Deep Breath

There is something about tonight that is helping me to take the first deep breath in a long time.

It’s been three whirlwind weeks – and I’ve loved it – but I’m exhausted. I need some space.

The first week was jet lag and all the firsts (first trip to the grocery, first time driving, first Chipotle), the second week was driving.  I logged 2200 miles on the rental car.  The third week was all the Wilmington relatives (a chatty and curious bunch 😉

Now I’m back in Toledo for two weeks helping Jackie and her partner with some of their fixer-upper projects.  It’s a relief to know I’ll be here for a while and a relief to have some time-consuming projects.  I’ve needed something to really occupy my mind and keep it focused.

I can’t say as its been particularly easy to be back.  Of course its been fabulous, but….

It’s hard to share how I feel about America and Americans without 1. being hypocritical, and 2. risking upsetting people. But I really don’t know if I can be happy living here again.  I’m not pressuring myself to have it figured out, and I know that every week will evolve and be different, but I’m just not sure where I fit in.

I wasn’t just on a trip.  I made a life and a home, such as it was, somewhere else.  And I miss it. I had responsibilities and a community and a very different worldview. I’m sad to be away from my friends and neighbors.  I’m sad that what’s valuable in Vashisht is not valuable here.  I miss my porch. I miss my food. I’m sad that our refrigerators have cameras inside them.  I’m sad that I don’t seem able to convey that I’m not the same and I struggle to understand if I even need you to understand this.

I can’t believe how generous everyone has been to me.  I’m overwhelmed with blessings and kindnesses. I was sitting on the porch with Brian’s mom this morning thinking that I’d sit there with her all day if I could and that would be the best day. Last week I walked with Jeff to see Brian’s bench at Elon and I thought how incredible to have a friend who wants to do this – who knows that I want to do it. In Kent everyone stood around talking with me on a hectic pre-commencement morning. Brian’s Aunt Kathy and Uncle Eric let me borrow their car and take it to Toledo for two weeks.

It’s been three weeks of belonging to people again. And it’s been three weeks of wondering how I’m going to reconcile America with my heart.

 

Brian’s 40th Birthday!

If he were still with us I would have to drag him out of bed to face this day.  I for sure would not have dared to buy him any over the hill birthday items (and besides, I’m pretty sure the family would have that covered, so I could enjoy his reaction but not be blamed ;).

I went searching through old emails and notes that I have access to while I’m away.  I have tons of emails from him with funny YouTube videos, or cartoons or jokes he found on the internet.  If you were to take that as your complete picture of him you’d say he was only interested in the pursuit of the funny, constantly working to keep himself and everyone else (but mostly himself) entertained.

I found one email that I’ll post here to commemorate that ridiculous and cheeky side of him.

Today the Hill side of Brian’s family is gathering to celebrate their Christmas this year (because there are 2,700 of them and they can’t all fit inside a house at Christmas when it’s cold).   Today is also Ben Afflecks birthday, which Brian randomly liked to mention (so I continue the tradtion!).  Today I miss him and I miss home immensely.

But going through his emails made me laugh. And that was nice.  All my love, have a beautiful day!

From: bgcollins15@gmail.com
Subject: Just saying hello
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2012 10:04:52 -0500
To: aidanomala@hotmail.com

I put my shorts on backwards today. Whoops!

Hope you’re having a good day.

I love you,

B

Brian in South Carolina 2011

Namaste

Namastē (which is hello and goodbye in Hindi – it’s the aloha of India!),

If you’re reading this it’s either because you graciously asked about the blog or because I want to be sure to share it with you.  I’m leaving for India soon (the 18^th, 6:35pm!!) and I want you to have the link to my travel blog.  Though I hate thinking of it as a travel blog.  I call it a journal.  It makes me feel better about myself.

http://darkmoonjournal.wordpress.com/

On the home page there is a widget to sign up for emails each time I post.  Since I doubt I will be posting with any frequency, I am recommending you sign up.  This will save you from chronically checking and rechecking to see if I’ve posted (if you are the chronic rechecking type).  Just click on the “follow” button.

