Saturday, December 24, 2011

Grief is Love Without a Friend


Dearest Solace,

My grief goes before me, like I’m a lost puppy, guiding me back to what it remembers as wholeness within and can’t forget as wholeness with the other. It thinks on the balance once felt and yet still desires. Like the cell deprived of oxygen, it motions for what it needs, making no mockery.

I am barebones, sitting with grief. It strips away the layers of denial—of misdirection and projection, of optimism and hope, of anger—I hide behind. It asks for stinging-nettle honesty. It is the wasp of reality. Though it isolates me in feeling, it frees me to go on living and pushes me to seek connection, if only I will accept its company and stay with it.

If I abandon grief, I abandon myself. And then, I am alone, out in the winter, heart freezing to death.

Grief offers itself as a blanket, not a warm wish. As a kindled flame in the darkness. Grief offers the salve of itself, with or without resolution. It spares me the disservice of avoiding the pink elephant in the room. It does not promise that all things will get better. Its only hope is that I see right through hope to the mirror that is me and into the heart of things, with or without the silver lining. It desires to toughen my soft underbelly and teach me not to roll over for every tongue and hand that commands. Discernment is my friend.

I have to allow grief to restore my faith in forgiveness, in the present and possibility, to amend inconsistencies, and to clarify my vision. Grief sternly demands my attention, presence, and obedience to its golden rule—thou shalt not deny your truth.

My power is to let grief come up from the pit of my stomach and the depth of my heart and place no barrier between it and the ocean of my being. My duty is to honor the sacredness of that ocean.

I admit, there is no blame. And though struggling, I accept change.

Love, The Rejected
xoxo