Permanent Baggage

In the 5 years, 5 months and 3 days since Noah died, I’ve been on a journey of self-discovery and learning. One of the most important lessons that I’m coming to terms with is that my Grief is not a roller coaster, a hairball, a road to travel or any other example of something finite. My Grief is Infinite. Period. It doesn’t end, it doesn’t get less, it doesn’t wane and flicker out like a candle. What it does do, however, if I am willing and able to do the stupid hard work, is become easier to carry. It is my Permanent Baggage, and I am learning how to pack it in order to carry it more efficiently.

I got a therapist, way back when, and although we laugh about it now, I was obsessed with putting my Grief on a timeline. I wanted the behavior of Grief to be put on a documentation form, so I could discover its antecedents, find its function, and then work to replace it until I reached its target behavior, which for me was for it to just. stop. hurting. me. (yes, my Special Education people, I tried to do a Functional Behavioral Assessment/Positive Behavior Support Plan on my Grief.) Because something that hurt this big, that consumed me with an overwhelming pain, that made me want to cut my skin open to make room for it, had to have an end point. Right???

Wrong. My therapists, two at this point (one traditional, one reiki), albeit gently and with compassion, guided me toward the notion that there is no timeline, no predictable path, no “just wait it out and you will be over it”. I did not make it easy for them. I fought the concepts, closed my eyes to the work that I needed to do, and tried to do it my way. They were patient, and they waited me out. And, finally, I can’t remember when, I realized I was wrong. The more I fought to put my Grief into my perception of what I wanted it to be, the bigger it got.

So I opened my eyes, and I began to do the work.

You guys. This shit is hard work. It is not easy. It drains me, sometimes, to the point where I will sit on the couch, staring at nothing, incapable of doing much until I rest. Because in order for me to organize my Grief, I need to be self-aware. And in order for me to be self-aware, I have to bring the dark bits of me, the memories oppressed, the experiences that caused trauma into the light, examine them, understand them, and then put them into the Permanent Baggage. They don’t fit otherwise. (believe me, I have tried.)

It means remembering just exactly what the Others did to me, the trauma they inflicted, the feeling of safety they stripped away from me in order to control me. It means bringing that to the light–all the secrets I kept, all the memories I repressed, all the experiences I hid–examining them, feeling my feelings about them, learning to understand the consequences to my emotional self and my current/future reactions when triggered by them, and planning for those triggers. Then, and ONLY then, can it fit into the Permanent Baggage in a way that makes room for my Grief.

I’m a work in progress. For sure. But I can tell you that there has been progress. The question came up in therapy this week “what does it feel like when you are happy?” Three years ago, four years ago, even a year ago, I couldn’t answer. I was still immersed in my Grief; I didn’t feel safe enough to even think about or acknowledge all the work I needed to do. I couldn’t even fathom the concept of happiness, let alone what it felt like. But this week, (Jesus Murphy FINALLY, for those who are well-aware of my lack of patience for myself) I was able to explain.

I can feel happy now. I can be in the moment, experiencing and immersing in the joy and happiness that it brings to me. But, it feels different than it did five years, five months, and three days ago. It doesn’t feel less than, it feels different than. Now that I am packing my Permanent Baggage back into the backpack, piece by piece, organizing it better, I am carrying it more efficiently. The Grief fits into that backpack, most days, and I can carry it differently than I did in the beginning. Experiences can be filtered through the backpack in a much lighter way, for the Permanent Baggage, most days, feels more organized and manageable. It’s a delicate organization, though, and fragile, and still very new.

There are still days, more than I’m willing to confess, when the zipper breaks, something triggers my Grief (or my Trauma) and it all goes to hell quickly–baggage exploding everywhere and all I am left to do is pick it all back up, piece by piece, dusting it off and trying to fit it back in in the way that it will fit. But, now that I’m doing the stupid hard work, I know it will fit.

So you see, for me, Grief and I are linked together. It has its place in my Permanent Baggage. Some days it’s explosive, triggered by something, and it rises up, screaming for attention and refusing to go anywhere until I give in. But it is different now. Because once the explosion is over and the attention is paid, I can pick it up, dust it off, and gently put it back in the backpack where it sits, permanently there but easier to carry.