A Natalie Observed

Tag: faith

  • In the Mud

    My therapy has turned into trying to make sense of the fact that our relationship was an abusive one. Abuse is black or white, yes or no, binary. You do not feel binary to me. I see nuance in the shape of us, in the color changes of our shadows. I held on so tightly to the idea that things were not as bad as they were because I loved you and our version of the future. We drew a life for us that was so magical and alluring and clung to it. We hid in the fantasy because the world of us was too toxic to confront. The image of us burrowing into a mud hole keeps coming up for me. We might be buried and unable to move, but we can still see the sun, right? You drank to not feel the cold, damp, discomfort of the mud. I did what I have always done since childhood. I overanalyzed and stayed in my brain so I did not have to feel what was in my body. When I do this severance, Depression enters my soul. You could see Depression in how messy the house was, in how behind I was on laundry, in my use of weed to avoid the body even more. I was embarrassed to have my parents see it, to see how poorly I was doing. But I needed them when you died. They had to come in. I finally could let someone else in to see I was that broken. I was embarrassed and also relieved. I needed someone else to know.

    I recently had a client-related reason to review the criteria for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and as I read the criteria aloud, I realized you checked every single box. I feel stupid for not seeing it until after you died. I feel stupid for ignoring the signs of the abuse. I feel stupid for wanting the story to be different, for not wanting to be the person who was stuck in a cycle with you. I feel stupid. Admitting our relationship was abusive means admitting that I am the fool who was educated enough to know she was being abused as it was happening, but stayed anyway. Hoped for better despite all the logic. I stayed and would have continued to stay because I loved you and wanted to believe in the version of reality where things were not what they were, but you died. That reality never happened and now it never will. One thing that is the same now as it was before you died: I will never know if you would have gotten better, if the therapy would have worked, if you would have healed and stopped drinking. I wanted that for you. For us. You deserved it. You deserved to live a life out of the mud. But I was the only one who believed that and it takes two people to know things can be different for change to occur.

    I am trying to find support groups for people like me, people who realized they were in an abusive relationship and need other people like them to talk to about it, but it’s been difficult. Small towns have smaller resources. Part of me regrets moving because the things I need for healing absolutely are in Seattle. There was recently a support group that met in person in Seattle for Young Widows. Hi! I know of several grief support groups and retreats in Seattle and I even know the people who run them. Yes, please! I know in Seattle I could find the domestic violence support groups for women like me. I am lonely in this. I am lonely trying to make sense of what my life is now, in my despair that I have to be here trying to heal from not only your loss, but your rapture.

    Because I am lonely, I thought about volunteering with kids, with the humans who can still be saved from the harm adults cause. On a preliminary search, several organizations came up who help children with disabilities get outside. I thought of you. I thought of your work with Richie, of the amazing heart you have for kids who, like you, needed someone to see them. We could have had an amazing life here in Chico if you had healed. If you could come out of the mud with me. You had so much to give and gave whatever you could. The worst of you made the best lessons for all of us. The best of you made the most beautiful and long-lasting impressions. I still see you everywhere and feel warmth. Even in the mud we were warm and there was love. Nothing and everything is black or white about that. It’s both.

  • A Real Pain

    Last night I had my first night alone since you died. I walked all three dogs and did not trip on or lose any of them. I readied their dinner. I reheated leftovers for myself and watched the latest episode Traitors. I ate a small white chocolate cheesecake from Savor Ice Cream. I can confirm it is dangerous those tiny cakes are walking distance from my new apartment. I will be back. 

    I watched A Real Pain and felt like I was watching a movie about you. To be clear, it was not a movie about you at all. You are not Jewish, nor have Jewish family history in Poland. You also do not have a male cousin you would travel with in order to participate in a Polish Holocaust Tour because a grandmother left you money to visit her family home. But Kieran Culkin’s character felt like you, loving and suffering and entertaining and loathing. Caring for everyone and no one. Looking for meaning and finding a loss for words. Feeling everything and feeling numb to feeling at all. Having feelings so big, people turned away in discomfort. The film was brilliant in its complexity and artistry, in the acting and the writing. I wish you could see it to dissect it with me although I know it would be hard for you to watch. It was, true to its title, a real pain.

    Once again, I am struck by how close you feel and how far away you are. You are nowhere and everywhere. I did a Sound Bath on Friday and the image of you laying on the floor next to me resonated through my body. I imagined your breath on my neck, you were so close. Tears poured onto the weighted eye mask I borrowed from the studio. To prevent panic, my brain switched gears into wondering what instruments and tools created the sounds. How does thunder emanate from a bowl and rain fall from a stick? One moment we were surrounded by the lapping of waves on the shore which transitioned into the twinkling whimsy of chimes. What makes all of that happen? I miss our endless conversation about whatever we were curious about.

    I wish you could taste the cheesecake. It was airy and not too sweet. You always talked about a cheesecake you used to make and promised to make it for me one day. I wonder how this one compared. I guess that is another thing I can file into my mysteries folder. That and the circumstances that allowed someone to discover how to trap the sound of thunder in a bowl.

     

     

  • A Grief Observed

    Yesterday, I found myself with hours of free time and did not have the attention span for watching Housewives drama. I picked up the book my therapist suggested. I started it a week ago and put it down when I realized my thoughts were wandering and whole pages were turning without my knowing what was on them. A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis is an inside view of how he experienced his wife dying and his internal narrative that came with negotiating loss. I am not someone who finds comfort in the concept of God and it does not take a skilled analyst to see the religious undertones of Chronicles of Narnia. I started reading the book with skepticism as to how I can find kinship in this author’s experience. Kinship is what I’m hungry for. I need stories of other people examining their experience of loss, of grief, and of life after death.

    As I sat to read, the following passage literally took my breath away. Lewis is describing the inaccuracy of memory, and how our brains efficiently eliminate details of our loved ones because we grow so acclimated to their presence, we do not need to remember every line, color and shape of their physical being. We know our loved ones in our bodies, in our souls. Then Death begs the questions of what is real in our memory, and where do our loved ones go when they are gone from what we remember?

    “Slowly, quietly, like snow-flakes – like the small flakes that come when it is going to snow all night – little flakes of me, my impressions, my selections, are settling down on the image of her. The real shape will be quite hidden in the end. Ten minutes – ten seconds – of the real H. would correct all this. And yet, even if those ten seconds were allowed me, one second later the little flakes would begin to fall again.” – C.S. Lewis

    For a moment I imagined what it would be like to have 10 seconds with Jeffrey. 30 days after his death and the idea of having more time had not crossed my mind. He died. He is gone. That’s it. I started crying on the great expanse of my mother’s living room sofa. How had I not thought of this, of what it would be like to see him again? The comfort of his hug and hearing his voice feels so overwhelming. He was always so warm. I miss his presence and his love enveloping me. The closest I have come to feeling him is standing in the sun on these crisp Winter days. As I cried on the sofa, I felt embarrassed for not having thought of bargaining for time earlier in the 30 days since he died. Then I remembered that there is nothing to bargain for. Jeffrey died. He is not coming back. I will never ever receive a hug from him again.

    I am not sure how to make meaning of the feeling in my body that I can only describe as longing, emptiness, and weight. I feel heaviness in my bones and muscles. Loss is a stomachache, a panic attack, and the swelling under my eyelashes documenting the tears freshly leaked from my eyes.

    I wonder if Jeffrey read A Grief Observed or not. I wonder if he would have liked it. What would his critiques have been? So far, losing Jeffrey has meant having to come to terms with the fact that I will never ever know the answers to these questions.

    Fuck.