There are also a couple of other ways to keep track of me (if you are the worrying type) (You know who you are. I know who you are.  Embrace it).  There is some kind of “find your friends” app that I was asked to sign up for.  More info can be found on the blog.  If you do it to and then friend me, you can see exactly where in India I am any minute of the day.  If you notice that I am suddenly somewhere like Afghanistan or, say, Yemen, call someone.  Please.

Emails are always welcome in between posts.  You can use this address.  It will be like letters from home each time I get access to the internets.

I’ve posted some maps of India, as well as some quotes and poems that I’ve been reading and reflecting on since the fall.  I also have put up some journal entries dating back to November.  I felt that these entries reflected some key points of my past few months.

It’s been 11 months since Brian died and almost two since my mother’s death.   It’s difficult to be confronted with the reality that you are not who or what you thought you were (as Whitman says, “I am larger and better than I thought”).  I wish I could tell you what the next 11 months will bring (or the 11 after that!).  We’ll all just have to trust together that according to the universe, everything is as it should be.

I’m excited.  Really excited.  I hope you’ll share the ups and downs with me.

Feel free to pass the link along to anyone interested.

India, Finally

I have been waiting to tell you that I have my ticket to India.  I leave on February 18.  I wanted to tell a few key people first (my mom being the main one), and while I didn’t hit everyone today, I got close.

It’s hard to talk about India.  Most people respond like they would if someone said they were taking an exciting vacation or doing something strange and exciting.  I guess India is all those things, and I desperately hope that I have fun, but that’s not why I’m going.  And I wish I could give you a really great “why,” but I realized a while ago that that isn’t possible.  I try to couch it in so many different ways, trying to make it comfortable for people, or trying to make it make sense.  I learned that it doesn’t matter though, no matter what I say.

But here is my truth about why I am going to India:  Because it is the only thing that makes sense.  It is the only thing I can do.

I could embellish a little, but that is it, plainly.  Some will understand this and some won’t.  Either way, it’s ok.

I don’t have many more answers than before.  I fly into Bangalore.  From there I will make my way to the coast, to Goa.  It’s a touristy, beachy area and I thought that would be a good place to get my bearings, learn some things, and just get prepared in general.  I plan to be there a while – at least through March 7.  I think I’d like to watch a beautiful ocean sunset that day – I believe that would do my heart good. I have found myself missing the sunrises and sunsets from my time in The Keys.  So that’s the plan as of now.

After that?  Who knows!

As I begin this trek, there is a lot to share.  I would, in fact, like to embellish on the “why” at some point.  I would like to share what I am learning and who I am becoming.  There are also less existential, yet still interesting things to share (like, I’ve started my vaccinations, and my personal challenge is a pack that weighs no more than 20 pounds).

I don’t think that this blog is the place for it though.  I’ve felt for a while that this blog was at an end.  I thought I could keep it going until I left, but that’s a symmetry that just isn’t going to happen.  So this is my second to last post.  Some time in January I will post once more, with a web address for a new blog – a travel blog (which annoys me just to type those words).

Personally, I think a blog of my experience will be good for me. Despite continued misgivings about blogging and, well, “technology.”  🙂  It will also serve to communicate with lots of people all at once.  I’m not super concerned with a lack of internet, but certainly a blog is most efficient.  It will let you know I am alive and well.  I hope you’ll check in with me.

I think I did well today.  I was most worried about this day as the memories from last year are so vivid in my mind.  The race and Brian never once complaining because he wanted to be there for me.  There are all kinds of dates coming up that have me worried because of the memories.  Days that I don’t know if I’ll ever forget.  But I did more than survive, I did ok.  I slept in, hung out with my mom a little (promised to bring potato chips next time), hung out with some friends during the afternoon, made plans to see a movie tomorrow with some other friends, talked to some Wilmington folks.  And I feel ok.

I’m having chili for my Thanksgiving.  Chili, chips, and salsa.  Oh, and an apple pie.  The whole thing.  🙂

Some sort of thanks feels in order, some sort of wrapping up. But I don’t know what…. I will leave the blog up for a while longer.  I think some people are still just now finding it. My hope is that it can help others who are facing similar challenges find some… comfort, I guess.   It might seem odd to call all this comforting, but I know I spent no small amount of time searching and searching for someone who felt like me, who spoke words I couldn’t, and who made me feel a little less crazy.

