06/08/20
I haven’t written for a while- I’m trying to write a thesis (‘trying’ being the key word here), so extra reading or writing feels like a chore at the moment. But this week things have felt like they’re flooding me a bit, which probably revolves around the fact that I’ve barely slept for 3 nights. We hit 8 months this week since Jordan has been gone, and every month that passes just feels so surreal. I don’t really know what this post is about, and the sleep deprivation may mean it makes little sense.
My life would probably feel quite hectic at the moment WITHOUT grief. I feel like I’m juggling 1000 fragile glass balls, but I can’t juggle, and I can’t drop any of them. All the while, I’m also made of glass, one wrong foot and I might smash into tiny pieces too. Whilst trying to manage the practical life balls, the things I ‘have’ to do, I’m also trying to continue to focus on the grieving and healing ones. But there are only so many hours in a day, and it’s exhausting. I have the urge to stop attending my suicide bereavement support group, or my grief counselling, just so I can drop a ball. Some days, it feels relentless, despite the fact that I know that I’m doing all of the ‘right’ things. I only have two hands.
Grief is like being pushed down a deep, dark hole. You are desperately trying to climb out of the hole, to be up in the light with all the other humans. People reach down with their hand to try and help you out, and you begin to see the light as they pull you up a little. Then they leave, and you’re alone again, and you end up falling back down. As you try to make your way out of the hole, dirt keeps getting thrown on you. You think you can make it out because you can see other people up there, but you can’t. You get back to the bottom, and the dirt keeps on coming. You claw desperately at the earth, but the hole is too deep. You know that the only way out is to carve a new tunnel. It’ll take some planning, and you know it’ll be such hard work, and take so much longer, but you also know it’s the only way to really get out of the hole for good. The only problem is, when you’re carving your new tunnel, obstacles present in the earth. You get tired. You want to give up. But you rest, and dig again tomorrow, hoping to eventually find your way to the light again for good.
I was out for a walk today when this idea came to me. I visited my therapy ‘safe place’, a lovely wooded area with a stream running through. I’m not sure that I’ve talked in depth about this anywhere, but I had Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy earlier this year to help me through the trauma of losing Jord. During EMDR sessions, you relive the traumatic events fully and the therapist helps you to process them effectively so that they are not as intrusive and distressing. I didn’t know if this would work, because at the time, I couldn’t see the memories ever being less distressing. I knew the symptoms of PTSD, and what I was experiencing terrified me; I never saw it getting any better. Nightmares, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts and images, insomnia, feeling constantly scared, anxiety, twitches, lack of concentration etc etc. The therapy was horrendous by all means. But my Psychologist was amazing, and she supported me through the process, as did Jordan’s mum, every single week. I had therapy on Monday’s, and felt wiped for the rest of the week. My brain was on overdrive, and trying desperately to get me out of the hole I was in. As part of EMDR, you create an image in your mind of a place where you feel safe, to go to when your mind wanders and you feel overwhelmed. My place was a physical place, that I visited frequently after Jordan died. I went alone, and I went with friends. I still go now, and it seems to be a place where I do feel safe. Not only physically safe, but safe to let my emotions out (I often cry-walk there). When I was there today, I thought of all the other times I’d been there in the past 8 months, and I just couldn’t believe the process I’d been through in such a short space of time, but that also feels so SO long. When I’m there, I seem to have my strongest moments of clarity, peace and acceptance. Its quite bizzare to explain really, but at one point today, I literally stopped in my tracks and looked down at the trees and the water. I could hear the birds, children laughing, and water running. I felt like I was in a painting, and that everything was just as it should be.
I knew this post was going to be a bit jumpy, so bare with me. This week I did the stupid thing of looking back through old pictures. Not just ones of Jordan and I, but of pictures of the ‘me’ before we met, and the ‘me’ in the time that we were together. I see someone totally different now, I feel like that’s not me anymore. I see a happy, bubbly, outgoing, and optimistic woman who is full of life and hope for the future. As well as grieving for Jord, I feel like I’m grieving the loss of the ‘old me’; the me that I actually liked quite a lot, and the me I wish I still was. I feel so sad that I’m not that person anymore, and will never be able to go back to being her. But I feel so far from her now. I spoke to a couple of people about this, and it really helped. It made me realise that it’s okay not to be that person anymore. I am different, and actually, maybe I’ve evolved into a better version of me. This shouldn’t be mistaken as a ‘positive’ from Jordan’s death. Nothing positive can be taken from losing him. But having these conversations with others about who I am now gave me hope for myself, and for the person I am becoming along my grief journey.
I’m way more open and honest now. I’ve learnt that you need to say things to others when you think and feel them, because the moment may pass, and I want others to know how I feel. I’m also more honest about my own vulnerabilities, which helps in connecting more deeply with others. Before, I was the type of person that felt the need to have it together all the time. I didn’t like to cry in front of people and I found it hard to be 100% honest about how I was feeling. I didn’t like to ‘put’ my emotions on others. I tended to push away my emotions and tell people I was fine, because I thought, “I can handle this”. But, I CAN’T. I need to be cared for, and it doesn’t make me weak. I’ve let so many people in, old and new. I’ve had to let go of some control, and let others take the wheel for me. I still haven’t mastered this I’ll admit, but it’s something I’m working on, because it feels so important to me now.
