Archives for category: grief
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

In Brief, In Briefs

January 17, 2015 //
0

I’m still lounging in my sleepwear, and it’s actually 8:00 am. I succeeded in sleeping in – and a good thing, because my emotions and my physical pain kept me up quite late. There’s nothing like stress, hormones, and pain to illustrate all my very worst qualities as a human being: easily frustrated, childishly attached to being comforted, emotional, needy, demanding, inflexible, irritable, unapproachable, resentful, baggage laden, and capable of losing all perspective in a moment. This human primate thing is not so easy as it seems…at least not if I am wanting to be the best that these raw materials allow.

This morning I woke with this headache continuing from yesterday, and through the tears (yes, sufficiently painful to cause tears in the absence of other emotion-causing stimulus) I took time to be grateful for something pretty obvious; I don’t have this headache every day. That’s something. I take a moment and try to apply the same practice to other frustrations, other things I am ‘going without’ or just no longer have in my experience these days, that I continue to be attached to, and to yearn for.  I’m grateful that I ever did have those feelings, and experiences. I appreciate and value the memories that linger.

This is not the most joyful place I’ve been in life. Facing a mid-life health concern, having my own experience – companionship, love, sharing; none of these things actually change one thing that is real and true in all this. I am having my own experience. There will always be elements of my experience I can’t easily share, or verbalize. There will always be the limitation that others are having their own experience, as well, and my words will be filtered through their understanding of the world, and the context of their experience. There will probably also always be elements of my experience that are best not shared at all – that’s been a given all along. It’s one of the most difficult things about having this particular TBI, or of being a trauma survivor; most people don’t try to share on the level I default to, and most people do not want to have a visceral understanding of some kinds of pain. I am alone with my words. A lot. At some point, that has to be okay.

My TBI complicates things, and sometimes in a very unexpected way. I’ve been feeling incredibly discontent lately, less supported than I ‘expected to’, lonely, sexually unsatisfied, emotionally isolated, frustrated, and disconnected in my relationships… I miss a particular time period in a valued romantic relationship (which one would not be relevant, the experience is similar across all of them, to varying degrees). I miss “that year” together, with the intensity of our affection, the continuous good-natured camaraderie, the close emotional bond, the driven heat of sex-all-the-damned-time – and feeling well and truly loved, satisfied, cared for, nurtured, valued… it was fucking fantastic. There’s never been another year like it in my life, before or since – even in the relationship I share with that lover, now. I noticed it at the time, and I valued it greatly. I regularly attempted to express my appreciation and gratitude… and to my later great disadvantage (I realized during the night), his response was to assure me I deserved to be treated so well, and that he always would, and further that I ought not settle for less, ever. I wonder if, at the time, he had any idea that he would be treating me less well over time, himself? I recognized how spectacularly special that time was, and the wonderful way he loved and cared for me. I regret that I didn’t understand his polite refusal to be complimented on it had the potential to set my expectations of the future of love. It’s not fair to either of us that I yearn so much for a moment in love’s life cycle of unsustainable intensity. I’m sure it was a good time for him, too. No time machine. That time is not now.

Here I am now. Love is. That’s a pretty big deal. There are still things I want out of love that I don’t have right now. That is what it is. I suppose I will likely always feel that way. Realistically, if I never had sex ever again… I’ve had more than most people, some of it has been extraordinary. Same with love – if I were bereft of love’s warmth tomorrow, I have at least known love. Romantic promises and hyperbole probably don’t trip everyone up the way they tripped me up…my broken brain got in my way; I did not understand those promises were not ‘real’, only beautiful words of love.

