March: The end of my Journey through my Valley

This may be coming early in the month, we still have a week of March left but I've always been one to be a little earlier than most...its a fear of turning out like my wonderful, but always about five minutes late, Aunt.

I'm sure that I'm going to get a disgruntled phone call about that later.

Its no secret that this month is terribly difficult for me, the looming cloud of unhappy memories and the fact that most people painstakingly avoid the subject of my mother in order to preserve my heart are both catalysts in re-opening old wounds. In the past they have been wounds that I've tried to hide, wounds that I may as well have scrubbed with a dirty sponge because my actions were causing them to fester and spread. As the years went on, I found that it was becomming easier to deal with and I didn't have to really hide anymore. I didn't have to feel shame, that these feelings were real and not methods to get attention; I was on a journey through that deep valley called Grief.

Now, I don't want to be a plagiarist; the metaphor I just used is credited to a wonderful writer (and fabulous actress too I may add) who I just recently discovered, Alexandra Silber. I've never met her, I don't know what her favourite color is, where she likes to shop, or what she does on her days when she is not involved with the theatre. I only know that she adores Murder, She Wrote (which is a clue that she's awesome in my book) and she is a fantastically talented woman...who also has suffered the loss of a parent. She wrote a wonderful, heartbreaking and heartfelt post about her father and about her own journey through the seemingly endless valley of grief.

Loosing your parent is not only earth shattering, its also a very lonely thing to have happen to someone. I was thirteen, and then I was victimized by a predator; so needless to say the years following my mother's death are not ones I wish to recount. I remember feeling very, very lonely; feeling like I was the only person in my world, that there was really nobody else who understood. I've confessed this before and have been chastized for it: "How could you think you're alone when you have all these people who care about you?!" It was as if they were saying "You're the one who makes yourself lonely." Not seeing that I was absolutely terrified of trusting anyone who was a male or talking about my feelings to a woman that may just say "Oh you're just trying to get attention." I don't want anyone to think that I am embittered, I'm not. I am simply providing some sort of explanation for why I felt the way I did because those of you reading this who haven't lost a parent really don't know what it's like. And no, loosing you're dog is not the same...yes, I've heard that too. I used to condemn those who hurt me, I used to not want anything to do with anyone because I was just...hurt. I was so immensely lost and sad, I had (still do to an extent) a very hard time trusting anyone about anything because of what else happened. I hope this doesn't sound like a "woe is me" sort of thing because those people really get on my nerves.

I'm going to pull a Kate Chopin and blatantly plagiarize another writer for the use of their incredibly wonderful metaphor, with the hopes that Miss Silber will not send the copyright monster down on my head. Just know that I was not the one who first came up with this metaphor. By the way, Kate Chopin did plagiarize...just read Madame Bovary and you'll see a remarkable resemblance to The Awakening. But I digress.

Grief is a deep, often dark valley that people are thrust into at least once in their lives; it's full of abyssal ravines, painful falls and winding roads that seemingly have no end. When you loose a parent, someone who was your whole world, who you depended on to always be there and give you advice...its like being thrust into this valley that you must now, on your own, find your way out of. Its something that is so foreign to a child: to find their way by themselves when they haven't had the proper teaching of how to do so. The child, after somewhat accepting that their parent is gone, begins the long journey through their Valley. They start at the bottom of one of those abyssal ravines, with nothing to help them but their own wounded mind and their will. Soon, the mind begins to heal; not completely but it becomes manageable. Like a gash on the arm or leg, it begins to close up and become mobile. The child can't get around like they used to yet, but in time they're able to at least make it out of the ravine.

Soon they begin to stand up and begin their long journey down the winding road out of their Valley, mind you there will be many pitfalls but now the child is on the road; in the Valley, one must see each step as a tiny victory. On their way down this road there are several milestones, like mile-markers or rest stops on Turnpikes and Parkways.

Along the way, the child has a fall. This fall could be anything: an anniversary, a birthday, a song or movie that reminds you of your sorrow, or even a smell. This fall is not as dark and abyssal as the ravine that they started out in, but it is a reminder that in the Valley, it is always important to remember that you must allow yourself to grieve. You must feel that pain because if you don't, if you try to cover it up and suppress it; it will eventually bubble over like a volcano that has lain dormant for hundreds of years. It will feel as though your loss happened yesterday, and you will experience that deep, painful sobbing that you experienced the day you lost them.

You must be allowed to grieve. That is what the rest-stops on the road are for: they are for the child to be allowed to remember, to determine what is a good memory and what is a bad, to be allowed to feel the pain and to realize that this pain is going to lessen. If they are denied that, their wounds will be left unattended and fester.

After a series of pitfalls, a few moments of getting lost and confused the child finally makes it: the end of the road and the exit out of their Valley. However, this is not a permanent exit; the Valley of Grief is one that the child will re-visit many times over their lives, and each time the way out will become easier and easier to find. Soon the Valley will become a sort of Mecca if you will; a place where one goes to recount what they've learned and how far they have come since their first visit here. They will be allowed to grieve, to cry and to long for their parent. This is not a setback, and there is no need to be concerned. The important thing to understand is that the pain will never completely disappear, and to be honest I don't think it would be good if it did. That would mean completely forgetting about those we lost, and I would rather die than to forget my mother.

