Reflections of a decade
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There is nothing better than the start of a new year. This one is no exception. It is also the end of a decade, and the beginning of a new one. It is a time to reflect and gauge what worked and what didn’t; what can be improved on and what we can afford to let go.
This decade has been my most trying. While I have achieved things I never dreamed possible, I have also lost. I lost parents, and I lost a child. It all chipped away at me, slowly but surely and somewhere along the line I started telling myself I was beyond help, beyond counsel, beyond healing.
Depression, anxiety, despair and addiction crept in and I let it fester and grow until it overwhelmed my very being. I let a whole host of things crush me. I carried a whole lot of hurt that I pretended didn’t exist. I wanted to be that positive soul that gave to the world as much as I could, but I couldn’t. Then grief in all its forms finally took from me.
I was spent, and I’m still recovering from that. Trying to evolve into the me I used to be, without losing the good things about the person I am today. I often felt numb when I thought of Zia or spoke of her in the last year. In truth I still am. It was like she was some distant memory, a fleeting glimpse of what could have been and so I tucked her away where I couldn’t reach her readily. Always searching for moments of her, but never truly feeling anything. I stopped all the candle lighting and the bereaved community projects. I stopped writing about her, and tucked away all the thoughts that came to the fore.
I wanted signs and I wanted miracles, none of which ever came to be. And that made me angry and bitter. Why did others dream of their children and I didn’t. Did she not love me enough? Did I not love her enough? Were all those little things I thought she made happen, real at all? Losing her changed me, it hardened me, broke me, and stole from me.
So I lied. To the world, my family and most of all to myself. I lied that I was okay when I wasn’t. I lied that I could finally see a spark of hope while I drowned myself in devastation, suffering alone. I wanted to be normal again. I didn’t want to be that person that people felt awkward around, that pregnant women avoided like the plague. I didn’t want to be that outcast that didn’t attend baby showers and see newborns in the family. I lied, and it nearly destroyed me.
This year, I want to change that. I want to be honest. I want to free myself from the shackles of pretense and just flow, be one with the universe, my sadness, my joy, my failures, my successes. My love, my loss. I realize that I’ve been floating through life for years, like an observer, never truly giving it my all.
In the words of an unknown author, “Do not judge the bereaved mother. She comes in many forms. She is breathing, but she is dying. She may look young, but inside she has become ancient. She smiles but her heart sobs. She walks, she talks, she cooks, she cleans, she works, she is but she is not all at once. She is here, but part of her is elsewhere for eternity.”
No truer words have ever been written. It caused me to stop and reflect, to introspect, to come to terms with the fact that I haven’t been living, but merely existing while I lost my soul. I let myself be okay with things I am not okay with. I did things I didn’t want to do. I said things I didn’t mean. I made really hard decisions and regretted them, I made good ones and took them for granted. So this year I will be true to the brokenness within. Because there is beauty in the admission of your flaws. I tried to be all right and it didn’t work, now I just want to be real.
There is no greater injustice than to bury your truth. It is meant to be expressed, if not to the world then to yourself.
How has the losses you experienced impacted your truth? Are you ready to own your story?