little sad, missing him, but coping all right with the loss on another significant day. I am not overwhelmed, (although it’s still before lunchtime). Honestly, the only difference between today and all the other days is that it IS a significant day. I’m often a little sad and missing him, on and off all day, every day, and I usually acknowledge it, sigh a little, and then go back to my activity in progress.
I’d had an epiphany of sorts recently that while it was important and healthy to honor my feelings as they arose, it was possible I could be doing myself a disservice by…what would I call it? Seeking them out? Manipulating myself into situations and reinforcing passing mindsets that were likely to set me off on a descending spiral of grief, really. So I decided to attempt not to do that. I decided not to get myself worked up in anticipation of this milestone I’m passing without him, as I have watched myself do for camp, for Valentine’s Day, for the tribute concert last month. I thought I owed it to myself to try to just be, and feel what I would feel, without trying to feel any certain way. It’s a lesson grief is teaching me, one I’m applying to my life in general.
I thought I was doing a pretty good job for the last week or so. Further distracting me from me was that I’ve been dealing with a health issue for 2 1/2 weeks that has taken up most of my concentration and concern. It’s finally resolving, but as it does, I found starting Tuesday that some of my anxiety symptoms were back, after 4-week reprieve. Mostly it’s heart palpitations. I don’t know if the other issue was just masking the palpitations that were there also. It could be the heavy self-medication with dark chocolate I’ve done over the last 2 days because of my PMS. I cut out all caffeine a couple months ago, so I haven’t the tolerance I once did for it. It could be that it’s my sweetheart’s birthday. Or it could be all of the above, to various degrees.
I tend to think it’s stress. I have also learned from grief that I’m quite adept at pushing my stress out of my head and into my body. I had no idea. It’s not that I don’t recognize my stressors; I’m quite aware of them and could easily list them. Grief, and at this point just the ongoing absence of my boy, has been and remains the biggest of these. But I don’t always give them the floor. Maybe that’s a mistake.
I find that active healing in grief is a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, it’s very easy for me to go from zero to self-pity in under 60 seconds and stay there, drowning in my pain, anger, and sadness, and I must constantly make the judgment call as to whether it is genuine and necessary, or self-indulgent and avoidable. On the other hand, it seems that insistent okayness in my head is not so okay with my body, which refuses to lie to me. It also tends to be in greater touch with all the parts of my mind, not just the conscious mind, which fancies itself in charge until the pain in my neck or the heart palpitations reminds it that it is not the sole, and soul, decision-maker.
So while I’d like to say I’m okay, my heart is saying I might be slightly less okay than I think. And that’s okay. I’m listening to it, and willing to admit that there’s a part of me, somewhere, that is offering a dissenting opinion about my current mental and emotional state. As with all of this, I don’t know what to do about that other than acknowledge it and keep breathing.
This evening I will play songs for him, light a candle by his picture, write to him in my journal. I do this every night. And I’ll reread some old chats, to “hear” his voice again for real, not the one in my mind, and be reminded again (though I’ve never forgotten) how thoroughly delightful a soul he was. Is. I don’t do that every night; it’s bittersweet. I fall in love with him again every time I do it, and cannot express that in the ways I always have. The cost of reminiscing is often frustration. I can only send my words and my faith out into the universe and somehow scrape up the faith and trust that he receives them. Faith and trust are for me like Penelope’s weaving; it seems I take it apart every night and have to put it together anew each day. I suppose as long as I hold those threads in my hands, though, and still sit before the loom each day, I’ll be okay.