Feeling What We're Avoiding

I know people like to talk about "rising above," but more often I find we can't move ahead until we drop down.

Sitting down to write this week's blog I hit an invisble wall. There are nothing but false starts, ideas that fizzle on the page, observations that lay there like dead fish, the cursor flashing on the screen, taunting me, daring me to continue, (I swear, even though I know better, it feels personal,) the blank page a testament to a blank mind and mysteriously missing connection to what is going on at a feeling level.

Now, I’ve been at this writing thing long enough to know that when this happens- when I’ve not written in my own journal for four days in a row- some part of me is working very hard to bury or outrun something that feels too painful to face and/or too daunting to try to express (even to myself!)

So, I start with a writing prompt which, in moments like this, I can honestly say I’m not eager to use. I begin with the phrase, I don’t want to write about. . . . .

I don’t want to write about. . . . the decision I made last week to let go of someone in my life, to stop having contact, to not pick up the phone when she calls, to not dial her number or send her a note, to say a single prayer for her daily but stop all attempts at communication.

I don’t want to write about the years I have spent working to see, accept, and love this person for who she is, trying to let go of all expectations for our interactions or any desire to ever be seen and accepted in turn, only to find that the interaction continued to be draining and toxic for me.

I don’t want to write about my own hubris- my certainty that I could find a way for us to actively relate to each other (if only in a limited way) and not be drained and ill afterwards. The containment and healthy boundaries, the deepening of acceptance, the positive visioning and wishful thinking, the healing from past wounds and prayers for guidance – none of it has changed the reality of the effect our contact has on me.

I don`t want to write about how hard it is to accept this, how part of me rails on within, sure that even after all these years, there must be something I can do, something I have not tried. 

I don`t want to write about how I have been lying to myself about not being hooked into wanting anything from this relationship. Expectation is too strong a word for what I'd been carrying, but clearly there was hope. The grief I have been outrunning is for the loss of hope inherent in fully accepting what is.

That’s it: the molecular structure of the invisible wall I keep hitting each time I try to write around this event in my life, is composed of grief and loss. And, as author Ann Lamott writes, the only way through grief is by grieving.

And in writing just this. . .  something brittle and sharp in my chest softens and is released. The tears flow and I can feel my body here in this moment- supported by the chair and the floor beneath the chair and the earth beneath the floor. . . and I give into the gravity of what is, feel it pull me inexorably toward the centre of myself and life. 

Sometimes we just have to stop and feel the heartbreak so there's room to feel our own life again. In simply allowing the sadness we open to the possibility of joy once again.

This is what it is to be human: to learn again and again how to be with loss; to trust the very way we are made and the sacred stuff of which we are made, knowing that joy is in the fullness of life- nothing left out, nothing avoided or buried, all aspects greeted and made bearable with tenderness and mercy.
 

 Oriah (c) 2013