Thank you all.

I’ll send a postcard!

Dead Broke Farm

For my birthday one year Brian got us a two-hour horseback ride.  It was crazy painful. But fun.  But I’ve had no desire to do it since.  We both brought our cameras but managed to only take one picture during the several hours that we were there.

This is afterwards, in the car getting ready to go home.  Some of you may remember Brian telling one of his favorite stories about how when he climbed down from the horse his shirt got caught on something on the saddle and as he went down his shirt stayed up and all the buttons popped off like in a cartoon.  popopopopopopopopop.

Then, because he LOVED that shirt he spent 20 minutes looking for the buttons around the horses hooves.  But the horse would move and Brian had to keep reaching for buttons, terrified that the horse was going to step on him. But that didn’t stop him!

We are tired in this picture, but we had fun.

 

I Go Out Walkin’

Having insomnia over a prolonged period of time is an interesting thing. In my life I’ve had nights when I didn’t sleep and weeks at a time where I wasn’t sleeping well – like maybe because of work stress.  But it’s never lasted long.

I’d say I was rapidly cycling through insomnia in the beginning.  Couple bad nights, couple good nights, repeat.  Since I’ve sold the house and moved to Chapel Hill I’d say the idea of sleep has become a bit torturous.

Now, I am sleeping.  On a good night I can get as many as six hours.  Which I think a lot of people would consider pretty good.  On a bad night I can get as little as two.  The problem is that more nights are bad than good.

This is something that happened to Brian when he stopped working.  He wouldn’t let himself fall asleep.  He’d push and push and push to stay up.  I never understood it and now that a similar thing is happening to me, I still don’t understand!  It’s not like bad things happen when I lie down.  I’m pretty masterful at not thinking about sad things.

But in normal life there is something that happens when you close your eyes for sleep.  Even if you’re one of those men who fall asleep in 5.6 seconds. Well, maybe this doesn’t happen to them… but for the rest of us… there is a thing that happens.

It’s some kind of ordering or organizing of your life.  It’s not conscious, it’s an automatic thing.  Like a heart beat.  It just happens.  Whatever part of you, whether your heart or your brain, takes stock of things and orders your life.  Partner?  Check.  Kids?  Check.  Work?  Check.  House?  Check.  Important people in my life?  Check?  Money in the bank?  Check. Food in the fridge?  Check.  And when this ordering has been completed, and you subconsciously account for the most important and most basic of your life’s needs, you feel settled, you feel set, and then you sleep.

And I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that even if you’ve never thought about this before or ever realized that it’s happening to you, it is.

I wasn’t aware of this ordering thing until I had this huge item on my list that could no longer be checked off.  My subconscious can’t settle my list.  I can’t sleep because the whole of my life can’t be accounted for.  So my brain or my heart just keeps endlessly searching for some imagined scenario where all the boxes can be checked.  Like a computer trying to solve a problem.  When it can no longer continue on one path, it resets and starts again down another.  Or like working on a Rubik cube and you’ve got all the colors in the right places (settled) except one or two and you can’t find the combination that makes the whole “right.”

This is super exhausting because while a computer could work all night and not get tired, you, your conscious self, are just hanging out, squeezing your eyes shut, praying for sleep.  lol.  And you can no more ask your subconscious to stop looking for a way to make it all make sense than you can ask your heart to stop beating.

And all this is to say (posts sometimes take an unexpected turn) that when I can’t sleep, I walk.  If it gets to be 2am, 3am, and I’m still wired for sound, I put my sneakers on and take a walk.  These days I wear Brian’s big winter coat, as it seems I don’t actually own one myself any longer.  (I don’t know why.  I just don’t seem to own one anymore).  When I first put his coat on to take my first walk, I put my hands in the pockets and found his gloves.  There in his pockets from the last time he wore the coat.

And that’s another interesting thought about grief:  so far, healing has been happening, but at a glacial pace (and that’s not necessarily just times fault :), but what time is doing quickly is decreasing my ability to have a direct physical contact with Brian.  Like finding gloves that were last touched by him last winter.  Like finding them and then being able to see us in the living room, just coming in from somewhere, kicking off our slushy shoes on the mat so we didn’t muck up the house, pulling off our layers, hanging our toboggans on the hall tree, stuffing our gloves in our pockets, hanging up the coats….