Reader I have made this journey to my Valley several times since the death of my mother, and I do speak the truth when I say that it does become more of a place of recollection as the years go on. Do I still weep like I did eleven years ago? Of course I do. Is the pain sometimes so sharp that I can't breathe or think? Yes. Do I still get choked up about certain things and have to cry? Yes. But this is something that will always be, and I've accepted it. I've accepted, but not been consumed by it. A wave that crashes on the sand must eventually return to sea, taking with it the sediments and shells, but leaving behind new ones. The wave of grief crashes over you and takes away something, when my mother died she took with her something that I will never get back, but in the retracting waves I find that I've also gained something. What it is, I can't really explain; those who have lost a parent (I think) know what I mean.

It has taken years to reach this point, and to be honest, I still have much further to go. I'm content where I am right now, yes there are days where I wake up and I'm suddenly hit with this pang of loss and I can't think of anything but my mother and how much I miss her, but I accept them; I see them as a minor pitfall that I must find my way out of, that the Valley is calling me back for some reason and I must heed that call.

I urge you to read Alexandra's post, because she said it much better than I did; it seems strange to say this about a person that I have never met but I feel that she knows what I'm talking about. If she even reads this, if I'm priviledged enough to have her read this I want to say thank you for your gift and sharing it with me.

Dear reader, if you are in the midst of travelling through your Valley of Grief, whatever it may be, know that you are a beautiful being; know that you are not alone, that there is someone out there who cares for you; that you can and will make it, you just have to fight. You have to get your hands dirty, and maybe a little scraped up but you can make it out. Patience, Will, and Faith are the keys dear reader; those are the keys to the doors that will take you out of your Valley.

#21: The art of self-mutilation

I'm not talking about cutting yourself, or doing that crazy thing where you strangle yourself and see how long you can go without air before you pass out...which sounds like so much fun...

The kind of self-mutilation I'm talking about is the kind we put ourselves through when we're in a relationship. It can be any sort of relationship: spouse, friend, family, lover, etc. When it comes to your family, unfortunately we really have no choice but tolerate them; as I always say, you have to love them...not like them. This sort of process usually involves people who aren't related, case in point: spouses, lovers and friends. I'm going to tackle that age old question: Why do people stay with/tolerate/marry/hang out with people who really don't appreciate what they do or how much they care?

Now, I'm not lucky (or unlucky) enough to have fallen in love yet. I'm okay with that, I figure for God's sake I'm only 22 and damnit I'm going to ENJOY my twenties. Your thirties are for marriage, kids, and all of that other crap. I've found however, that this doesn't apply to people who are in a romantic/intimate relationship. I've always prided myself in not giving a damn about what other people say, and having the ability to really read people even after spending only a few minutes with them. These two instincts can be suppressed when I allow myself to trust and be comfortable with someone who I consider a friend. I have a lot of friends, but I can count my really good friends on my one hand; let me tell you what, it's an honor to get on that hand.

I don't allow myself to trust people until they earn it, and I'll trust you until you give me a reason not to; once that happens don't expect to earn it back for a long time, if ever. Lately I've been in these two friendships where I know that there is little chance where anything will be salvaged from it, but yet I still find myself checking their facebook pages or something stupid like that to see what they're doing; that turns out to be a mistake because I usually end up getting pissed off, I remember the reason why we're not talking or hanging out as much and I remember that I had just started to consider both of them really good friends. They had just made it on that hand. The reason is irrelevant, and who knows? Maybe I did do something that caused them to believe that I wasn't the person they thought I was; though I have to say in my defense, I'm not that hard to figure out. I have a reputation as being very straightforward and honest, no bullshit here. I am sure of one thing: They definitely aren't the people I thought they were.

And yet I still went on considering them my friends, breaking my back to try to call them, talking to them, pretending like nothing was bothering me and everything was just hunky dory. It clearly wasn't, but I told myself it was. Why? Why do we do that? Is it because we are remembering all that they did for us when times were great? Or because we somehow think that this is a storm that will eventually subside? Are we somehow worried that we'll be labeled a 'quitter' by society?

I think it's all of those things combined. We don't want to give up, we still care about the person and remember all of the good times, and we think eventually this storm will pass, its just a rough spot. It's hard to look at it for what it really is: a relationship that just doesn't work anymore. The problem with just letting it slide is that it starts to eat at you, festering like an untreated wound. The wound eventually becomes an infection that spreads like wildfire and you soon find yourself being consumed by it, hating them. Hate is like a poison, and there isn't an antidote for it; you have to be the one to fight it off, which is hard to do with an infection caused by a festering wound. Soon you're no better than the people who screwed you over.

I felt myself beginning to feel this way, and it scared me. I knew then that I had to begin to disconnect myself from them. It sucks because these are people that I trusted, and they just kind of blew me off. I'm not going to dwell on it, I've still got plenty of friends, and I know that those few really good friends I have are in it for the long haul.

So the way I see it, the faster you see that a relationship isn't going to amount to anything, the faster you'll heal. And who knows? You may find something that is a whole lot better, and will last a long time; maybe even forever.

At least, that's how I see it ;]