Today I will have breakfast with a friend I’ve been missing, and converse about the things going on in our ‘now’. I won’t need to pretty up the details – he’s the sort of friend I’ve always been able to be entirely frank with, and he’s always there. He’s been a friend since before the relationships of my heart’s landscape now even existed, and has context on who I am over time, and how I’ve grown. When we hang out, I walk away feeling more aware of how far I’ve come, and wholly accepted. It’s never been about sex between us, and it’s good to be able to talk those things over with someone who doesn’t have any potential to feel hurt by it. If you have such a friend – cherish them. You may need the warmth of their good company later on. Later I will ride the train home, and think about all the sex, all the lovers… and the awareness that there is life beyond sex, much of which I’ve not had to explore; most of my experience is sexual in some way. I’d like to find my way to a point on the journey where sex just doesn’t matter, doesn’t drive needs, doesn’t influence my actions or emotions – for now, even the idea of sex tends to feel emotionally compelling, and something more or less on the order of ‘everything that matters’, because for now, it seems to matter so terribly much that without those experiences, I sort of wonder what the point is?

The path isn't straight, the destination isn't obvious, but the journey must continue.

The path isn’t straight, the destination isn’t obvious, but the journey must continue.

Today is a good day to explore the unknown within. Today is a good day to talk with a friend. Today is a good day to wander, eyes open, on strange paths. Today is a good day…to change.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Anxiety, Brain Injury, grief, Hormone Hell, Love, Menopause, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, The Big 5, women, Words

It’s Nothing Like That Other Thing

January 13, 2015 //
1

I started the morning with a headache. I’m sure it will pass. My brain feels a little sluggish and foggy today; it was very late when I actually fell asleep, and I woke earnestly wanting the alarm to go off later…much later. I’m not bitching. I’m hopeful that at some point I will have that quality of deep sleep on a weekend morning that carries me on wings of pure restfulness until I wake, and finding myself so groggy right now manages to be a reminder that I am capable of deep sleep. My fingertips feel cold. This morning it reminds me that the temperature in my room is once again balanced for better sleep, and fairly chilly first thing when I get up as a result. I’m okay with that, too.

Headache and all, actually, today feels okay so far. I feel okay. The gray cloud of uneased loneliness seems to have lifted – and no surprise, I suppose, considering I spent a good many minutes after I retired last night crying; unreservedly and wholeheartedly grieving what may be lost along the way. Just that. To have some moment, some experience, of such sweetness and love – any such – and feel it slip away over time, or simply be…done…those are some very challenging experiences for me. I am still learning to accept some very basic truths about life – that lovely ‘this too shall pass’ aphorism cuts a very different way when considered in the context of some profoundly wonderful thing…and it’s no less true. Change is. I didn’t pass judgment on my sorrow, and I didn’t make excuses, or criticize my need to grieve life’s losses over time. I accepted in that moment that I was feeling profound sadness, and let that experience unfold. I cared for myself, and tended my injured heart, and I didn’t stuff my big emotions into a tiny box.

Just about the time my tears had dried, and I was meditating calmly and feeling accepting and content, my traveling partner checked in on me; it’s been a difficult bit of time, together, and he is more sensitive than most to the ebb and flow of my emotions, it can be hard to endure the intensity up close. We cuddled for a time, and I felt safe and secure nestled in his arms. I felt loved. It’s a powerful love that we share… It may not ‘be the same’ right now as it ‘once was’, but won’t that always be true, regardless? I live ‘now’…and ‘once was’ is not now, ever. It’s really that simple. This morning I woke feeling centered, and understanding more that there is so much to be enjoyed about right now… there are so many nuances to love and to loving… if things stayed the same, however good that might be, how much of what love has to offer would I miss out on?

I made some different choices to take care of me over the past few days, and they’ve been good choices, based on the outcome over time. Initial results don’t always seem so promising…but there again, maybe that’s because although change is, change is not always comfortable. I feel good today. I feel balanced. I feel the results of taking care of me….even grieving what isn’t can have some value, after all, it helped me get on through to what is.  In my own experience, being nearly always feels more fulfilling than yearning. I wasn’t helping myself out, being stuck and waiting for someone to help me out of the muck; I had my hands on a rope ladder of my own making, and all I needed to do was climb. There are verbs involved.

