Allowing It

"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.