A Natalie Observed

Tag: trauma

  • Presence

    I feel like I am looking into a kaleidoscope. Every turn I make I see new silhouettes, new refractions of color against the tiny mirrors. As time passes, the sun changes the shapes. Is that a rainbow or the feeling of you?

    I do not know how to write about this, the complexity and the layers to the experience leave me wanting more words to describe it. A dainty, brunette woman around my age wrapped her arm around my waist while at the Gang of Four show on Friday. She needed to move me from one place to another so she could reach her group at the front of the stage. I can feel it now, her hand sliding from my left hip across my back as she parted my dad and me so she could continue her journey. I watched her touch everyone in my line of sight the same way so I know I did not misconceive the feeling. Time slowed down. Why did she touch me like that? Do I still have my things? I felt for my purse. Still clasped. I do not know why anyone would steal from me at a show like this. Then, a memory of you touching my waist poured itself into my body like wet, heavy sand. People do not touch my waist without permission. No one has touched me like that since you did. I shattered.

    Outside the trains don't run on time
    He believes it's not coincidence

    Jon King reminds me why I am at this show, to see him and this band. To see the energy he has been bringing to vocalizing post-punk anthems since 1976. This is the first time my dad is seeing Gang of Four after listening to them contour his young adulthood. This is the first time I am seeing a concert like this with my dad, as an adult child hanging out with her adult dad. As an adult in my life without you. We are in San Francisco at the Chapel. Only 500 people are experiencing this tonight. I want to be here with them. But I am having a panic attack. Because a woman touched me around the waist and no one has touched me there since you did. No one touches my waist without permission.

    I got this demon on my back every day
    It’s the hope that will not fade

    Tears stream down my face and I close my eyes. I feel my heart reverberate in my chest as music folds around me like the fog this city is famous for. I feel both cold and warm. I feel my sore feet anchoring my body to the Earth. I flex them to give relief to their screaming. I feel my stiff legs wondering why I am still standing after a Peloton workout and 15,000 steps. My body can do amazing things. I am breathing. I count to four and inhale. I count to four and exhale. I hum the words I do not know and remember you cannot have a panic attack while singing. I do not know all the words the way I wish I did. I make up words.

    Blinkered, paralysed
Flat on my back
My ambitions come to nothing
What I wanted now just seems a waste of time
I can't make out what has gone wrong
I was good at what I did

    I cannot stop the tears streaming down my face and I wonder if I need to go outside. The cold air would feel so lovely. But people would see me. And I do not want to tell them why this is happening. Explaining your death to strangers is a gamble I do not have the bandwidth for. Why would she touch me there? No one has touched my waist since you did. No one touches my waist without permission. If I go outside, my dad will know something is wrong. It is not that I do not want him to know. I am not afraid to show him I am shattering, that the kaleidoscope is stuck in a rotation I cannot stop. But I do not want to ruin this once-in-a-lifetime experience for him. The members of this band are in their late-60s and early-70s. Two of the original members have already passed. This is their last tour. To see all of Entertainment! played in its entirety is a privilege. To be here in this city, at this venue, and with my dad is a gift. They say one of the quietest places on Earth is in the Hoh Rainforest in Washington State. They say when you are there you can hear the trees breathing. I am striving for that level of presence. I want to bathe in my own wonder of how my life got me here. I want to feel it all.

    I also do not want to ruin this once-in-a-lifetime experience for me. I battle on. I am so angry another woman did this to me. Girl Code died. And yet, I do not want to let her win. To let grief win. Because I want to hear the trees breath. I want to feel this music in my body and notice how the audience is the same age as my dad and wonder how long these grown men have worn that matching pair of perfectly crimson pants. I want to feel anything other than what I have felt for months. I want to remember what it is like to not feel consumed by your absence. Why did she touch me there? I am in a room full of people and in an experience entirely alone. No one has touched my waist since you died. No one touches my waist without permission. Keep singing, Natalie. You can’t have a panic attack when you’re singing.

