Grief

It's been a week with a potent loss that I don't want to talk about, but I have to mention it as a responsible diarist.

The resulting grief has thrown an emotional wrench in my attitude and outlook, and I find myself actually punishing myself for my misery. I have no justification to be miserable, I tell myself sternly. I need to pull myself up by my bootstraps and be a big girl. I need to recognize that in the context of world suffering, this is not something about which to complain. I am a lucky fortunate girl, my inner voice insists. Bellyaching about making a best albeit difficult decision is both self-indulgent and counterproductive.

After all, negative feelings have no place in today's society. They have lost against modern culture, where self-help is a lifestyle choice and counselors du jour provide a battalion of mood-altering techniques and medications to ensure constant contentment. Why feel bad when there are so many reasons/ methods/ solutions to feel good? Turn that frown around! But while it's bad to feel bad, I have indeed felt bad all week. I haven't been successful at quelling the encompassing desolation that's engulfed me over and over like a hyperactive tidal wave. It's a failure... and I've learned that atop the failure that generated the grief, the failure to handle my feelings positively renders grief squared, not added. I punish myself exponentially for punishing myself.

Have I enjoyed any of this? No, not on any level. I did find my divorce-grief fascinating, because I knew that someday I would prevail, and a part of me watched me outside of myself, waiting to see how it would all work out. Now, however, there is no curiosity. There is no confidence in my ability to remain afloat, no confidence in my instinct, even, to want to remain afloat. As I can't keep back the literal tide of water, and I cannot fight against an emotional one, either. I don't want to anymore. I want it to engulf me, toss me about, and either throw me ashore ready to begin again or just put me out of my misery altogether.

I think that's what it's come down to. I wrote tonight to my friend that I think "more changes are in store for me." I think, really, it's time for a total change. On some level, I have to give up the person I think I am, the one who's tied to the past and defined by preconceptions and indoctrinations. I have to bury her, figuratively. She is done. Then I have to start again, reconstructing myself authentically to who I AM, poking and testing and gauging what really does matter to me after all, what are my true prioroties, and understanding them, honoring them, living them out. I have to find myself dwelling authentically in The Way Things Are, not The Way I Want Them to Be, not The Way They Should Be, not The Way I Imagined They Are. It sounds dramatic, perhaps, but truly, I have to let go... altogether. Shed my preconceptions and the resulting frustrations. Remove my rose-colored glasses and the related expectations. Surrender any imagined or granted power or control over what happens next. Acknowledge my limitations and weaknesses and love myself in spite of them... because of them... while searching for purpose outside of myself and others, but in dedication to God and in alliance with my own creativity.

I can't reconcile my life now with what I expected from life five years ago or fifteen years ago. But instead trying and regain ground, which is how I've felt for so long, I can kiss the ground before me instead. This is where I am, whether it's anywhere I've ever expected. I've done what I've done, what's happened is happened, I do my best, and any regrets or sadnesses or second-guesses are normal indicators of transitions that I can begin to practice greeting with trust and faith, not with fear. After all, maybe my aerobics teacher is right that everything does happen for a reason, and that I have a purpose that's placed me precisely where I am because, unfathomable as it seems, it's precisely -- precisely! -- where I need to be, for all I've done or not done... or undone... to get here.