"Well, how have I not made note of every word you've ever said?
And time is not on our side, but I pretend that it's alright.
Before you leave: you must know you are beloved,
and before you leave, remember I was with you."
I had gone to Olive Garden for lunch this weekend. That's not something I normally do, but it had been a really long week
& weekend at work, and I had been hungry for pasta for months
and decided with the overtime coming I could splurge a little.
(Olive Garden is not the point of this post, by the way, ha.)
And I was eating, like normal. I didn't feel super great, but figured I was just worn out. I was staring up at the TV, showing house
renovation shows on mute, reading the captions, letting other thoughts
quietly pick away at different things in the back of my head. And before
I was through eating my entree (shrimp scampi, for those needing to
know) it hit.
And I felt it. I knew.
Lately,
anxiety has taken on a new tactic. I've heard people talk about it in a
similar way to this before, but I'd never really experienced it quite
this way myself until a few weeks ago. Currently it's decided to feel
like it's a weight, or creature, sitting heavy on my shoulders, wrapping
my whole neck and head in tension, making it feel like it's hard to
breathe. It feels like a trap that's sprung and attacked your head and
neck and upper shoulders. I recognized it, I knew what was happening, I
reminded myself of it and began talking myself through it. I tried to go
back in my thoughts and pinpoint what I was thinking about at the
moment it hit, but I couldn't. My stomach instantly turned and I started
feeling genuinely ill. I asked for the check, paid my bill and left.
I sat in the parking lot in my car and kept trying every trick in the book I had to get out from under it.
What tools do you have with you? What do you have right now that would be useful to you? I
turned the AC on blast, cranked up Mumford & Sons, and buried
my face in my hands to shut out light. I kept trying to work my way
back. I finally felt the tears starting to form, which is actually good
news for me I've learned. It usually means the anxiety is cresting, and
will start to even out soon. And then I heard it in the back of my mind,
what I was searching for, why it had hit. And I'm always a little
embarrassed when this is the reason why, because for some of them it's
been so long now, but it's still truth. And it has to come to the
forefront, because shoving it down did more trauma than facing it:
I miss them so much.
I knew I had touched the nerve. And the only thing I could do was bring it back to the surface.
I
miss them so much. I miss them all. I'm so sorry they're still not
here. I wish they didn't have to go for me to realize how much I loved
them. I wish I was older when they went so I had a chance to tell them.
I'll never know if they knew. I miss grandma so much. I miss mom. I miss
dad. I miss Phyllis. I miss grandpa. I miss my grandparents. I miss
them all. I miss my whole family. And then, I actually started to
laugh with relief. I had at least found the nugget that was tucked in
there wrecking it all. I don't know where it came from. I don't know why
in that moment I was so sick with it. Maybe I was just tired. Maybe I
really was actually sick with something. Maybe it's the cold
front has moved in, and weather changes can affect me, especially cold.
Maybe it was the house reno shows I used to watch with grandma. Maybe it
was I was suddenly lonely. It was probably a mix of all of them and
more that I just don't realize.
When it finally eased
up and I was clear headed, I drove across the parking lot to a store I
had intended to go to anyway. I still felt kind of sick, and even more
worn out, and I knew I needed a distraction to get out of my head.
I
walked in, cried some more in their bathroom (and laughed at myself for
doing so, which is fine with me, because anxiety hates being laughed
at, ha. Well, now we've officially cried in Big Lots restroom. We'll add that to our growing list, with Whataburger, ahaha.) And when I walked out Mumford & Sons began playing over the store radio.
....
I
felt incredibly looked after in that moment. It was a small thing, but
it was so much in that moment. It feels overdramatic to say it felt like
God had reached out to me and reminded me it was going to be okay, but
that's what it felt like in that moment. It was even the beginning of
the song, I even got the listen to the whole thing. And that's when I
began to really calm down. I wandered through the store. I looked for
distractions. I followed where the radio was loudest until the song was
over. I reminded myself I had nowhere to be. I perused through aisles of
Christmas decorations. It made me think of grandma. We went to the Big
Lots almost every year those last five years or so, looking through the
decorations. But it made me smile. It wasn't painful.
After about 20 minutes, I sat down in a chair at the store for a minute, because anxiety will make you feel really tired.
But I was also almost felt giddy. I felt significantly better. I still
didn't feel great the rest of the day, and I did decide afterward to go
home and rest. But I was functional. There was no bear trap clinging to
my head. I was lighter.
It's okay to be sick with
grief. It's okay to miss your loved ones over 20 years. We want to move
on, and somehow we think that you can't do both. We think you can't
"move on" while you're still grieving. Maybe you can't. I don't know the
psychology of it. Maybe I have my terms wrong.
I know
there is such as thing as being stuck in grief, and I suspect I probably
am or have been in the past. But I also know this whole thing is a journey, death and grief are parts of your life, they'll come in and out, they're not necessarily static.
It's okay to still love those people 20 years later and still miss them.
I'm not recommending you don't continue to grow and develop and learn and love, I'm actually recommending that you do.
That's the only way you're going to heal. And I'm working on that for
myself. But at the exact same time, it's okay to still love those people
you lost and still miss them. You loved them. Of course, it's okay.
You're going to need them at different points in your life, for
different reasons at different ages, you'll appreciate them in different
ways and miss them for different reasons. And that's okay.
Allow yourself to do so. You loved them.