As time goes on, there is just less and less of that direct contact with something about him.  Memories are good, but this is different.

But I’m trying to write a post about my midnight walks.  Which doesn’t seem to have happened.  Let me see if I can sum it up and wrap it up:  I walk in the wee hours of the morning when I can’t sleep.  It feels good to be outside and getting grounded.  I watch the moon as I walk – if she’s out.  It’s a good time to think.  Sometimes I try talking to Brian but that usually last 15 seconds before I totally shut it down. I talk to the moon. I always see a lot of the neighborhood deer.  It’s nice.  It’s quiet.  I come back and I’m usually able to sleep.

Good night all!

Anniversary Trauma

In the mental health field there is something called Anniversary Trauma.  I first heard it in grad school and first experienced it when my friend Becca died.  One year after her death I started feeling off and a little volatile with my emotions.  I didn’t know what was happening.  It wasn’t too bad, maybe like a really bad case of PMS.  I didn’t realize until several weeks later, when I was finally feeling better, that I had experienced anniversary trauma.  I hadn’t really been thinking about Becca at all.  But my body and brain were remembering and acting out that sorrow.

Anniversary trauma is when you experience distressing emotions after being triggered by a cue.  It doesn’t have to be a one year anniversary (although some people have yearly trauma for much of their lives), it can be anything at any time.  An event, a comment, a smell.  I think it’s most common with people who have, at some point, received a PTSD diagnosis.  But anniversary trauma is also common with the loss of a loved on.

The two links below talk more about anniversary trauma.  The first is a short article by a woman who experiences it each year.  It’s more in layman’s terms.  The second is a more technical article about the why’s, when’s, symptoms, etc.

http://www.blogher.com/conquering-your-trauma-anniversary

http://www.hiddenhurt.co.uk/anniversary_reactions_to_traumatic_events.html

I thought they would be more helpful than me trying to explain it.  As I said, there is not a lot of info about anniversary trauma and grief.  There are also mental health and medical professionals who don’t really believe that it’s true.  I’d like to cast my vote for absolutely 100% true.

My insomnia is getting worse.  Always a roller coaster these last 8 months I typically experience a few days of good sleep, a few of bad, a few of good, and so on.  In Ohio last week I slept really well.  I haven’t slept much at all since getting back to NC.  Even though I was sleeping well at Danny and Kay’s, it was always just before sleep that I would miss Brian the most.  Miss him like I don’t really let myself ever miss him.  But it was too strong there to ignore.

The holidays are coming up.  I haven’t really given them much thought.  Avoidance is a classic, and easy, coping mechanism for grief.  I avoid thinking about the holidays, therefore, I feel no stress about it.  Easy.

I mentioned a post or two ago that I’ve submitted my resignation for January 2.  As you can imagine that sparked a series of discussions with my boss about things like transition reports, wrapping up, HR benefits termination, health insurance, and office coverage for the holiday week.  Because I have not been able to build up my decimated vacation hours, I have no time to take off at the holidays.  Something I had not been thinking about (avoidance).  I always take off at Christmas, it’s never an issue, I was just going on auto pilot that this year would be like all others.

But when I talked with my boss about working the three days in between Christmas and New Year’s, when the university offices are open, it hit me.  My first thought was, “No body likes working those days but someone has to do it, I don’t have any days to take, I’m leaving shortly after, I can take one for the team.”  Then I REALLY stopped sleeping and I had to look at why.

I don’t know what I’ll do for Christmas, but there is no way I can survive if I have to focus on being mentally well enough to be at work the day after Christmas.  I am barely going to survive as it is.  But I will be in no condition to work.  I just can’t do it.  The first Thanksgiving and Christmas without Brian and I have to be well enough to function at work?  Just not going to happen. His birthday, which laid me low, was nothing compared to what the next couple of months will be.

