Who will we become?

Grief is a new thing for me.

I've spent a little time with it here and there at the end of relationships. At the end of friendships. At the end of eras. But not the big losses. The life-changing,  reevaluate-what's-important kind. Or maybe grief, like childbirth (which I've never done at all so why on earth am I using it as a metaphor?), is something you do eventually forget enough of that the next time it's startlingly dramatic?

I saw my therapist for the first time in 18 months because I'm not managing my reactions to life well right now. I yelled at WC when he said I checked the placement of his toe wrong (he was trying on new shoes and he wanted me to check toe placement and apparently this isn't a skill I have). I also yelled at one of my employees for helping. She was. Just not precisely, exactly, 100% the way I would have done it had I done it myself which I couldn't which is why she was helping. I mostly hate everything that isn't perfectly behaving exactly as I need it to.

This is not a healthy way to approach the world.

I sat on Molly's couch, inhaled, and tried to cover the last 18 months as quickly as I could, knowing I'd cry as soon as I got to the heart of things. I explained my experiences dealing with my unwellness. How so much of non-work life was built around the enjoyment of food and the socializing that comes with it. How I've started to figure it out, but it isn't the same. How I don't feel like I'm allowed to be upset because my situation led to weight loss and aren't I happy about that? (The answer is that I'll trade my new pants size for consistent health in heartbeat.)

She asked me if I thought I was grieving for the life I'd been living. I exhaled and the tears came. I have become a person who daily thinks about my health. Do I feel well? How much sleep did I really get laying in bed for 8 hours but hearing every car drive by on the street below? What meetings can I skip if I'm not feeling well? I should cancel lunch with the girls... because... because....

This is not a person I recognize. But it's still me. I look in the mirror and it's still me, but it is not part of the definition of me that I've held dear. And I miss me.

A friend of mine, Christine, passed away last month. She hadn't been well, but she'd been getting better. Her system wasn't fully healthy and something happened in her brain, it didn't clot I guess, and she hemorrhaged. One day of "I have a headache" and the next day she was on a ventilator.

Her husband IM'd to let me know when they were taking her off the ventilator (scheduled so everything usable could be donated to others). I was in a meeting. I took a deep breath and shoved it down. So far down. To my toes. Toe nails. I sat for 20 minutes. I spoke professionally but briefly to my coworkers and boss. The meeting ended and I mentioned that I was going to head out early to avoid traffic. I gathered my things and went to my car.

I exhaled. Up it came. The grief. In large gulping pleading sobs from my toes through my whole body.

Some friends of mine are about to divorce. A marriage of a decade and a half, kids, years of couples counseling, years of inhaling the this-isn't-rightness and shoving it down... and just now exhaling the grief. The life they'd planned didn't turn out. The life they both deserve... based in happiness, mutual respect, and love for exactly who the other is to the world.

Hopefully their end is a beginning.

But for now, the starting over. Redefining what everyday looks like. Learning and growing from the character-building experiences that are pain. And grief.

Christine and me. 2006

    

The people in these pictures are changed. None of it's fair. None of it is logical. It just is. We can't fight it. We can only adapt to it.

So for now, the starting over. Who will we become?