    Look at me, ain't I fine
Brand new me, dig my mine
I parade myself

    The show wraps with an encore of Damaged Goods, played already in the first set, but again for us. A second bite of tiramisu. A replay of Sound of Music. A second chance we often miss in living. A second chance I am not getting with you.

    Sometimes I'm thinking that I love you
But I know it's only lust
The change will do you good
I always knew it would
You know the change will do you good

    This is when I have the thought I scribbled down in the Notes app of my phone: Is “total presence” the blessing of your death? I feel so acutely aware the moments of my life are passing by, that I am doing what I need to do to survive them. I feel robbed of my hope for Gang of Four because a woman I do not know touched my waist without permission. I am angry another woman did this to me. I know, I know she was probably high on something where touching feels appealing. Yet, even with that generous interpretation of her behavior, she should not have touched me without permission. She robbed me of my first time letting someone touch my waist since you died on my own terms. She took something important from me I can never get back. I do not know how to make that make sense. The kaleidoscope keeps changing the shapes of your shadow, of your light. Is that a rainbow or the feeling of you?

    I experienced every second of that show as best I could. I stayed in it. Present. I saw a couple grow closer together as they bobbed their heads in unison. I observed the blonde in front of me get looser with each refill of her wine. I saw Hugo Burnham’s smirky grin as he banged on his drums despite breaking his leg and cancelling a show a few days earlier. I got to see my dad the way he probably was before and even just after I was born, a once upon a time 20-something wondering with awe how he got here. My dad also tries to listen to the trees breath. We are the same that way. What a beautiful life indeed.

  • Grief Goblins

    Tonight I finished the third season of Lincoln Lawyer. We started it when you were alive, finished the first episode but did not get further. I really enjoy this show and I so enjoyed hypothesizing the scenarios for the ending with you. I know the cases will all come together, that the cast of characters and a pug will figure out how to get the innocent person saved. But I never know how the saving will unfold and am always pleasantly surprised.

    As another intense cliff hanger ended the season, I felt the strongest urge to know what you thought about it. My brain imagined asking you. Tears started to form in my eyes as I felt the missing of you, the intense empty space where you used to sit on our couch. Then, at the exact moment I registered how much I missed you, I also felt a feeling that caused my heart to heat up and I knew immediately what it was. I felt the feeling of love and the glow of adoration for you. I have not felt that feeling in so long, I think I forgot about it. It was… everything. The brightest, softest and briefest light. I tried to sit in the feeling but as brilliant as it felt, it faded, the grief goblin taking his fill.

    Registering the warmth, I started crying in deep sobs disturbing enough for Dottie to come lay on my chest and start incessantly licking my face. She somehow knows the distraction will help me to catch my breath, to start focusing on breathing. I do what I do when she does this and start counting breaths in and out, keeping rhythm while I pet her so I can attempt to relax both of us. It works.

    Lately during my Peloton workouts, I start sobbing on the bike, mid-workout. I cannot really figure out why, although I know it makes sense that it is happening. The crying is never at the same time, during the same style workout, or triggered by something said. I’ll be climbing some hill, out of breath, sweaty, and trying to beat the fastest person even though I never do, and an overwhelming feeling of sadness consumes me. And, no, I am not describing a feeling that believes “this is so good I am crying”. My crying is a feeling whispering in a mothering voice, “this life has been so incredibly difficult for you. And that part, the part of it being so difficult is really, really sad.” I find this entire experience confusing. Why while working out, during my endorphins capture, is my body releasing the darkest of feelings? I cannot even work out without Grief saying hello? Really?

