I know that we cannot always live within the light. I mean, if there is light, than there has to be dark, right?
I am a sentimental and a romantic and a believer in black and white, so the gray and the dark pummel me, most of the time I respond with an adamant, “No!” Sometimes though, something happens and there is no other way to describe what I am feeling than to say it is sorrow. I just went and checked to be certain that I wasn’t misusing the word:
a feeling of deep distress caused by loss, disappointment,
or other misfortune suffered by oneself or others
It went on to list lamentation:
a passionate expression of grief or sorrow
I am steeped in sorrow right now, some of it for a friendship that is not, some for that which I cannot identify but falls into some shade of “keeping up” and the last for the inevitable confrontation of mortality. I know it’s there, I’ve known it since before I understood what it was. A part of me has always been aware of its brushing against the door, when other kids were asking for ponies I was pleading with my mom not to die, not to leave me.
Now it’s here. The inescapable commonality we have, of the promise of loss, is perched beside me, I know I don’t have to do anything, there is no Quixotic battle to be had. It is what it is. As a daughter I loathed it, as a parent I resent it and as a person I genuinely fear it.
My pendulum is squarely lodged in a dark place.
I am bone tired from the normal things on my plate and emotionally spent from that which is not essential. A part of me wants to take a part of the small section of superfluous and tell a few people to take a flying leap. The thing is, that won’t change the reality that people will do and say as they like, even if it means being disingenuous (that is a kind label) and life will take the turns that it will. I can’t change fakes and I can’t unwind time.
We can forget the big words and just say, as Casey did, we are all hurt. Things happen. Quickly.
Right now, blessed though I have been, I am sad. And I think that’s ok, even though I don’t like it.
And I will make it out of this.
I feel like you wrote this from the depths of my own heart. This sorrow I know intimately. As a child I insisted that my parents’ last words to me always be “I love you” (when they went out for the night, or left me at school). The reason? In case they died before i saw them again. Sounds like we are similarly textured souls, with real darkness and dread of mortality in them.
And these days, I write obsessively about how the end haunts the present for me, how the loss of each day colors it even as I’m living it. Alas.
I am not being very helpful, and I’m sorry about that. I guess I mean only to say you are not alone, and thank you, thank you, a million times over for expressing so gorgeously the deepest sorrow of my soul.
xox
Also, incredibly, I just used the word “lamentation” in my blog post for tomorrow -literally hours ago. Feeling kindred.
Thanks.
I’ve been immersed in this, but I do not fear death for myself. When I was a kid I used to stand very still outside my mother’s bedroom just to make sure I could hear her breathing before I went to bed. I think I felt she was all I had. The losses I fear now are ones that happen too soon and I will not even begin to let my mind wander there.
Blessings are wonderful but cannot always negate sorrow. However I found this ‘brownie in a mug’ (better than the cake in a mug) recipe that can lift my spirits a bit. Fun for you and your girls and tasty too! š
http://www.instructables.com/id/Mug-Brownie/
Okay that was a total lesson in emotional eating. Never mind. š
I love you and your hurt is mine.
My dad always told me “everyone goes through life with a bag of shit. Just make sure they don’t put their shit in your bag.”
I’m not saying that to dilute what you’re feeling. Merely to say that it’s okay to feel like that, and people interpret this kind of sadness in different ways.
There are days where I can’t get out of my melancholy, for whatever reason. There have been so many moments where I’ve lamented the girlfriends that have ignored me or that have hated me for no apparent reason. But I tend to wallow in those kinds of feelings, so it takes much longer for me to learn.
You’ve taught me how to climb out of those perversely comfortable abysses. You seem to teach a lot of people how to look up.
So, after you’re done, look up. You’ll be okay.
Oh, and PS… death scares the shit out of me. It’s a fear I force myself to acknowledge every day.
Lindsey hit it on the head for me, as did tet who called them “comfortable abysses.” I can’t remember ever worrying about my parents dying, and in all of my self-destructive ways, I often find myself challenging the universe to take someone from me, just to see how I’d react. I play it all out in my head, from getting the phone call, to the tears, to the anger, to the stoic acceptance.
But for someone who fears change, and death, and thinks too hard on something I heard once—“Everyone you know will be dead someday”—I can’t seem to put the small things in perspective.
The keeping up, and the tiredness—oh how I can relate. Hang in there.
C
me too. we are. we will. it’s ok. i’m here.
wow…sending you a hug and hoping the pendulum swings back to light and joy soon
xoxo
I have buried more than a few friends and been there for friends who lost parents. Had more than one discussion with my children where they asked me not to die.
None of it gets easier with repetition or time. But, I adjust because it is what is necessary. There are days though where it is harder to feel the warmth of the sun on my back.
Sending you wishes for your pendulum to make a quick return to the light. I hope that happy finds you.