Grief comes. Now. Deeper than it did before. It creeps into
the quiet corners of my day and brings me tears. It shakes my shoulders with
its pain. It weakens me in worship, so all I can manage to do is weep while
listening to other voices sing words I haven’t the strength or confidence to
murmur. When it wanders off for a reprieve, my head is left throbbing, a
reminder it was there—and will come again.
And I am left befuddled.
Here?
Now?
Why?
It’s been nearly a year. The voice of shame comes, You should be over this by now. I
imagine that is what people are thinking. It becomes the reason I bite my
tongue, creep into my loneliness. Who wants to be around someone who is sad?
Surely wearing my grief will make me more alone. And I already feel alone. So I
attempt to hide my pain. Answering the expected fake pleasantries.
How are you?
Okay.
Good.
Because isn’t that what we all want to hear? None of us like
to watch others in pain. Our savior complexes kick in and we want to fix it.
Pain—especially pain we can’t control—makes us anxious, awkward, bewildered,
helpless.
How are you? The real answers to that question ricochet
inside my head. I didn’t want to get out
of bed this morning. I hate my job right now. I’m lonely. My heart hurts. And
none of it really makes sense to me. My world feels like it’s imploding. I want
to curl up in a ball in cry. Instead I offer a weak smile.
I’m fine.
Freaked out.
Insecure.
Neurotic.
Emotional.
Yep. I’m most
definitely FINE.
Good, they say,
and walk away.
I don’t understand grief. It comes just in the moment I
expect to be free. It’s almost been a year. I just crawled out from under the
crushing weight of the practical implications of our break-up. I made my peace.
I severed the last tie. I thought now I would be free.
So why now? I’m bawling, asking Tim this question just two
nights ago. He tucks me into his shoulder and explains, because you are safe.
I take a rational look at my life now and my instinct is not
to describe it as safe. It feels more like upheaval. But I think back through
my year and I know, somehow, that Tim is right. The first wave of grief was
just the shock. Encapsulation. Finding a way to keep going. After all, I had an
internship to finish, a house full of girls who needed me, expectations from my
leaders, commitments I had made. And after that was more chaos and needs, and
after that a job and church with more chaos and needs. Until, now, I’ve hit a
wall and said I can’t go on anymore. But somewhere in the midst of this mess
must be a few relationships, a sense of knowing I can fall and it will be okay,
to realize that I’m safe. To grieve.
The wounded little
girl crawls out of the dark, windowless room in which she has been hiding into
the light. And there, in the warmth of the sunshine, she cries.
