Grief

Grieving is a funny thing.
Of course I don't mean ha-ha funny. I mean funny in the more horrible, unexpected and unpredictable way. Funny in I have to laugh or I will cry again way. I will probably cry again regardless.
I have found myself grieving more than I thought possible this past year. I have lost more than any other time in my life. Some things caused me more pain to hang on to than to let go of, yet I find myself unable to relinquish this strangle hold on them.

With much therapy and too much reflection, I have realized that so many of my most painful moments come from my need to control. If I hold on, I can fix it. I can control this situation. I MUST control this situation.

This will not be news to many of you but for some reason it always is to me-  I cannot control situations. I will make mistakes. People will leave. Some for just a while, and some forever. Some I am better off without and some I will mourn the loss of for much longer than is logical.

This is what I mean by grieving. We grieve the lost relationships, not just death. We grieve those who choose to leave us. We grieve those we choose to leave, because while we still love, we simply cannot sacrifice ourselves anymore. We grieve the broken promises, the never got to bes, the soft moments that we will never forget, the life that we had or the life we never got to live.

Grief is a funny thing. Just when you think it's gone, it hits. The first bars of a song. Rolling over in an empty bed. A restaurant. A tv show on the PVR. The sound of a blender and the smell of tequila. Nothing at all.
The most random of things can invoke such a response- like all the air has been sucked out and I can't stop shaking. I have tried to logically talk myself out it. I have pulled over to the side of the road and sobbed until I had nothing left. I have called friends. I have self medicated with wine and Ativan. I have tried to literally run away.

The only thing to do I have found is to ride it out. Sit in the shit as my yoga teacher always told me. Feel it. Experience the pain, the missing, the loneliness, all of it. I have rewatched a Brene Brown TED talk on Vulnerability about 86 times. She says if we numb ourselves to the bad, we numb it all. The good and the bad.
I have done that and I refuse to do it any more. I have gone through years of survival. Where I felt small bits of joy (from my children), but refused to feel very much of anything out of fear that I would absolutely break apart. I have to forgive myself for that. It was years, but I did what I had to to survive. Now I know better, so now I do better. I am always trying to do better.

There was a song on my phone that I could not listen to. For months, it came on in the shuffle and I would dive to change it. Logic says to delete it but I somehow couldn't do that either. That meant it was time to move on and that I would never again listen to it with the person that I attached it to. That meant it was over and we would never sit in the kitchen just laughing and talking for hours. The memories attached to one simple song were so bittersweet I couldn't let go of any of it.

I listened to it today on purpose. I cried a little (shocking I know). Not a lot, but a little. I remembered. And it was ok. I let those memories come without trying to suppress them. I thought about all the lessons I had learned from that relationship that I was grieving so hard. I thought about the days this week that I felt relief that it was over.  I thought about the amazing times that I would never have again with that person. I thought about all the times it just wasn't enough. I thought about the hours of miscommunication and the back and forth.
Then I deleted the song. It is time to move on.

I am grateful for the memories I have. I am grateful for the lessons that I learned from the experience. I am grateful that I learned that I am capable of feeling all the things, and that I am willing to be vulnerable and not defensive. That is a huge thing for me as I wasn't sure I was capable of that for a long time.
I also learned that I will be ok and that I am proud of myself for allowing vulnerability. I always knew I'd get hurt. I knew it wouldn't last. I knew it going in, and maybe that created this self-fulfilling prophecy of it ending. I will never know. But I do know that I allowed all the emotions. The good and the bad and I didn't numb any of it.
I learned that I am much more whole than I thought.