Old Wounds

ETA: this was actually written yesterday (sunday 1/3/10), but I wasn't sure I wanted to post it or make it public. It may not make a lot of sense, but it is just me...trying to figure out where I'm at...kind of stream of consciousness really.

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This morning I find myself mulling over some of the last week in my head. Most of it has been spent in bed. I haven’t felt great and I think if I weren’t already struggling with depression, I might have been able to be a bit more productive. However, because I was already coping with some holiday depression which was compounded by my faux anniversary crap…I think the illness gave me the perfect excuse to lose myself in slumber. I seriously would wake up, go to my office, work my shift, sign off and then crawl back into bed. I’d wake up a bit later to spend a few hours with Tanner and then head back to bed.

I’m feeling a little better today…both health-wise and depression-wise so I guess I’m able to try and reflect with a little more clarity over what has had my mind in overdrive for the last week. When it comes to grief, one thing I’ve realized is that it is very much like a roller coaster. Initially, it feels like you do nothing but bounce from one crest to one valley over and over again; you find yourself plunging down that steep hill, completely out of control of your emotions and then immersed in your grief and before you know it, you are making that climb again, feeling better, more confident and bam…you plummet again. In my experience, the “coasting” time, or the time between those peaks and valleys extends gradually. Before you know it, you are going a few hours between crying jags, then a few days, then maybe it’s a week and before you know it…it is maybe once a month that you experience those scary plummets into the emotional abyss where your grief dwells. Around this time, you also notice that the abyss isn’t quite as dark and murky as it once was. You are able to find your footing and your way back to the here and now much easier. Those intense feelings of grief wane until it is just the gentle ache of remembrance and reflection.

I guess I thought that was it…the end of the cycle of grief. Acceptance. You’ve arrived at your destination and can now get off and get on with the rest of your life. I thought I had arrived and embraced acceptance and was moving on with the rest of my life. You have taken good care of the wounds of loss; you cleaned and bandaged and doctored them until you felt they had healed sufficiently. You take the bandage off with guarded confidence, stretch and bend slowly, testing the wound, making sure its going to hold. Each day you gain more confidence as you see it stand up to more strenuous tests until you aren’t really thinking about it anymore. Maybe just occasionally, you’ll catch a glimpse of the scar in the mirror after a shower or maybe run a hand across it getting dressed and you’ll remember….”Wow, I almost forgot about that….it hurt like hell, that wound” but what you are remembering is just a shadow of what you felt at the time and you have a life to live so you finish dressing and get on with your day. And you think you’re ok.

The thing is, I guess like real wounds, we knit ourselves back together, but we can never really do it with the same finesse as our creator. Whereas before, it took a really nasty injury to open up that initial wound…now, smaller injuries seem to be able to open up it back up easily. That sucks. I don’t like nursing the same wound over and over again! It’s healed, I’m done with it, I’ve moved on…NEXT.

I guess what I’m discovering is that these wounds tend to be fragile because again, like real wounds, if you leave anything behind…any feelings or emotions that weren’t dealt with the first time around…like a nasty bacteria, they are going to weaken any healing that’s done and eventually that wound will open back up again…forcing you to take another look to see what you missed. I know that somewhere this is a good thing, otherwise what is left behind grows and festers and before you know it, it’s consumed you….It takes over, you become septic, you die. So I suppose I should be thankful that I get a second chance at this…the healing.

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