I had a hardcore wake-up call about grief recently.
Like you, I’ve got some compounded grief going on, had an apartment fire, a miscarriage, my grandfather died of cancer, my husband relapsed, became suicidal, and then left me out-of-the-blue, my brother had a mental breakdown involving drugs and undiagnosed bipolar tendencies, and then my mother died of cancer a few months ago.
And at first, I could barely get out of bed, and did a lot of crying. Then I started to get some of my energy back, and started putting one foot in front of the other and thought I was “moving on.” BUT there is something new in my life that I’ve never dealt with before and I’m beginning to realize it’s because of grief—I am not ready or able to steer my own ship right now. My inner compass direction, that “vision” for what I want for my life, or where I’m “going,” it’s gone. I can wake up, and I can do LOTS of things. I can get work done, stay busy, go the gym, stay healthy, I can live. But if you ask me right now to have a plan or a goal or a vision, I don’t and I can’t. And I think that’s okay. I’m pretty sure it comes back, but on its own time. For now, I’m working on giving myself permission to live life one step at a time, and with a little less direction than I’m used to. Have trust that doing the bit that I can do is enough for now. And if anyone else is wondering why it’s 6-months, a year, or however long it takes and “I’m still not over it,” that’s on them.
Every time we get a little “better” feeling, I think we just unlock the next level of grief. And the deeper we get, the slower the healing is and the deeper it cuts. But it’s still important. This past weekend I finally admitted to myself I’m not as okay as I thought I was, and it was so freeing (I’m 7 months out from AH abandoning our life/marriage, and roughly 5 months out from my mom’s transcendence). I’ve worked my way through the tip of the iceberg, but now I finally see how much is below the surface, and it might be longer than I wanted to admit that I’ll be “in between” myself.
I’m trying to find the joy of looking at the liminal space as it’s own destination. And enjoying perhaps the perks of what you can do and know when you’re living “in-between.”