    I told my therapist today I have a very strong instinct to feel this experience I am having, that I do not want to biohack my grief. There are so many somatic therapies that could and probably eventually will help me heal the trauma living within me. But part of me just knows I need to feel all of this, to study its impact on me, to learn what my body can do to heal itself and help me through this. Sometimes I feel like that is positive side of losing you, even though that feels incredibly horrible to say. Is there a positive side of any of this? If there is, it is that I am getting to know myself in a way I never would have without you dying. It is humbling, to say the very least. I told my therapist it is ironically the least anxious I have ever felt. Go fucking figure.

  • Five Seconds

    I keep trying to remember the details of what happened when I found you on the dining room floor, but I cannot remember it all and it is frustrating. I walked in, I found you on the floor. I called emergency services. I told them you were not breathing, my name, and my address. The first person transferred me to another person. I told the new person you were not breathing, my name, and my address. It seemed like a waste of time to repeat myself, but there was no time to question it. The person on the phone talked me through how to do CPR and counted with me as I pressed as hard as I could on your chest. I remember them telling me to speed up a bit and I followed their guidance. I remember hearing the sirens. I remember Dottie’s scared, shaky body under the dining table. I remember the man standing with me in the kitchen documenting every action taken on a laptop. I remember all of our furniture strewn about the apartment, part of the coffee table in the kitchen and another part behind the couch. I remember the dining table shoved against a wall. I remember one paramedic opening our windows to let in the cool November air.  I remember them hanging an IV bag from the hook in the middle of our ceiling. The hook was used for a blanket fort, I explained to everyone in the room who could hear me because for some reason I felt I needed to explain a hook in the middle of the ceiling. Cringe.

    I remember your vomit still on the floor where I found you. I remember them calling out to each other as each round of CPR and electric stimulation to your heart completed. I remember questions about what I knew about your circumstances. I remember listing out all your medications and health conditions, your age, and family history. I remember telling them the things I knew about the timeline, that you had been depressed and anxious with the election, that you were drinking more. I remember telling them sincerely I was not aware of any drinking other than the half-empty pint bottle on our dining table when I found you. That the amount of alcohol I found did not make sense for what I was seeing. I did not know then how many bottles I would find around our home when I moved. I did not know you lied to me as much as you did.

    I remember texting my mom, dad, Heather, and Randy that I found you not breathing. I remember one paramedic yelling down to someone in one of the two fire trucks that they had recovered a heartbeat, that they needed a gurney. I remember my mom calling as I told a different paramedic which medications you were taking, that I was sure you took them because I checked the pill sorter and Friday Morning was gone. I remember sending my mom to voicemail and texting her that I could not talk. I remember seeing Scott, our apartment manager, standing in the hallway and him mouthing to me “is everything okay?”. I remember telling him things were not okay. I remember a paramedic telling me they would need to take you to the emergency room, that I could ride in the ambulance. I remember debating whether I needed to grab my backpack or not and deciding to take it with me.

    I remember so many things. So many. But I do not remember how emergency services got inside our home. Did I let them in? If I let them in, that means I stopped CPR on you. Would that have happened? Did I stop trying to save you to let other people try to save you? Did I leave the door unlocked? It does not shut without the deadbolt, and I cannot imagine a habit I formed after eight years of locking that door did not happen on this day. But then again, I do not remember letting anyone in. So maybe I intuitively left it unlocked. Maybe they let themselves in through magic EMTness? I do not remember the seconds after I stopped CPR and someone took over. I remember them bringing you from the dining room to the living room, but not how they got to you. It bothers me. I wake up in the middle of the night and think about it. How did the emergency response team get inside? It could not be more than five seconds of time. Five seconds that continue to haunt me alongside everything else.

    Recently during a session with a client, they processed how nice it was to sleep separately from their partner. As they detailed the deepness of their sleep, the ability to read instead of watch television, I asked questions to help them develop more insight into the benefits of sleeping solo. Then, with the sharpness of a shard of glass, a flashback of you reaching across the bed to touch my shoulder as I tossed and turned interrupted my focus. The heat of tears filled my eyes. I pinched my arm with my fingernails, attempting to refocus on my client. I took deep, intentional, counting breaths. I could not feel the depth of how much I missed you while in session with a client. I could not start crying. I am a therapist, and this moment with my client was not in any way about me. I recovered, and nothing gave away my human, grieving, unideal moment. I did not miss a beat in my questions, in my reflections, in my mirroring. But it happened. I felt you right there in the room with me. And I missed you. I missed us. The way we knew the other was not sleeping well. The way we reassured each other we were not alone by touching the shoulder. A comfort in the night. I miss it.

