In the interest of doing something worthwhile, I have recently been forced to ask myself a question that could have very comfortably gone unanswered. How do you come to terms with an irreconcilable loss?
About a year ago, I heard about a place called Judi's House. They help kids work through the grief of a lost loved one. From the minute I heard about it, I couldnt think of something I would rather invest myself in. You see, a year and a half ago, I lost someone I loved very much. His name was Quinton, and he was... beautiful. It was Quinton that brought me to Judi's House. But what I didnt expect is how much of him I would find there.
We spent a weekend training to help kids through their process of grief. To my own surprise, I found that my process of grief has remained painfully stunted. They say the the first task of grief is accepting that the death is real and understanding that it is final. They want us to use the terms bluntly and with authority... dead, death, died. And I had to ask myself, am I there? Do I understand these things? The answer to that questions holds more than I have the strength to sort through. Because I realized, there is a part of me that believes that Quinton is coming back. Dont get me wrong, I know that he is gone. But the finality of that seems impossible to me. When I allow myself to consider fully the gravity of him being gone, it is almost incapacitating. And to think that that will never change... that it will never get better. I dont know how to let that be true. Everything has an end, right? But the end of losing someone is finding them again. So, somewhere deeper than I have been able to reach until now, I have been waiting to find Quinton again. How do I reconcile that part of me with every other part of me that knows that he is gone and feels the weight of it every day? I dont know that I can. Is that ok?
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Sunday, November 2, 2008
honestly...
I have been thinking about honesty a lot lately. The truth. If you asked any given person what their greatest fear is, they would probably say something like, "Always being alone" or "Failure." But I would argue that for most of us, what we really fear most is the truth. Whether it is the truth about life or the truth about ourselves... there is something about total honesty that makes us completely vulnerable. So much so that a lot of times the person we have the most trouble being honest with is ourselves. We create these pseudo-truths, versions of honesty that protect us from harm. All the while the real truth, the whole truth remains buried under layers of half truths where judgment and hurt cannot reach it.
In the same way, I think we often create a version of ourselves that we choose to believe is true. We learn the characteristics we have that seem acceptable to others or ourselves and become convinced that this is who we are. But behind this version of ourselves, all of our shortcomings and mistakes and ugliness lay hidden. So we split ourselves in two, perpetually sifting through what we include in our truth and what we do not. The problem with this is, when you are only presenting the world with part of yourself, only part of you can be known and loved. I wonder if anyone would feel lonely if they knew that they were fully known and fully loved by another. My guess is no. And yet, there is a very large risk wrapped up in this predicament of total honesty. Opening yourself to the possibility of an all-embracing love leaves you equally open to hurt and shame at its deepest level. At what point does the reward outweigh the risk?
Now if you're thinking "she just talked herself into a philosophical oblivion" (or something along those lines), you are right, and it happens a lot. But I say all that to say... circumstances recently have caused me to question the risks and rewards of honesty. While on a much smaller scale than mentioned above, Im finding the rewards of honesty with myself and the people around me to be pleasantly surprising. And coming from someone who has experienced the hurt of being fully known and not so fully loved or loved at all, Im realizing that may not always be the case. Honesty isnt without hope, and the risk will probably be worth it again.
In the same way, I think we often create a version of ourselves that we choose to believe is true. We learn the characteristics we have that seem acceptable to others or ourselves and become convinced that this is who we are. But behind this version of ourselves, all of our shortcomings and mistakes and ugliness lay hidden. So we split ourselves in two, perpetually sifting through what we include in our truth and what we do not. The problem with this is, when you are only presenting the world with part of yourself, only part of you can be known and loved. I wonder if anyone would feel lonely if they knew that they were fully known and fully loved by another. My guess is no. And yet, there is a very large risk wrapped up in this predicament of total honesty. Opening yourself to the possibility of an all-embracing love leaves you equally open to hurt and shame at its deepest level. At what point does the reward outweigh the risk?
Now if you're thinking "she just talked herself into a philosophical oblivion" (or something along those lines), you are right, and it happens a lot. But I say all that to say... circumstances recently have caused me to question the risks and rewards of honesty. While on a much smaller scale than mentioned above, Im finding the rewards of honesty with myself and the people around me to be pleasantly surprising. And coming from someone who has experienced the hurt of being fully known and not so fully loved or loved at all, Im realizing that may not always be the case. Honesty isnt without hope, and the risk will probably be worth it again.
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