I was talking to Jackie tonight and she was asking me about holiday plans and something about how I was dealing with it all.  I tried to explain to her that it’s changing right now and changing pretty rapidly.  The past 8 months have been relatively benign in terms of “memories from the year before.”  Yes, Brian slept through July, and yes it was so hard to help him decide to not go back to work and start long-term disability, and yes, there was a very scary hospitalization in August when his family was here visiting, and yes we had a big fight and I shipped him off to Ohio to get some distance from him, and any number of other “hard things.”

But it wasn’t until this time of year last year that things went from bad to inevitable.  It was November/December when he was really truly sick.  In fact, it was Thanksgiving Day when I first began to understand that we were experiencing the beginning of the end.  This is naturally a time of year that has a lot of “benchmarks” that we can naturally track time and events.  “That was the Thanksgiving when we…..”  “Remember that New Year’s when we….”  Now, these natural markers in the holiday season are intensified by the cancer memories.

All this is to say that I think I am beginning what will be a heavy period of anniversary trauma.  I can feel it coming in my worsening insomnia, in how I missed Brian so badly last week even though I work hard to not think about missing Brian.  I can feel it in the flashbacks that are starting to come back.  Things that I’d forgotten or hadn’t thought about since they first happened.

My 5k run on Thanksgiving last year.  Brian was so sick and fatigued and weak and nauseous but he insisted on being there to support me.  He had so much back pain and there weren’t any good places to sit.  The event took so much out of him that he went instantly to bed and pretty much stayed there for the remainder of the weekend.  This is when I first started to know.  Though it would be a few more weeks before I admitted it to myself.

Then there was the first of the three December hospitalizations.
The sweat lodge.
The second hospitalization when we learned of the grapefruit sized tumor in his omentum and he had the catheter put in.
The Christmas visit from the family which he fought so hard to be a part of but was so so sick.
The delirium.
When he called 911 and the police came to the house because he hallucinated a woman hung from the ceiling fan.
The third hospitalization where Phil had to restrain him.  When he thought I was trying to put him away in an institution and he ranted and raved all night.
January were we had a New Years miracle and he started to feel better.
Our wedding anniversary.
The doctors appointment where Brian was so sick he started vomiting in the lobby and Dr. C told us his cancer was terminal.
Getting admitted right after that, sitting in an isolation room so we could have some privacy, facing death together for the first and one of the only times.
Doctors appointment two to three times a week during this time.
The last doctor appointment when Dr. C said it was over.  It was time for hospice.  She came in with Dr. P and said that out in the hallway she asked Dr. P for help, told her she was scared to come in and tell Brian that it was over.  She said Dr. P told her they’d come in together and Dr. C would be able to tell us, would be able to deliver the bad news.
Wheeling Brian out after that visit, after making arrangements for hospice to come to the house and right as I am wheeling him out of the office doors to the lobby he says, “Wait, am I never coming back here?” I said, “I don’t think so.”
The pain, the real pain that, when it started, would never stop.
The weight loss that made him a shell.
The day he stopped being able to swallow pills and therefore was no longer taking the BRAF.
The blackness that started at his toes and would eventually cover most of his feet on the day he died.
The blood clots in his legs.
How no matter how much pain medicine I gave him, pumped into him, he still just hurt and hurt.How I played Southern Cross that night because there was nothing else I could do.
Trying to calm him down and make him comfortable and then realizing, after long hours that he was finally calm, in the cancer coma, and that he was gone.  Conscious Brian was gone and I’d missed whatever it was that he last spoke to me and that I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye.
Hours spent coaching him out of this life.  Telling him we’d all be ok, that he could let go of the pain, that he didn’t have to worry about us.
The last three breaths.

This is all about to start.  The reliving of the beginning of the end all the way through to the actual end.  That’s anniversary trauma.  The reliving it whether you want to or not, no matter how much you try to keep it away, keep it in check.  I think that, ultimately I’ll be ok.  I’m not entirely sure what is worse than this that is yet to come.  So when I survive this there will be very few more difficult things left.  LOL.  That’s my silver lining.  That’s my source of hope to help me get through.

Take care everyone – If you’re so inclined, send up some prayers for sleep.