    My last touch with you is touch you were not alive for. I do not know how to rectify that with my present reality. I run through what happened in an attempt to grasp it, like capturing pathetic fireflies in a jar, but my jar has holes. I keep hoping your death will settle in so I can feel anything else, but then I get stuck in five seconds I cannot remember about the last time we touched. They are five seconds I may never remember and it feels unfair. I want a rewind and replay option. Instead, I sit here as a cool breeze brings relief to warm temperatures to which I am not yet acclimated, wearing a Sierra Nevada t-shirt you got me from a delivery driver while at The Duchess. How am I here, and you are this entity that only exists in my memory? My memory minus five seconds. It is maddening.

  • Party Tricks and a Birthday

    My latest party trick is having a panic attack when I am surprised by the sound of sirens or see a gurney. I have you to thank for that. Last week, I was in the nail salon when a patron lost consciousness and hit their head. I did not see what happened but heard the thud of an untethered head hit the floor. Fifteen minutes later, an ambulance came. No sirens alerted me to anything going on, so it was business as usual for me as the technician buffed and shined my destroyed nail beds. Then I watched them roll the gurney in and I felt my chest tighten as images of you on a gurney flashed into my mind. Do I take my backpack with me? When do I call your dad? Who is going to clean up all the medical supplies strewn all over our apartment? Your vomit is still on the floor by the dining room chair where I found you. They said they got a heartbeat, which is good, right? The image of the banana bag hanging from the hook in our living room ceiling flashed in my brain as I watched two EMTs help a young woman onto the gurney. Tears welled, pooled, and fell down my face.  I just need to make it through this appointment. Box breath, Natalie. You cannot hyperventilate and have a visible panic attack in public. Is this really happening? Fuck. I did not know I would have PTSD flashbacks like this.  I called my mom afterwards because I needed someone to know I had a panic attack when a woman needed medical attention at the nail salon.

    The next day, I explained to my dad what happened over lunch at Burger’s and Brews. We sat outside as the temperature hovered around 64 degrees Fahrenheit making Spring feel touchable. Not five minutes after I explained the panic attack, do I hear the sound of sirens coming from behind me. Chest tightened, heart raced, tears poured out of my eyes. The image of me talking to the ambulance driver as I sat in the front seat about how strange this all was. People really do pull over when the lights and sounds are on. I have always wondered. I said that to the ambulance driver and explained to him that I am a therapist, that I understand what I am going through would come back to haunt me. Dad held my hand as I closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath. Picture the box, Natalie. Out, …2…3…4… Hold, … 2… 3… 4… Inhale… 2… 3… 4… and so on. I think it lasted five minutes. Part of me feels validated that my dad witnessed it. I am not being dramatic or making my situation worse through a story. I hear sirens from behind me and have a panic attack. That happened. It happened a couple weeks ago while on a walk with mom and was happening again at lunch. I have data to validate an experience. I am not crazy.

