The Only Way Forward is Through

I have isolated myself. 

Hannah is gone. All that is left of her is a deeply sad, scarred place. I hear and see things that I want to to share with her, that I remember she liked, and there's no her.  The fiction that I gave myself when she first died (that word hurts), half hearted even at the time, that if I talked with her she could hear me, that she would try to reach out to me somehow, in the glow of lights on the wall, that is faded and hopeless now.

On my living room wall, a captured light.

From march, unpublished

From March 18th.

I have hung onto the grief tightly, like a life ring .  It has changed me, and I have had to evolve to survive the oceans of pain and grief. I have tried to ignore the cold seeping into me as the stresses of the last several months have magnified my feelings, until I realized about two months ago that I had become  bitter, angry, and anxious.  

I am- possibly too late - taking time off of work to take care of myself, though I am not sure that this job fits me any more. I am not sure what fits me now, unsure of who I am and what I want in many ways.  I will need to make decisions about that soon. I crave the familiar, but find that I am in fear of the changes that the company is going through and how they will affect the smaller, more vulnerable business that we deal with. I find that when I try to think about this, waves come over me. Anxiety, making it hard to breathe. Fear of being unemployed. Fear that I won't find something better. Fear that it doesn't matter, that I will lose my job, my friends from work. Fear that if I don't lose my job, I will stay there in a place that has changed, and that has been so inconsistent in their policies. Will we raise the minimums? Should I bend over backwards for this customer, or will I need to say no? If I say no, will they complain to me, to my boss, to the board of directors? Screw up formulas and cost O* thousands of dollars. They want their products shipped before they're paid for? nope, says Melinda. They choose to work with us in development again, but only if they may buy their IP. No to O* about their IP. Yes to O* about their IP, but only if they pay a lot. No, they won't have to pay a lot, they will just have to buy a lot, more than they are ordering right now. So much whiplash, and that's just for one customer. How many products need to be reworked? How many customers won't make the new MOQ? How many businesses will fail due to our new policies?

I am trying to become a calmer, more open person. It's like a flower opening one petal at a time, but where I felt closed and choked a month ago, I can see rays of light sometimes now.

What is the Condition of My Heart?

 Note:  This is based on an exercise from Megan Devine's "How to Carry What Can't be Fixed." This is my experience in the world right now, 2 days shy of 22 months since  Hannah took her life, 25 months after my long term relationship ended, 24 months after my finding out I had stage 1 ductal carcinoma, 25 months after the pandemic created multiple crises in the USA, 4 months since my treatment plan was taken away and uncertainty has taken it over, and 3 months since I found out that Darren had died alone in his apartment, not found for weeks. I have had a growing sense of anxiety and dread about pretty much everything in my life, and I am taking some time off of work to learn some coping techniques and begin to heal.

My heart. It's hidden away in the shadows now, unidentifiable in shape, around a corner protecting herself.  I can only make out shadow and light mostly, bright yellow and white intermingled with sharp black edges and greys, the occasional flash of an image:  a wrinkled mass like clothing, a large crumpled bow. Things that had value and possibly beauty and may still, but have been dropped on the floor, neglected, ignored, discarded. I no longer know if the trampled-on mess is my own creation or something that has happened to me, at me, but it's clear my heart has not been treated well by me. It's been treated as though it has no value, should be given away like a trinket with no care for it.

I have been looking for someone to help me do my "dirty laundry," to help me clean up the mess, but I am beginning to see that I just need to pick up one piece at a time. Walking on and over and through the mess without acknowledgement or care has only served to further damage those parts of me that need care and devalues who I am and who I can still be.

I know that I want to be in "the world" in a way that is in keeping with my values. I know that where I am working right now does not feel like that right now, but I don't know if it's the lens that I am seeing through or if my perception of the current trajectory of inequity in the company is real. 

My Grief speaks

Note:  This is based on an exercise from Megan Devine's "How to Carry What Can't be Fixed." The instruction was to characterize and describe my grief. 