Mary Oliver

I secretly wanted to be an English major.  But I was intimidated by the faculty.  And by the English majors I knew who seemed to have a comprehension of language and an understanding of beauty that I was always in awe of.

I blame this (changing my major from English to History as a way to avoid possible failure) for not having discovered Mary Oliver until this year.  I don’t know if any of you have ever had this experience, but you hear something or see something or experience something and it’s so powerful it feels like IT is the reason you came here to live this life.

This happens most frequently to me with poets and transcendentalists and other various writers.  It’s happened again with Mary Oliver.

Her name has continued to pop up more and more this year.  I had read a few of her poems (apparently the wrong ones) but never a collection, and never any of her poems on grief.  The first poem I paid serious attention to was a poem that was read at an Elon event this past May.  Jeff told me about an event held on campus after the state voted to add an amendment to the constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman.  Several students, faculty, and staff gathered together to grieve this loss.  I thought it was kind of amazing that a poem, written so many years ago, could speak to this loss so poignantly.  I thought it was kind of amazing that a person could write like that.

Since then she’s just been popping up all over – like a sign from God, “take this exit!!”  I’m chagrined to admit it’s taken me this long to find her, but ever so slightly more at peace because I have.

I wanted to post two poems this evening.  (They’re short, hang with me!!).  As I was looking through them I wanted to post them all.  Like, all of them.  I was reading and reading and getting lost in that, almost forgetting about the blog completely, when I came across Thirst and just started crying.  I don’t know why.  But I thought my tears were an indication to meditate on the poem a little more, and an indication to share it with you.  The second poem is The Uses of Sorrow.  It expresses what I hope, but not where I am – yet.

Thirst

Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have. I walk out to the pond and all the way God has given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar but sulked and hunched over my books past the hour and the bell; grant me, in your mercy, a little more time. Love for the earth and love for you are having such a long conversation in my heart. Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent, yet already I have given a great many things away, expecting to be told to pack nothing, except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.

The Uses of Sorrow

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

Snowing. In October.

Being in Ohio last week was good.  I always like visiting Wilmington.  It’s always comfy at Danny and Kay’s, there is so little to do that there is never any stress.  It was good to see the family, it was good to watch HGTV, it was good to stay in PJ’s 80% of the day.  It was also good to see Lily.  I didn’t want to get specific last time I posted because I wasn’t certain, but I can now positively confirm that she is newly 10.  She’s so much older even from the last time I saw her.  Which was just May.  Or June.  She’s got this shoe thing which is hilarious and kind of cool.  She likes the boldest shoes for a ten year old!   There are definitely phases of growing up.  Phases I am more and less comfortable with or interested in.  Ten is a good one.  She’s got such a good heart and I know she’ll figure out how to use it more and more as she grows up.

The drive up with Jackie was a lot of fun.  She’s got a good heart too and I’m glad that we’re still friends.  We worked together at App and hanging on to people after I’ve left a place is not something I do well or often.  That was six years ago!  On Monday I had dinner with Dave and his wife Wendy.  It was nice to be able to meet up with them since Dave has driven from Raleigh to Chapel Hill a couple of times now to have dinner.  I feel like I am always on the receiving end of every thing. And it’s just really nice to get to know Dave, and now Wendy.  It’s really uncanny how much I have in common with each of them.  I have to believe it’s not a coincidence that we’ve met.  On Tuesday we did a little family birthday thing for Lily.  Got to see a lot of the Hill side of the family as well as Grandma Collins and Danny’s brother Kip.  And any gathering that involves Kathy and Eric (aunt and uncle) is going to be a fun time! On Wednesday I went to dinner with Adam and Rachel and Lily which was really nice.  And despite the fact that I wasn’t paying attention to the menu and ordered almost everything wrong, it was good to spend time with them. Aside from that I hung out with Kay who is home recuperating from broken ankle surgery.  We watched this show called the Property Brothers, which is nothing special above and beyond all the other real estate shows, but I am obsessed with it!

What is most noticeable to me about my week in Ohio is a confirmation of my existence in this apathetic no mans land.  I have been aware for a while now that I am not retaining as much, that I am not paying as much attention, that I am not aware or present as much.  I live alone. And I knew that was affecting me, but I didn’t realize how much until I lived with people for a few days!  I live in an inner (and outer for the most part) world populated by one.  I have been insulating against pain and fear so that even when I’m in the company of others (like at work) I am still alone.