    Tomorrow you would have turned 42. 42. I always felt a tremendous responsibility and honor in making your birthdays a big deal. We took trips or had nice dinners because I think it mattered that you knew how much I loved that you were born. That you came into my life. That you existed. And then there is this year, the first time I mark your birthday after you died. I do not know what to do. It feels too soon to have composed some poetic idea for how to mark the day.  I researched beach vacations because we loved the beach together and I would love to have an experience of my anxiety melting into the rhythm of ocean waves. I pondered Disneyland because you would have wanted me to experience that kind of adrenaline joy. Financially none of that made sense. I cannot afford the time off given the six weeks I have missed since you died. I ordered a carrot cake from Mim’s Bakery. I Googled “what to put on a dead person’s cake” because I do not know what to say. Heather suggested a quote from your favorite author, so I looked up Gabriel García Márquez quotes as I know he was one of your favorites. There is always something left to love. I feel like a fraud because I have not read the book. I am terrified of discovering it has some meaning that is not what I am making of it. Also, only having the wherewithal for a cake feels substandard. This is not representative of how I feel about you, but then again, nothing right now feels adequate. You are having panic attacks multiple days in a row, Natalie. A Cake is enough. He would have loved a cake.

    That said, for you there is always something left to love. Even in the darkest moments of this experience, there is something left. Parts of you are here with me still as I wrestle with how to be a human in the wake of your absence. I know it is because of you I will learn the depths of what I am capable. What a gift you were and are to me. For all the complications of this story, at least that piece I know is real and true. I am not crazy. You existed and mattered. 42 years later and you still matter a great deal. I wish you were here so I could tell you all this, but you are not because you died. Tomorrow is your birthday, and we are not going to dinner or having a celebration because you died.

    What the fuck?

  • A Bird Without Song

    I wore your shirt today. The one I bought you before you died. We were in University Village and decided to treat ourselves to a nice article of clothing as part of our effort to look toward a different future. I received several compliments from strangers, from a client, and from my mother on this shirt, the shirt I bought you, the shirt that is yours. I cannot stop crying because you should be the one wearing it. But you are not here. You died. You will never wear any of your clothes again. I am not borrowing them. You do not get to see what I look like wearing them. They are remnants of you I claimed. I feel like I stole them but there is no one to steal them from. You died.

    You wore this shirt the weekend before you died. We went to Pacific Science Center on a date to celebrate our 4-year anniversary. We completely enjoyed ourselves, navigating from dinosaur fact to funhouse mirrors to science experiments to butterfly exhibit to the movie about blue whales. I agreed to go into the butterfly exhibit despite my strong aversion to the idea of bugs landing on me. I knew you would want to go inside and that you would hold my hand if I got anxious. You explained the different kinds of butterflies and where they were from. You told me how many days they spend in a cocoon and stood in awe next to me as we admired the largest butterfly in the world. At one point, something touched my head and I looked to you for reassurance that a butterfly had not landed. You assured me one had not, that it was the tree branch just above. I let out a sigh of relief and we quickly exited. Later in the evening when we were home you confessed that a butterfly did indeed land on my head, that you felt it best to lie to protect me from being scared. I kissed you. It was exactly the right thing to do. Four years of looking out for each other.

    Five days later, you died. A fact I still feel so stunned by 104 days later.

    In the month after you died, I dreamt about butterflies landing on me. I could not control it. They kept landing on me over and over and it was so stressful. I woke up in a panic, crying, not able to catch my breath. The following morning, when I went to get in the shower, a moth the size of my hand flew towards my face. I had to ask Phil to get rid of it because I could not.

    So I guess you are in the butterflies now. In the eery, uncomfortable feeling of wings against my skin. I am not sure it is cruel or poetic. Either way, you are not here to tell me the tiny lie that will make me feel safe enough to keep going. And I am trying so hard to hold on long enough to find a reason on my own.

  • Muscle Memory

    Last night, something funny and endearing happened on Big Bang Theory. I’m watching the series through because I have never seen it and I need dumb, low-stakes television. I turned to see if you also thought it was funny, my brain tricking me for a split second into thinking you were seated in your usual seat on the couch, but you were not there. You died. I lost language as I gasped for air between tears, attempting to recover from the impact of Grief Whiplash punching me in the gut. It took 93 days for me to look for you in the same room, a sadistic muscle memory and a refreshing reminder that I was not always devastated by you.