I am grief and I am lonely. You have shut me out and I will be felt. I will be heard. You  know me. I am the feeling of damp anxiety,  like water pouring into an already obstructed drain. I am the moist darkness that rots your pipes, destroys your foundation if you continue to ignore me. You may feel safe right now, but I will make sure that you know that the floor may collapse beneath you. It may only be a squeak beneath your foot, but does it foretell collapse?

I am the feeling of despair, the moisture beneath your knee when you gave CPR, the hopelessness soaking into your clothing and seeping into the crevices  and dark corners all around and taking hold. You think I've gone, and then one day the noise below your step reminds you that you are vulnerable.

Ignore my voice and  pests and poisons flourish in your world. Untended, I am as rotten fruit, the pool of barely identified liquid sticking, stinking to the bottom of the drawer. Deny me, forsake me and  the softened wood of your foundations and fortifications are chewed up and decay. 

The perfect peach must be examined and re-examined again to make sure it isn't spoiled or wriggling. The zucchini and cauliflower are uneaten, finally you give up on "real" fruit and buy frozen, antiseptic, unseen, giving you a sense of autonomy and safety.

I want for you to see me. I want you to acknowledge me, so we may learn to live together one day.

I am meeting with a counselor on Monday to work on a plan and tools to help to reduce the intense anxiety that I have been experiencing these last several weeks.  

Trauma and trust issues.

Written August 4, 2021.

 A recent conversation with someone has put a new spin on the old record of mental illness...mine, hers, what that means and what it looks like.

It has taken me a few days to be able to sit with this and write since our Tuesday meeting, to be able to

unpack and dissect our conversation and why it has created a sense of sadness, anger, vulnerability and

apprehension that makes me wary of coming back and talking with you.  It has opened up a jagged can

of worms.

Narcissist. That word is fucking powerful. It’s used to describe Donald Trump in the same breath that he

is called a fascist. It’s used to describe emotional abusers and dictators, people who take and want love

but cannot give it in return. The concept of narcissism is never associated with empathy, mindfulness, or

kindness.

Is writing about this, thinking about it, wanting to deny it, inherently narcissistic? Does thinking about my

own inner workings and outer life make me self absorbed? Is my willingness to pay thousands of dollars

a year in therapy an indication of a desperate need to have someone validate me? Was then my love and

marrying a selfish grab for attention which I was condemned to reject? Was being a parent a desperate

endeavor to prove my worth? If that is true, then my daughter’s death tears that down.

For years, I cut the bottoms of my feet because the pain when I walked took away the pain in my spirit,

my head, in the murky places that I wanted to exorcise. I have taken dozens of antidepressants and a few

antipsychotics. In times when I was desperate for clear light and breath, I considered electroshock

therapy to take away the darkness, knowing that life might not have the vivid blues and greens and reds,

but neither would it have the greys that sometimes take over. Perhaps life would be less painful and fraught.

I have learned a lot in DBT, from getting older, reading about Buddhism and meditation, though it does

not dissipate the greys that come over me, the periodic thick fog that unfocuses the ability to see beauty

and hope. I’ve worked hard to gain a gentle dominion over the krakens that arise. I continued to see Dr. S,

while in a deeper place I have wondered if by seeing a therapist, I am only paying someone to listen to me,

to talk about myself, that it was elementally narcissistic, staring at myself in the pond looking at my reflection

week after week, month after month, year after year. I tread the line, knowing that it’s not appropriate for me

to ask my therapists about themselves, yet knowing that the “relationship” is inherently selfish.  But over

time, I had gotten to a place of calm in my life, and was seeing my last therapist once every 3-6 months.

There was stability at work, I was slowly ending an unhealthy love relationship, and felt that I was beginning

to have friend relationships in daily life. When the cancer diagnosis, the decision to have a bilateral

mastectomy happened, I was okay. Worried, but okay. The isolationism of covid was mitigated by my

ability to see people at work every day.

