Grief and My Soul Sucking Alien

So tonight my husband and I went on a date for Valentine's Day. We watched the movie "The Vow". The premise is that a woman wakes up after a car accident and has forgotten the last 5 years of her life, including meeting and marrying her husband, losing and meeting friends, fights with family, switching towns,  career paths, and life goals.  So much happened to change her life and she has to start all over again, discovering the same beliefs and convictions that led to the changes in the first place. She had to rediscover who she was and is.

Life transformations and transitions are interesting things. They seem to always sneak up on us, as if we haven't gone through them before or as if we don't know that life at 50 will be different than life at 20. So we stumble along, whine a little "Not AGAIN! How many times do I have to change?!", and ultimately feel lost, over and over and over. Some of us, if we're lucky, are found for a while. We have those periods of clarity, of who we are and why we're here. So many ways to talk about it, depending on your belief system. The planets aligned or everything came together or even God worked through me.

The past 3 years or so, especially the last 2, feel surreal to me, as if my memories are from another lifetime. The constant pressure, stress and side effects of fertility treatments and challenging health tainted everything I did or thought or felt. I'm not saying it was all bad or all good. It was both, just like life usually is, but somewhere along the way I lost myself. I tried not to. I tried really really hard not to. However, if you know me, you probably realize being around me often was kind of like listening to someone sing just slightly off key.

Since we decided to halt the fertility treatments for now (and most likely for good), a weight has been lifted off me. I kind of feel like a giant soul sucking alien parasite has been detached from my back. When it was detached, my life- body, heart and mind- went out of whack. I had to detox from the alien nasties or something. And now, at times, I can finally see more clearly, before the nasty returns.

The trouble is, this alien nasty is grief. And grief never leaves us. Not really. Funny how I've become a grief educator just as I experience some of the most heart wrenching grief I've ever experienced. It's not as if I haven't felt the loss of a dream before, the loss of a potential future being erased. But the dreams of babies who have my husband's eyes and my freckles are somehow different than the dreams I've had before. They feel more tangible, even though they are still ideas. When I was younger and I lost my faith in "The System", when I realized I could not really "Save the World", I never thought I'd get over that heartbreak and be able to hope again, to trust in a better future.  It was so very real to me at the time, that grief for intangible things. But with time, I did dream again, I did imagine a future where I can change the world... just not how I thought I would when I was an invincible teenager.

So right now, my faith is pretty low. I'm being honest. There are moments however I remember other times when I thought my heart would break. And guess what? I got through them. The grief is still there. A memory of a heartbreak, but those wounds no longer cut so deep. There are times I'm not sure I'm going to emerge from this abyss, but then I remember and I can at least have hope for a day where the pain is not so sharp, not so mind/heart/body twisted up.

Something about times of need heighten my awareness of music and song. Two songs speak to my dark place. One is a hymn from the 1880s, Uncloudy Day. Here is an excerpt:

Oh, they tell me of a home Far beyond the skies
Oh, they tell me of a home So far away
Yes, they tell me of a home Where no storm clouds rise
Oh, they tell me Yes, they tell me Of an uncloudy day

And another from  Florence and the Machines new single "Shake it Out"

I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart
'Cause I like to keep my issues strong
It's always darkest before the dawn