  • Message Sent to Both Heather and Randy Separately on Wednesday:

    When Jeffrey and I first started dating, we got into a debate about the word ‘irregardless’. Jeffrey insisted it was not a word, that its meaning is duplicative of ‘regardless’ and that it’s grammatically incorrect to say ‘irregardless’. I googled it and found ‘irregardless’ in the Oxford English dictionary, among others. It does look like the word was added to the dictionary more recently because people say it so much. It’s considered a word even though irregardless and regardless have the same meaning. I loved that conversation so much. It was debate and learning and everything I love so much about what would become our relationship.

    My therapist said ‘irregardless’ during our session yesterday and I immediately thought of that memory. I couldn’t tell them because you look like an asshole if you point out something like a grammar error to another person Jeffrey worried he looked like an asshole when he pointed it out to me. But he didn’t. I like learning and I want to do things correctly. I asked Jeffrey what words meant all the time because I knew he would know and I could validate “that word means what I think it means”.

    I really feel like I’m never going to have that ever again. And it is suffocating.

  • Grief Makes New Sounds

    Yesterday during therapy I sobbed so intensely I heard a sound I never heard come out of my body. It was somewhere between the pitch a hiccup and hyperventilating. I do not know how to describe it. 

    Mom said I need to talk in therapy about what is going to happen next week, about walking into the home we shared, the home where I found you not breathing on our dining room floor. “It’s too soon in the grief process for you to have to be doing this”. As if I did not know. I knew my mom was right because the thought I had the two times she brought it up was, “why are you focusing on this? I don’t have a choice but to go there and pack up our things and pointing out what’s hard about it isn’t going to get all this stuff done.” Defensiveness is always holding up a mirror. 

    I am overwhelmed. There really is so much to do. I need to sort through your shirts and select the ones I want to keep so someone can help me make a quilt. I need to donate your wheel chair and other medical supplies to the organization who helped you get a wheel chair at no cost after your injury. I need to donate your Trike to the organization that helps folks with disabilities get outside, that helped you test ride different bikes to figure out which one was best for your accessibility needs. I could sell the Trike, it’s worth a lot of money, but that feels wrong when a grant helped you buy it. I need to give your dad space and time to identify what he wants from your things. I need to figure out what I can sell or give away as quickly as possible so I do not have to pack more than necessary. I need to coordinate for a junk person to take the things we cannot haul or donate ourselves. I need to clean and remove my existence from the home I lived in for 8 years, 1 spouse’s gender transition, 1 divorce, 1 pandemic, 1 graduate school degree, 1 engagement, 1 career ending and another starting, and 1 fiancé death. I need to decide what of your things I am not sure I will regret giving away. I plan to box them and write your name on the boxes with a Sharpie. Do I store those boxes in the new apartment or a storage unit? Do I want reminders of this confronting me daily or do I need to put them somewhere? 

    These questions feel impossible to answer. My mom is right, it is too soon. But I am not getting a choice in making decisions about my timeline for grief. I have to do all of this next week. I did not ask to or sign up for it, but this is happening. When I let in what I feel about being in our home, new noises reverberate through and out of my body. You died when I was not ready and now I have to participate in the next chapter of the trauma triggered by the worst day of my life, the day you died. I am not ready. It is too soon.

    I cannot decide if I want to sleep in the apartment or even be in there alone. My parents got a hotel room because eventually there will not be a bed in the place I am trying to remove my existence from. I cannot decide if I will regret not giving myself the time to be in our home, my home, the home the holds so much of my life, of who I am. The apartment holds every painful moment of my life and there are so many of them. It holds my survival and my accomplishments. How do I decide if I can handle being in there? How do I look at your jackets, fold them, and give them away? Will I miss the dumb dice you bought too many of? The coffee mug with yours and your uncle’s name on it? The duvets and bedding we picked out together. You used to sit in the green chair in the office and read a book while I worked. But I do not need the chair. The blankets hold your smell. They hold us. All of these things hold us. Hold a lifetime no longer happening. A dream that is a nightmare I cannot and will not ever wake up from.

