I've been writing for this blog as therapy and with the solitary hope of finding the newness adversity can sometimes inspire and for the hope of making sense of raw emotion for you. I hope, I really hope, that my emotions have moved you to tears, if not relief, because I can relate to so many forms of sadness.
If you are reading me for the first time, I encourage you to take a few laps through the different phases of my grief; the dark that lead to light, the light that lead to anger, the anger that comes from left field, my paranoia, fear of abandonment, losing the will to live, my brother's love that has catapulted me into loving myself, the qualms of spiritual restoration, the quakes that broke my foundation, the people who help me love, and the honesty of life.
If you've sometimes checked in on me to discover a new place within my journey or to find a milestone for yourself, I thank you for doing so. Your readership has given me purpose, has inspired me and has helped me to openly express without the fear of judgement. My blog is a safe place; one that offers a heart to hug, life learnings, a laser focus on empathy and the belief that tomorrow can happen.
"Calm down, Mommy, calm down", my daughter soothingly whispered as she stroked my face and kissed my sobbing eyes. Her small hands held me, her young eyes locked into mine, her breath steady and patient spoke tender to me in such a way that I surrendered to my reality and gave way to what is now.
This was last night.
I've felt so many feelings since losing my brother. Many are "standard" while others have swelled in force almost immediately and with time.
I feel abandoned because my brother has always been the man in my life who has always assumed the role of mental thought. He was the person who aided me in all things trivial and yet all things simple as a "yes, that's right," or "no, you're wrong and this is why". He was my fellow foot soldier in the trenches of youth and a carpenter during the construction of adulthood where we frequently referenced our childhood to justify our thirst for love and affection. He was my confidante who held the darkest of secrets- ones which were never spoken of beyond one another.
As you now understand, my brother was my everything. He was everything to me until long after he passed away and I realized that my daughter is also part of my everything pie, as am I. I struggle to slice any of "my life pie" for anyone else- I suppose it's because I'm protective now and guarded. I won't let anyone in for fear that I'll be abandoned, and while this is no way to live, this is how I process and this is how I maintain. And yet I'm self-aware to the point of destruction; I know what I'm doing and who I'm distancing myself from because I want to leave before I am left. It' a sad way to live [in fear] but it's the only way I can protect myself from feeling deep pain…as I heal...
Healing can be a lifelong journey as a friend suggested last week, "Most of your friends have no idea how much you manage and the intensity of your emotional responsibility". I nodded in agreement to this observant notion and loved him for paying such close attention to me while we conversed. I rarely spend time focused on a peer, let alone have the time to be social. My mind is often clouded and it takes conscious effort to pay attention.
Take my mom for instance; she and I spend a lot of time with one another. We listen to words without much effort, we laugh at minutia and I hold her quite frequently; she is broken in ways that I'm not, for she is a mother who has lost her child, her firstborn, her only son. I cannot fathom her pain nor the guilt she solely carries, but I can only relate. If I were to lose my daughter, I would die. I would either die of a broken heart or take my own life. Fact. I wouldn't want to endure another loss. Losing my father and brother have been more than enough. I live in fear that I will lose her, too. My mom however, my mom is a pillar of survival not of strength. A woman who has pushed forward despite her desire to stop living. A woman whose spirit stretches beyond her human being. A woman who has been healing for over 30 years with no relief in sight. I worry about dying and how much more she will break. I worry that I will die before her and she will die soon after. I worry about the life I cannot control. This is yet another consequence of loss.
Losing someone, losing someone you love, and losing your mind is a lot like an earthquake. When tragedy occurs [in any form] our foundation breaks and the very beliefs within our structures are crumbled to pieces from the magnitude of impact. We are shaken quite literally and we must rebuild from the ground up and with the scraps that remain. The more we are shaken, the more we are thrust into surviving and letting go of who we once were. Losing and finding yourself can be excruciating, exhausting and quite painful. It's an incredibly challenging process; one that requires stamina, forgiveness, punishment, objectivity, understanding, and release. Having to let go and be somewhere else opens doors to new possibilities- possibilities which weren't there before tragedy. These earthquakes can shake you up in a good way. People who experience heart-breaking tragedy are also broken to their core. It's almost like gaining a new pair of eyes and a much broader soul. I know from experience that my soul has expanded into thoughts and feelings I've never known. When I thought I was lonely before, I'm lonelier. And when I thought I had loved and lost before, everything now pales in comparison to losing my brother.
A trauma survivor such as myself, will see herself as a warrior of sorts. She will regain her confidence, she will see her way through the impossibilities, form new opinions, awareness, perceptions and a new sense-of-self. This is all very beautiful and simultaneously magical. I've never been more true to myself than I am now. I've never loved and appreciated life as I do now. And I hope to feel this way until I die and join my big brother Charley in a heaven that reunites us for always.
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