Today is a good day to take another step on this amazing journey. Today is a good day to remember that kindness begins with how I treat myself – and so do respect, consideration, compassion, and love. Today is a good day to remember the effect of incremental change over time, and to understand that however small one single step may seem to be as a singular experience, taken as a whole the journey goes many many miles, and every individual step is utterly necessary to complete it. Today is a good day to continue the journey.

One step at a time...

One step at a time…

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Free Will, grief, Hormone Hell, Love, Menopause, Mindfulness, Perspective, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Big 5, women

Some Restrictions May Apply

January 10, 2015 //
0

Love is wonderful. Life is fairly amazing as experiences go. We are, however, imperfect mortal human primates, made as much of flaws and bad decision-making as we are of ‘star stuff’. This human experience is complicated. In every moment of misery, I try to hold on to something I find to be true about suffering, which is that the intensity of suffering tends to be a fair indicator of the magnitude of joy I am also capable of feeling. Some days that’s not much in the ‘something to hold on to’ department, but paired with ‘this too shall pass’ it’s generally enough to get by on, in a bad moment.

This morning I raise my mug in wry appreciation for the misery that woke me. I’m grateful that my traveling partner was awake, and there with a warm hug, and a hot latte. I woke feeling bereft, cut off, lonely…’lonely’ doesn’t really do the emotion that woke me justice. It was the loneliness of the friend standing by as the person they yearn for talks about ‘finding someone just like you’. It was the loneliness of the ‘tween who wants with so much hunger…and hasn’t yet become woman enough to be interesting romantically. It was the loneliness of sleeping alone, of waking alone, of being alone…and wanting intimacy and connection and companionship so much more than solitude. It was the loneliness of love lost, and the loneliness of the realization that what had been found wasn’t love at all. It was the loneliness of being ignored, or being forgotten. It was the loneliness of being unpopular. It was the loneliness of walking away. I woke feeling every lonely moment I have ever known, simultaneously delivered as a single waking moment, a sort of distilled essence of loneliness. The power of it was horrific. I woke stunned and emotionally immobilized long enough to take my morning medication, and try to go back to bed, uncertain what else to do. I felt ‘coated in distance’.  I pulled the covers over me, made my body comfortable, took a breath and relaxed to return to sleep and… and then I cried. I cried for every lonely moment I’d ever felt that I didn’t have tears for at the time. My heart melted, and it broke, and I cried until no more tears would come. I am clearly not going to be going back to sleep.

Thoughts of coffee differ from actual coffee.

Thoughts of coffee differ from actual coffee. It’s strange how intensely real thoughts can seem.

I finally woke up enough, some minutes beyond the crying, to realize that just laying there was pretty pointless, and, well… coffee. I got up and went first to my traveling partner, rather reassuringly relaxing in the living room and reading his email, sipping his morning coffee, looking for all the world like a man having a nice morning, in a world that is…just fine. He asked me how I’m doing, and I said it simply enough, without baggage or drama, “I woke feeling lonely and weird.” I accepted the offered hug, and he held me for the rest of our lives – well, no, actually just for some moments of lovely warmth and comfort, but it felt good – reassuring, safe, and comforting. By the time I sat down at my keyboard, with my latte, my heart was already feeling calmer, and the loneliness I woke to was receding. I have to wonder…how deeply can I connect to someone, how intimately close can I be with another human being, how vast is my capacity to love – if the loneliness that woke me is something I am able to feel, at all – and not only to feel, but to endure, and survive? Wow. I am eager to find my way to that connected intimate place.