    I told Heather I keep waiting for my life to get bigger than this grief, but that is not happening. The grief is everywhere I go. It is reflected on the face of everyone who sees me. Everything I do, I’m doing while Grief is sitting on my chest, punching me in the throat, mocking me.

    We leave on Friday morning. An 11 hour drive to the guillotine. I feel like I am preparing to stare down the sun. I know I will lose eyesight, but there is nothing I can do to stop it. I need to get used to looking at this duller version of the world, but its sepia tones are so muted and dystopian.

    What the fuck?

  • 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.

     

     

  • The Grief Palace

    I am really scared of how much this loss is fucking me up and that I’m not going to be the same person anymore. I have no way of knowing just how much this is changing who I am. This is Big “T” trauma, and I cannot believe I’m in it. 

    In response to feeling disconnected from any reality, I have started imagining a building where all of my grief lives. Right now, its shape is unknown, but I can feel the immense shadow of a structure built with the oldest and grayest stone. I can smell the damp air, and it is the kind of cold only January can bring. Fog shrouds the Grief Palace, making understanding its scale and shape impossible, although I keep trying to see it. 

    Despite the lack of detail on what the building looks like, there is a stately wooden door that is heavy and hot. When I touch the door, the energy of the grief pours into my body like a fire. My chest tightens and I stop breathing. Tears pour out of my eyes attempting to tamper the blaze, but the fire rages through my torso, spreading into my limbs. Eventually I remember to breathe and begin gently and rhythmically tapping my chest to activate my parasympathetic nervous system just as I have taught clients to do. 

    To get through Christmas, I added a moat around the Grief Palace. Before leaving my bedroom yesterday morning, I imagined raising the drawbridge so I could not walk across to touch the palace. While still visible in the distance, Grief was not something to feel until I had time to attend to the panic it causes. 

    The moat proved structurally sound as planned. At home last night while watching Elf I allowed myself to approach the Grief Palace. I inventoried the thoughts I had throughout the day of Jeffrey. I wanted to show Jeffrey my gifts, to ask him a question about religion, validate he heard so-and-so say what I just heard, and listen to him explain all the facts about the hummingbirds at the feeder. Tears poured out.  As I cried, I saw an image of the moat flooding the land, keeping me from the safety of stable ground. Then I realized I stopped breathing and once again began tapping my chest. 

    In the panic, several thoughts happen: The grief is too much. Even my attempts to visualize containment are futile. I can’t hold it all. This is never going to get better. How am I going to survive this? Then I remembered this is Bjg “T” trauma and I am not supposed to hold it all. Big “T” trauma is an event that challenges the concept of Self because the emotional pain is SO much, the brain short circuits. Our amygdala (the fear center) becomes hypersensitive to signals of danger. To compensate for the misfire, the brain activates your nervous system and takes offline any systems it does not need to keep you alive/safe. These offline systems include the hippocampus (memory sequencing) and prefrontal cortex (emotional processing). We do not need these functions to run from a wild animal. Our brain in split seconds can decide what we are experiencing is too traumatic to keep all systems going. In short, during a big “T” trauma our brain splits reality to help us survive. After the trauma, we have to make meaning of what happened as our brains continue to misfire in its attempts to sequence the event and integrate the story with the emotions. This process sometimes forms post-traumatic stress disorder.

    In my case, losing Jeffrey was so traumatic, my brain has not integrated the emotions with the memory. I cannot see the Grief Palace and when I try to, my body becomes so overwhelmed I have a panic attack. 

    Nothing and everything makes sense about this loss. I feel grateful to understand what is happening to me and so confused by everything I do not know about it. I want to see the Grief Palace, but the fog is too thick. I climb all that way for no view. A dissatisfying hike where you have to tell yourself “at least the snacks were good and I got some exercise”. What a crock of bullshit.