Being in Ohio allowed me to see how withdrawn I’ve become.  People wanted to know about future plans and I have none.  I had no real updates on how all the Burlington folks are doing.  My inner life is all.  And my inner life is not a place where anyone else is invited (or can get to).  The irony of my life is not lost on me.  As I talk about and make plans to go to India and expand expand expand, my real life has been condensed down to almost nothing.

In any given moment (at home) I am actually not thinking about anything.  I always wondered how some men could do that.

“What are you thinking about right now?”

“Nothing.”

Now I know.

I read to escape.  I eat to escape.  When I can do neither of those two things any more I go to sleep to escape.  I function basically normally around others and while at work.  But I find no immediate reasons to strive or thrive.  Both seem painful.  My life right now isn’t enviable or super enjoyable, but it’s all I feel compelled to do or be.  I used to have a huge need to process, to be open.  Now I find it both exhausting and alienating.  I feel people being uncomfortable and/or frustrated.  So I try to be as fine as I can be.  And I’ve learned that’s even more important when at work.  I think I do a pretty good job of faking it.  I think, probably, faking it is essential right now.  It doesn’t cost me much emotionally (meaning, 90% of the time it’s easy to do.  Only if I’m in a really low mood is it hard to muster), and I’ve always felt there was something to the saying, “Fake it til you make it.”  If I don’t practice faking it I’ll lose the road back to “making it.”

And it snowed in Ohio.  Not a lot, but it snowed.  In October.  Not cool.  The people who live in Ohio and insist that the sun comes out every occasionally are deluding themselves.  🙂

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Before I continue to forget:

• I have resigned my job effective Jan 2.
• I expect to leave for India in March
• What I will do between now and January, I do not know.
• What I will do between January and March, I do not know.
• What I will do after I get to India, I do not know.
• I am neither excited or panicked.  It is just the direction I’m moving.  The accomplishment right now is having decided on a direction and then actually heading that way.

More on India later, I promise.  As soon as I know, you’ll know.

Rabbit Hole

I seem to have a knack for finding movies about loss and grieving that mirror my own experiences.  I think the mirror part is not strange – as different as grief is for each individual, it is still universal.  The strange part is my knack for finding them.

I watched Rabbit Hole tonight.  It stars Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart.  They are parents whose four year old son died 8 months prior to the start of the movie.  There wasn’t a single scene in the movie that didn’t feel like my life.  I am that woman.  She is pieces of me.

I don’t know why I seek out these movies.  Mostly, I guess, it’s an attempt to feel normal.  To feel that I can relate to someone.  To feel understood.  Three things that I can’t have any more.  Right now.  What time has brought to me recently is that a barrier, a wall, a moat, a buffer zone of pain separates me not only from everyone in my life, but also from life.  Even the best intentioned friend can’t scale the wall, swim the moat, navigate the pain.  It’s not about your intention.  Of course you want to help me, make me feel better, fix it, support me, be there, carry some of the burden, lighten the load.  But you can’t.

Like, you just can’t.

It’s not possible.  I am alone.  I don’t say that in a sad way or a depressed way – maybe in an apathetic way – but just as a statement of fact.

I could fund my trip abroad for 3 years, staying at luxury resorts, if I had a dollar for every time some one said something along the lines of, “I can’t imagine….”  I have acknowledged this condolence in the best way I can in any given moment.  Usually saying something akin to, “Thank you for seeing that I am hurting and thank you for trying to show me that you care by saying that.”  Sometimes I try to validate the speaker in some way, “No, I know.  It’s ok.  You don’t have to, you’re here.  It’s ok.”

Recently however….. well, recently no one has said this to me.  No one talks to me about my grief anymore.  People ask how I am doing, but no one engages me in conversation with any depth around this topic.  People have stopped bringing it up.  Whether because they have reached the limits of their own comfortability or whether because they think, “it’s time to move on,”  I don’t know.  I also know it’s tough because many people are dealing with their OWN grief.