Loneliness is a painful emotion to experience, and one that I find difficult to discuss, or to ease. I don’t often feel it so intensely; I enjoy my own company, greatly. For so many years my ability to connect with someone on a deeply intimate level, and my interest in doing so, was very limited. Lonely didn’t come up much, because I hadn’t the capacity to recognize I was missing something when I was alone, and when I did feel lonely it was generally a fairly biological thing driven by hormones and sexual needs, not at all on the order of the powerful loneliness experienced by someone yearning for a cherished deeply felt intimate connection that has been lost, or the loneliness of heartbreak. Perhaps learning to love truly well must include the experience of loneliness, to be valued in full? That seems a positive way to consider it, and I’m content with that for now.

I don’t know what today has to offer, or the weekend ahead, or the work week that follows. I am adaptable, life is unscripted, and reality brings spontaneity and change every moment of every day. Today I am a fearless explorer on a journey into an unknown future, with only ‘then’ and ‘now’ as compass and map. I hope to discover great things. Today is a good day to discover love.

 

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Brain Injury, grief, Hormone Hell, Love, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, women, Words

This is Why…

January 8, 2015 //
0

I didn’t get far with my day yesterday before the news was filled with murder, and soon thereafter #JeSuisCharlie – and with good reason. It’s criminal to murder. It’s unacceptable to take lives over a difference in aesthetic, opinion, lifestyle – I mean, let’s face it, murder just isn’t okay.  How do people ever get the idea that there is adequate justification to murder? That’s a level of righteous entitlement that frustrates and angers me, and I feel helpless. That’s perhaps the point; to render voices silent. I am moved by the outpouring of support as artists of all sorts stand, come forward, and make statements of their own – because we are all Charlie Hebdo; artists take risks with words, images, and songs. Every one with a voice, everyone with something to share, everyone with a message, everyone with an experience outside the ordinary, everyone moved to create art, compose music, or put words in a row, is Charlie Hebdo. Charlie Hebdo isn’t an individual anymore than The Onion is an individual – and the more powerful for having distilled the voices of many into one; this terrorist attack resulted in real human lives lost, real murder, and it’s really not okay.

This is why we can’t have nice things. How many times do we have sit back in shock and horror because some lunatic jackass(es) thinks they have the right to take a life to make a statement or prove a point? It’s horrific, and fairly stupid, that this goes on… but we live in a world where whole nations commit to acts of genocide, slaughter, land-grabbing, and warfare, over opinions, over resources, and over ideology. I defy you to find justification for any of it that is ‘rational’, reasonable, or truly necessary…but we all grow up in a world where our own leaders set an example that says to us all that we are not safe, and that our lives lack value, and that for some there is justification for murder.

I, too, am Charlie Hebdo. Aren’t you? What will you do to make the world safer for the artists who amuse, who enlighten, who delight, who move you to a different understanding than you had before? We need your help, your support, and the power of your convictions. Each of us, all of us, are Charlie Hebdo; don’t let your voice be silenced.

Tiny worlds exist between one perspective and another along my way.

Tiny worlds exist between one perspective and another along my way.

My own day was much less eventful than Wednesday in Paris. I went to my medical appointment, arrived on time, had my procedure. No amount of comforting medically dismissive preparatory dialogue is adequate to describe how much this procedure hurt…but the acute moment was very brief. “You may feel some cramping…” was definitely not accurate, relative to my own experience. It was vile. Invasive. Painful. I spent the remainder of the day gently, taking care of me in the company of my traveling partner. I called it a night early. Today I feel okay, although a little achy in an area I usually don’t feel much moment-to-moment. In the context of global terrorism, murder, and the viciousness of free-range human primates it seems a small thing. I can’t help but wonder…what would the perspective be of the wee life forms living in the moss growing in the crack on a brick wall, on our madness?

Today is a good day for perspective. Today is a good day to treat myself gently – and to treat the world gently, too; we’ve been through a lot, haven’t we? Today is a good day to be kind, out in the world.