But when Hannah died, my world was shaken to its roots. I felt like everything I believed was wrong. Every single interaction between her and everyone she interacted with, her moods and actions and my

response to them was worthy of question to try and find the answer to WHY. I wanted to know how a smart,

sassy, beautiful, intense, artistic young woman could have slipped away like a porcelain cup crashing to

the ground. How have I, who am so much less than she, survived and she is gone? I will never know, and

while that’s not what I want, I accept it and will continue on, even when I am in pain.

But back on topic.  After Hannah died, I called my talk doctor.  She was a great therapist for years, but this

loss was a different thing, and I needed someone who could understand. I came to you to deal with the

trauma of my dead daughter under my hands, pumping her chest, my knees in the fluid that drained from

her body after she expired. The lips glued shut, the memory of that last horrible argument. The recognition

that she must have been afraid of my father’s yelling, of her own anger, and in that last moment when no

one saved her by opening the locked door. She must have been afraid when no one saved her. Was she

still alive when I was knocking on her door, plate in hand? I have accepted that I will never know. It’s been

a year of memory of those last moments, of her childhood, touching the objects that were there with her

in her daily life til the day she died and slowly deciding what to keep, what represented who she was, and

to be able to let go of some of the rest in a world where my family - my sons, my ex husband, my parents

- have not been able to deal with. The only way forward is through. While it’s likely as hard for me as for

them, I am doing it because they say they cannot. This year has had multiple surgeries, T-rex arms, work

grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, living my responsibilities in the world, wishing there was a hand I could

grab onto for. Lacking that, I push the feelings down.  

I recognize that my jokes about eating my feelings are the tip of an iceberg, thanks in part to Brene Brown,

which I am about 70% done with. I see that I am numbing when I eat til I am sick to my stomach, watch

tv, listen to silly books on audio, shop, surf the internet for hours, and am only slowly opening to the possibility

that there are other choices. The way forward is through here as well.

I came to you, Laurie, to help me navigate what I could not even accept or comprehend. For a year we

have talked almost every week. I don’t envy you listening to the horrors of the experiences of people like

Craig, Sybil, Rebecca, Walter, Laura and my family.  You’ve heard the stories, experience our pain, seen

our tears. You’ve looked at the drawings, walked through the darkest moments of our lives with us while

we trust you and the others in our group with the things we can’t talk to anyone who hasn’t been there.I’ve felt uncomfortable periodically, about focusing some of what happened with Hannah on my own

childhood, my parents. How they have acted is theirs, whether it be from love or hate, control or absence.

Is it not also true that Hannah and I both ultimately have had agency over our decisions and actions

even when those choices were catastrophic? 

Narcissist.

When one is wounded, do we not rest and heal? I did not take that action last year, needing to go to work,

to talk with customers and co-workers daily.  Is my need to curl up narcissistic, or am I trying to take care

of myself?

Narcissist.

Your use of the word hit hard, and I don’t know if you saw, but my walls went up, the locks began to close.

I was shaken, uncomfortable, offended, shocked, traumatized by the word, the idea, even as you tried to explain.

Not narcissist. Vulnerable narcissist.

Not the same, yet some of the same pathology as grandiose narcissism. The other side of the same coin: arrogance/shame,

extroversion/introversion, superiority/unworthiness, attention seeking behavior/social anxiety. The core elements

are the same in both - Self absorption. Lack of emotional empathy. Sense of superiority. Attention seeking behavior Bizarre.

EntitlementI do feel entitled, I feel guilt and shame for it. I recognize that so many people don’t have access to medical

and mental health, and I do.I recognize the gift of having a home, a car, insurance, family, even when all i

want to do is hide myself away to be alone, to process, to escape. I feel monstrous, ludicrous going to therapy week after week, knowing that I could be taking that time and money and helping the unhoused, the 

powerless. 

Defining Characteristics of vulnerable narcissism: sense of superiority, hypersensitive, vindictive, resentful, ashamed, neurotic, depressed, anxious, moody, introverted, unworthy and inferior. Personalizing criticism?