But recently I’ve been feeling “alone” differently.  I think about that statement “I can’t imagine…” and rather than try to make it ok that you can’t imagine, I’ve realized – No.  You can’t.

You can’t imagine.  You don’t know.  You can’t even come close.  You have no idea and you don’t want to.

This is refreshing actually.  Because this realization does take the sadness and the depression out of, “I am alone.”  Because I can now see that it’s not your fault.  You can’t imagine.  There is nothing you can do about that, it’s the way it is.  It’s heartbreaking for you to not be able to fix, to understand, to make it easier, but there is nothing you can do about it. I used to get so angry about this.  You know, “that sucks that you can’t help.  You suck.”  And not that I won’t be angry again but there is an ability to relax into “I am alone” that wasn’t there when I thought it was your fault.

It’s also not my fault!  I have a complicated grief.  Some have recently suggested that I might actually be traumatized.  I do not have hope.  I have not decided whether to choose life or choose the abyss.  I am Pissed.  Capital P pissed.  But it’s just not my fault that I am alone.  I think some might argue differently, but if it’s not possible for you to imagine, then it’s not possible for me to make you able to either. We’re all off the hook. I am alone because that is what has happened.  Even if I immediately renounced suffering and embraced hope and life and love with wholehearted sincerity, the wall would still be there.  That’s what I mean when I say that this is not sad or depressing.  My current mood is beside the point.  Happy, sad, loving life, living large, or wallowing in the depths of despair – I am alone. I am changed.  Not just my life.  Me.

My inner life right now does not/cannot allow visitors.  Despite the fact that you may want to visit. Despite the fact that I desperately want you to. I am starting to learn to make my peace with this fact.  A gift from my resistance to all that happened (and didn’t) in Massachusetts.  A phrase that I have found myself unconsciously repeating when I find myself angry and lost because you can’t understand:  I am ready.  I am ready for the lonely.

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I know I regularly poo-poo copyright laws by using other people’s stuff or not citing properly or who knows what else.  But so far I’ve gotten away with it when I’ve done it, so I’m going to keep doing it.  There are a couple of quotes from the movie that I want to share because I feel like they provide amazing insight into how I feel and what it’s like to be me these days.

Nicole Kidman’s character, Becca, is in the basement with her mother (Dianne Weist).  They’ve just brought down several boxes of her sons things because the house is now for sale and they need to do something with the “stuff” (already feels SO familiar).  Becca asks her mother (who also lost a son many years ago), “Does it ever go away?”

“No.  I don’t think it does.  Not for me it hasn’t and it’s going on 11 years.  It changes though.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.  The weight of it I guess.  At some point it become bearable.  It turns into something you can crawl out from under.  And you can carry around, like a brick in your pocket.  And you even forget it for a little while.  But then you reach in, for whatever reason, and there it is.  Oh, right.  That.  It could be awful.  But not all the time.  It’s kind of… not that you like it or anything… but it’s what you’ve got instead of your son.  So you carry it around.  It doesn’t go away.  Which is…”
“Which is what?”
“Fine….”

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At the end of the movie, after struggling with their grief in different ways, after they’ve spent the movie falling apart as individuals, as a couple, in every way, Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart find themselves in the kitchen, wanting so much to support and be supported but not knowing how anymore.  She throws out the suggestion of a cookout as a peace offering, a toe in the water of “trying to be normal.”  They talk for a minute about the cookout and about needing to get a birthday gift for a daughter of a friend.  There is silence as they still don’t know what to say and then she asks a question,

“So what are we going to do?”
“About what?”
“I don’t know.  Just pick something.”
“Well, we could go to Village Toys.  Pick up Candy Land for Emily.”
“Hm.  Candy Land. Yeah…. but then what?”
“Then we wrap it.

“Hm.”

“And then, we have the cookout… and they’ll come over…we’ll have a couple of other people over so it’s not too awkward for anyone… and then, to make them feel comfortable we’ll ask a bunch of questions about what the kids have been up to… and we’ll pretend like we’re interested… and then… and then we’ll wait for someone to bring up Danny… while the kids are playing.  And maybe that will go on for a little while…  and after that, they’ll go home.”

“And then what?

“I don’t know.  Something though.”