Jackson Browne was right on the money with that question. Doctor My Eyes, have I kept them open for too long?? I see things all the time, over analyze, absorb, everything. Is seeing things the price for learning how not to cry? It seems like the "better" I appear at dealing, the more often I find myself in situations requiring me to deal. The stronger I seem, I get, the more detached in a way that I can make myself in that moment. So that I can cope, make it through, with minimal damage, to the other side of sadness. The more life seems to plunge me smack dab in the middle of those moments. And so I train myself to "check" my emotions at the door, to be able to keep going with life in the face of tragedy, despair, disillusionment, confusion, pain. Pain is kicker, the transformer. Your pain, the pain of loved ones, it changes you, fundmentally. It's strength lies in it's link to fear. Fear of loss, of losing what and who you love. So we do what comes naturally to us, we protect ourselves from pain by avoiding love, of really attaching ourselves, of offering all of ourselves to another person. We hold back a part of our hearts out of instinct, in the name of self-preservation. Just enough so that we know we can make it through if , just in case things go wrong...
I was at a funeral this last weekend for my cousin. It was surreal to say the least. He was 26 the day he died. The sky was grey and something that day cut me to the soul, every single second was so incredibly raw, paralyzing. I watched his mother bend over his casket and straighten his tie, smooth it. And break down, choking on her sobs while she held him for the last time, kissed his cheek with the tenderness only a mother could have for her child.
I was frozen. I felt overwhelmed and full of emotion, it was all there held tightly back, underneath the surface, tears sitting on the edge of my eyes waiting for permission to fall. Permission that they were not granted. And so there they stayed. And the lump that had risen in my throat was swallowed and pushed back down to where it had come from.
I thought of my children, and parts of my heart broke all over again for her, for all the days of sorrow yet to come for her. For all of the hours and minutes of silence that will come to her, to remind her of all she's lost. The light in her eyes was gone. To be honest I'm not sure that I can say that you'll ever see it there again. Maybe a pale reflection.
When I got home, I tried to hold onto that tenuous thread of honest emotion and memories. I tried to keep that moment in my heart where in a way, he was still here, alive, real, tangible, even though my mind had already started sorting and closing the boxes that contained him. I was conflicted within myself, my heart longed to cry and release this, but my mind was in survival mode.
Just then my baby girl walked in on me sitting in the silence of my bedroom, and she looked at me with her big blue, and surprisingly perceptive eyes. She reached for me and I swooped her up in my arms, she looked at me for a moment, and honestly I swear she understood me. She wrapped her little arms around me and we laid together until she fell asleep petting my hair.
There in the darkeness, in the arms of my 1yr old, I couldn't hide any longer and grief finally found me. And I wept, openly, and silently. Sobs racked my body for what felt like an eternity. Until I felt empty, purged of feeling. Tired, but ready. Ready to keep going.
Every day since I've thought about that day, him, her, all of it. Life goes on, and yet it creeps into your head in those moments that you least suspect, but in a weird way you wait for. Until one day.... you don't.
Every time something like this happens to you, you treat it like a disease that you don't want to catch. You don't want to feel this way again, so you allow yourself to build up an immunity, you disconnect a little, so that the next time you're ready. You arm yourself with the false sense of security, telling yourself that you'll be able to handle it. Be careful what you wish for. There's a difference between strength, and living a life afraid to feel, afraid to see and experience the things that really matter. Don't close off your heart in an attempt to survive hurt and circumvent pain, you'll miss the true connections life has to offer. The beautiful depths the heart will delve to in the name of love, and that.. that would be heartbreaking.
I don't want to survive life, I want to live it.
I have to remind myself all the time, a life of love and tears, or solitude and silence?
I choose love. Always.
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