I was empathic before, but more than ever I feel the emotions of people around me- the people I work with, my friends, my family. I feel the highs AND the lows more deeply. For the people I work with, I have such a deeper connection to their experiences, because I share some of these too. I have been at the lowest point in my life so far and found the resilience within myself to carry on. I see the resilience of other human beings and I’m in awe. Then I realise, that’s me too. I’ve had to really get to know myself and feel I’ve developed a self-awareness that is sometimes actually a bit too exhausting, because I’m constantly reflecting on who I am, how I feel, decisions I’m making. But I think I need to do this in order to get through each day and consider how to move forward with my grief, and with Jordan alongside me.
I see life so differently now. I still have a lot of conflict about this, which I’ll try to explain and I think it will lead me into my next group of thoughts. I so badly want to fully realise how precious life is, to live in the moment, and to grasp all of the opportunities for happiness that come my way. I want to be like this because Jord doesn’t have his life anymore, and I know he’d want me to treasure mine. But I still feel stuck a lot of the time. Everything feels so difficult. And then I feel disheartened that I’m not where I want to be. I feel like my life will never be okay. And if it is okay again at some point, it will surely fall apart. I get why I feel like that, it makes total sense. But I don’t want to live like that, because I don’t want to get to the end of my life and realise I didn’t make the most of it. But again, a big work in progress. I realise too that it’s still so soon since losing Jord, and actually, it’s okay not to feel that life is going to be okay yet. But I remind myself to have hope that it can happen for me one day.
So, I may no longer be the life and soul of a party, or be able to chat to everyone in a care free, breezy way. But I can still bring light to the lives of those around me (reminding me of my amazing friend Ellie’s recent post). Friends and family tell me what I bring to their lives, and I feel totally overwhelmed. I never would have known this before, or I guess, I never would have really thought about it. But I think about everything now x 10000000. It’s beautiful to hear these things from my loved ones, and gives me a sense of purpose knowing that although I’m changed, I continue to bring something to the lives of the people I care about. That’s really important to me.
After reflecting on how different I feel since Jordan left us, I feel a huge wave of guilt. I wonder if I had been the person I am now when Jordan was alive, would I have been better for him? Could I have brought something different to his life? Could me being different have changed the outcome for him? My head knows rationally that this isn’t the case, but my heart aches knowing that he doesn’t know this ‘me’. What would he think of me now? We change all the time, I know. But this change is so drastic, and confusing.
In my healing process, I’ve wondered whether what I’m feeling is ‘normal’. Am I too okay? Am I not okay enough? Am I grieving ‘properly’? Should I be doing something differently? What do other people think about how I’m coping? Some comments have been made to me recently about how ‘well’ I’m doing for the time frame, which triggers intense feelings of guilt (FYI this isn’t comments from friends and family). It makes me feel like I shouldn’t be where I am. But then I feel angry because I’ve been through hell in the last 8 months, and why shouldn’t I have glimpses of happiness and hope? Why shouldn’t I experience moments where I believe that Jordan is at peace and that I can accept that he could no longer stay here with us? Haven’t I been through enough? Would you like me to stay in my hole and never come out? I’ve worked really hard through my grief, and I continue to do so every single day. People don’t see everything that goes on for you, and I guess although I knew this before, it’s another huge lesson for me in all of this. We often don’t see each other’s worst moments of pain and suffering. I’m learning to share mine more because the pain is too much for one person to bear alone. And I guess it’s also one of the things that makes it difficult to lose Jord as my partner, because he was the person who’d see most of my pain and vulnerability, and now I have to learn to share it with other people more.
I know that it may seem I’m over-reacting to comments that are well meaning, and I understand that my response is related to my own process. But sometimes I feel that there are such conflicting messages in society- ‘there’s no right way to grieve, no set time frame’… but then it kind of feels sometimes like actually, people think that there is. It would just help if people accepted each and every person’s journey for what it is- an individual journey, working through the worst pain you could ever imagine in any way you possibly can. So this leads me to a place where I say, no, I know myself, and I know my own process. I am in charge of my own journey, digging this new tunnel for myself. My whole life has changed these past 8 months, and I am truly still terrified of what the future has in store for me. All I know is, I’m trying.
So I’m going to leave you with a couple of thoughts, and they’re things that help me through at the moment. Sorry for being such a Psychologist, and sorry if I’ve banged on about this stuff before. It’s what I think about every day personally, and in my work also.
In life, we often try to reduce the pain we are feeling. Grief is a huge source of pain, and it can never be reduced, because the person is never coming back. This is beyond shit. But in order to live in any way, we have to try and reach a point of accepting this pain. It’s there; it’s not going anywhere. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t experience anything else around this pain. Instead of trying to reduce the pain, I’m trying to grow my life around it. Pain and happiness aren’t opposing forces; they can co-exist. We rarely only feel one emotion at a time, it’s way more complex than that. Life is way more complex than that.
If life feels tough at the moment, as it does for many people, remember that there are always ways to gradually work your way out of the hole. There are so many routes, and it can feel a little scary. Which way do I go? When will I see the light again? Will things work out? But just chip away, day by day, carving that tunnel out. You’ll notice change gradually. And when you get knocked back, take a break, and try again the next day.