Tags , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories Anxiety, art and the artist, grief, Healthy Living, Menopause, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, women

Fog, Pain, and Solitude

November 8, 2014 //
0

I’ve got a solo weekend. The morning, so far, as been still and quiet…and strange. I didn’t sleep well, but I don’t feel fatigued. I tossed and turned wakefully much of the night, and managed to use the entire area of a king size bed alone…every corner, every side, diagonally, crosswise, splayed like a starfish, curled up like a hedgehog, with pillows, without pillows, blankets, no blankets… which is most peculiar since I generally sleep in just one or two positions throughout a given night, sometimes laying flat on my back throughout, rarely rolling over (it’s a remnant of domestic violence, and nights when any movement might give away that I wasn’t sleeping, or remind my spouse I was there, at all). I sometimes wake in the morning to find that the covers are not even a little disturbed from the night’s sleep, just turned down at the corner from getting up, looking like a dog-eared book page. So…yeah. I didn’t sleep well. I didn’t want to wake early, and went to bed tired, sleepy, and ready to just sleep until waking caught up with me.

As it turns out, waking caught up with me around 2:38 am. I had some fun cat naps between then, and when I finally gave up and got out of bed, around 5:00 am. No nightmares. I feel reasonably well-rested and satisfied with the comfortable knowledge that I can nap later, if I care to. I took my time with my yoga. I had to. I’m stiff this morning and the pain of my arthritis, which is in my spine, is indescribably vast and commanding of my attention. This morning my spine feels like a rigid column of pain, on which my head sits; a first for me, I think, to have continuous arthritis pain from the vertebrae just above the line of my hips, to the second vertebrae above my shoulders. I keep finding room in my experience to be somewhat impressed by the completeness of it. I suppose that’s better than laying in bed crying because it hurts. I don’t really want to waste precious mortal time that way.

Droplets of mist gather everywhere on a foggy morning, each one a tiny universe for life I can't see...or perhaps a miniature gazing ball on the world I can see. I suppose it depends on my perspective.

Droplets of mist gather everywhere on a foggy morning, each one a tiny universe for life I can’t see…or perhaps a miniature gazing ball on the world I can see. I suppose it depends on my perspective.

It’s another foggy morning. I love fog as a metaphor for the unknown, the unseen, the mystery of potential, and choices yet to be made. I enjoy walking in the fog.  I enjoy the whimsy of imagining that as I walk I create the world around me; each step I take revealing some new detail, what is beyond view slowly emerging. Yep. Almost 52, still daydreaming everywhere I go. lol. 🙂 It’s a quality of self that I value a great deal; it has held the power to make the tragic and painful endurable, and it has kept me going long after I would have quit without it.

Tears unexpectedly begin pouring down my face… arthritis pain? No, it’s just old trauma, old hurts; there are things lurking in the darkness that I never really stop crying over. These days I don’t fight the tears that come when my heart is touched by my own hurts; I keep a safe space for myself, in my own heart, to comfort me, to show myself compassion, to recognize that it has indeed been a lot to go through, a lot to survive, and to recognize that these honest tears are no sign of weakness or failure. In a sense they are a strange celebration of strength; I am here, and that’s a pretty big deal, considering what I have overcome. I only need, in this moment, to be kind to myself and let the tears fall without stress, without anger, gently supporting myself on the strengths I have. Tears pass. There’s plenty to cry over, but it doesn’t need drama – only love.

Autumn is a season of change, a good time to break patterns.

Autumn is a season of change, a good time to break patterns.

Today is a good day to take care of me. Today is a good day to be fully present, and engaged in the moment, even if all I do is flip through a holiday catalog, answer my email, or have a coffee in the chilly autumn garden watching the dawn unfold beyond the fog. Today is a good day to appreciate how far I’ve come, and how good things are right now in spite of pain. Today is a good day to make choices that create the world I really want to live in. How about you? What do you think… shall we change the world?

Tags , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories autumn, Brain Injury, grief, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Sleepless Nights, The Big 5, Words
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »