My view is changing quite rapidly. Depression scares me. And I don't want to avoid talking about things that have me scared anymore. It’s like your brain is stuck in darkness and you have no idea how to get the lights back on in there. I need a brain engineer and mechanic. Someone to go inside and figure out the faulty wiring and why all my neurons seem to be angry with me right now.
As I hear stories from friends and acquaintances who have experienced large amounts of loss over the past few years, I realize that until there are safe places to be honest about feelings of deep sadness and grief, the healing won't come as naturally as it could and should to bring people to the other side, where they experience both joy and fresh perspective again. And when I think about being honest about feelings, I don't necessarily mean using lots of words. Just being given space and time to really feel all the feelings and not be viewed as forever weak.
Home seems to find a way of uncovering things I always run from with the next great adventure or idea. But maybe I always return home because out of all the billions of people in the world and the hundreds of major cities where I could live and find community, there are only three people out of those masses who understand my story down to the gritty detail (those three people are my siblings). Maybe they’ve interpreted things differently than me, but their experiences and mine are known to each other on a different level than when I try to get to know a friend. And the truth is, all the friends I knew growing up knew me when my life was in survival mode and included an instinct to hide. So whoever I am now is not the person I was then, and as much as I wish I could take those friends with me throughout life, it doesn’t seem probable or even possible.
Maybe to survive I need to make peace with this place and with who I’ve been up to now so that I can become something new. Which is why I don't want to run into the next adrenaline rush adventure until I know the tears I need to cry have been cried and the healing meant to come in this season has come.
When I close my eyes, I want to again see open fields and smiling faces in all the nations where I want to one day travel. I want to wake up wanting to be here. Wanting to embrace a new day. I want to feel again the passion of being alive and the fierce courage in waking up every day believing that my life matters just as much as the billions who occupy space and time with me. That all of our lives matter. That we aren't just organic chemistry and atoms strewn together. We're the ones who get to breathe and feel and remember. There must be a point to it all. There must be a point to me. To you. To us. Something powerful and wise and strong in the big picture of it all that includes us.
So to those bordering the land of the living and of the dead, who have discovered the place called grief, may we be met with strength and vision to keep going and to find meaning while also feeling the missing. Feeling the morbid and the unknown and the unfinished. Feeling the lack of closure and hearing the questions that yell loud yet often remain in the heart, mind, body...unheard. And may we start to realize that grief unprocessed is often heard in chronic disease, in stress, in depression and insomnia and panic attacks. As a culture, I hope we begin to recognize the great need and strength found in giving people moments to be weak, to be honest with what hurts and let the healing come.
May we give ourselves permission to sit down for a second (or as long as it takes), take a breath, regather energy at the cellular level, and regain hope.
"Pry it open with your love/ it is steep, it is stone, such recovery/it has found what we orphaned/
...your love is known, I'm standing up on it."
-Bon Iver
1 comment:
Very touching, very real...I celebrate the power and courage of this authentic voice. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Much peace to you as you travel your path, my precious Caitlin. Love always, Ansley B.
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