I try to learn from constructive criticism Though the anxious part of me says that if that were true, I would be

feeling less like I had been attacked). Vindictive? I don’t believe so. Envious? I do have feelings that there are some others whose lives are easier, in part due to just resilience, which

I am trying to learn. Resentful?Possibly. I resent my weaknesses. I resent the sense that I have had what seems  bad - mojo? Karma? luck?

 I want to take responsibility for - control of - what happens so that I can have a sense of management of

the uncontrollable incidents that put me where I am. If I eschew this characterisation, does my “arrogant

denial” make the diagnosis more likely? Do narcissists have an incapacity to see their true selves in the

mirror?

  DSM-5 traits of narcissism:

• Self-esteem dependent on needing others to admire them, and their emotions can go up and down

• if they don’t achieve this external recognition.

• Goal setting is based on gaining approval from others. They set standards high so they can see themselves

• as exceptional – or set standards low based on a sense of entitlement.

• Struggling to recognise the feelings or needs of others, unless those feelings relate to themselves. 

• Not having a clear sense of how they affect others.

• Superficial relationships, mostly to boost their self-esteem.

• Arrogance and haughtiness, believing themselves to be better than others, and can be condescending.

The problem right now, Laurie, is that this is a lot to process, and in citing your insights from the podcast about

narcissism to me, something in our professional relationship became amiss. Maybe I am a narcissist. Maybe you

are wrong. Maybe you are right. But I need to step away from the hurt and anger that I am experiencing so

that I do not lose my livelihood and my way. Even if the way is not the “best” way right now, it’s the one I

can handle.

The New Year

 

The sunflower rug - it got to me. The family joke that ceased to be funny the minute her body ceased to be alive It was in 2006, on a train for many hours mile after mile of sunflowers as we traveled across France  until she said she could not stand to see any more sunflowers. For years it would come back, as a sweet, happy joke when we would see sunflowers. When we went to Europe again 10 years later, she brought a dress with her because she know that she would be going to the Van Gogh museum with Troy.  I think she wore it on her birthday when we were in the Summer gardens in St  Petersburg. She looked beautiful in it. She was cremated in it.

My mom wanted a rug for her kitchen floor and asked for my help to order one online. I was going through a website to find something that would work for her and I saw the sunflower rug. It was pretty, and I remembered Hannah, but it only hurt a little, and it was okay in a few minutes. Her brother saw the photo and remembered too. I wonder if it will always be this way - a little, common thing can make us sad. It's not as bad. I don't always cry and sometimes believe that there is hope for the future. God, I hope there is happiness in the future for the boys...  She's been gone for over 19 months now. I can see sunflowers without tearing up.

I googled her. I realized, again, that there will never be any more things to see when I google her. Her obituary, her published thesis, a photo from her obituary. That's it. 

Reticence

I have fought writing and expression these last few months. God,  it's been over two months.  Hannah passed over a year ago now, and her birthday has passed.  Another birthday we will not celebrate with her. I no longer know how many days it has been,  and the flow of days and weeks brings little comfort. There are  reminders in everyday life of her everywhere I go: art,  music,  flowers,  books yes,  but blue hair,  safety masks and gloves,  blue Volkswagens,  my back yard.  When I hear a fire engine,  my throat tightens. The sense that they are there to rescue is mitigated now by the knowledge that that sound can also be linked the darkest moment in so many lives, in my family's lives. I live in the house where she passed.  The door to that room is closed,  and I struggle to go through her things,  knowing it takes me farther from her. I feel a sense of failure in the avoidance, want to clutch everything to see if I can smell her in her belongings, but know that they are just things.  The phrase that I taught my children all their lives "they're just things" mocks me now,  because her things are all that is left of her. 

There is a softening of the pain of her death,  like a scar that is healing. There is a quote that I am trying to remember about the sensation of a scar. It distracts me again from writing, but I see that,  see the way in which my mind distracted me from getting close to the feelings again.  I will sit with that understanding,  sit with this feeling of peaceful sadness that I am having this morning.