Grief

This week has been another week when I have been experiencing real and profound grief....

What do you do with the ache in your heart and body, that is just with you day and night?

What do you do with the hopeless thoughts that come?

What do you do with the tears, and wracking sobs... that don't seem to stop forever?

What do you do, when life still goes on around you, and the washing, the showering, the teeth, the food, and the driving still needs to be done?

What do you do when connection is so very essential... and people offer the ocnnection they can, which is gratefully received... and some balm... and the ache remains as you walk away....

How do you explain to the doctor the grief that sounds like it is 'such a ittle thing'?... when for you it isn't?

How do you cope when there is grief upon grief ... and then others you know nothing about... yet... but your body knows?

How do you sit with the essential existential loneliness of that grief - and not become burdened by others' grief over the same loss?

Why do you sit in the counsellor's room and talk simply and unemotionally about how the week has been - like your mouth is cut off from your heart?

Is it true that movement towards acceptance of the loss is possible?  Is it true that movement itself is possible?

People leave, and others can't take their place - and it is just a reminder in my body of all the abandoments of forever.....

What to do when no amount of care is enough.... and the energy to do the things that could bring life... like swimming... is so lacking?

Sleep evades... heart aches.... composure is contained....

Contentment?????

4.45. 26.06.2011. Sunday...

 What do you hope for?
 What do you seek?
 What do you long for?

 One of the longings of my heart is 'contentment'.....
 An ability to be 'okay' with where I am, and what I am able to do, and my friendship networks...

 I have been thinking about loneliness this afternoon - about that ache for connection, that I believe exists in each of us, but for some of us, for whatever reason... the connections we have, never feel enough...

 I guess that says that the connections are not at fault, but rather something about how I am able to hold them, and trust it them...

 There have been a few changes (and changes ahead) in the availability of a couple of significant connections for me...  It hurts....

I know that things will settle into the new rhythm... I know that having a partner doesn't necessarily mean connection either... I know that somehow contentment with myself and my own company, must come from within, if it isn't to frighten other people away.... but it hurts.

 And on top of all that... how am I going to be able to get the windows cleaned in my house, when I am moving in 5 weeks...?  It is one job, I just can't do...

 I need something today... and I don't even really know what it is...

Loneliness?

I have been thinking about loneliness this afternoon. On one of my other interactive websites, I often say that I am lonely. It is a bit strange, if I think about it, as I have a number of friends and even though I'm not working at the moment, my days are reasonably full.

But the feeling of being lonely persists. Is it connected to 'not belonging'? Is it part and parcel of the Missionary Kid package? The constant moving and saying goodbye. Is that why I can't really trust that my friends are not going to abandon me?

Yet for me, it is more than that. Somehow in the past 7-8 years since I returned from Madagascar, the dislike of my own company has surfaced (maybe it was always there!). I struggle to have the concentration to engage in meaningful activity at home, or the energy and motivation to do the household chores.

I am learning that I have significant 'attachment' issues that stem from a very young age - and I know I experience that lack of attachment as a lostness, a sense of being on an asteroid hurtling into space, far away from human life.

My therapists assure me that what I need to do is to learn to nurture myself - to self-comfort the frightened, lost and lonely me. I am trying to learn to do that - so I went to the nuns - so that I could have a model of what being nurtured is like.

At this stage, I can't imagine feeling differently about myself, or about the 'empty time' that all of us have....