I am sitting alone in a hotel room on what was to be a restful, peaceful night. Instead, I am weeping so fiercely my ribs ache. I’m nauseous from hyperventilating and I’d scream but I don’t want to disturb the other guests at this quaint hotel.
Needing a break from caregiving, I drove an hour away from home, found a comfortable bed, put my feet up for the first time in days and instead of relaxing began to cry.
When I pledged to stop living in survival mode, I didn’t account for this part of healing. I didn’t realize that all of the anger and grief that I carry every day about my daughter and her illness and the challenges that the world puts up against her would overwhelm me. When you’re in survival mode you’re numb. You don’t have time to feel because you’re too busy trying to keep yourself and the people you love alive. But when you step away from hyper-vigilance and allow yourself to feel again, you don’t just feel happiness. You meet the darkness too.
The longer you bury the anguish the greater the waves of grief.
I want to run. I want to go back to feeling numb. I don’t want to feel this weight anymore. I want to stop crying.
But that means going back to survival mode, to a numb body and frozen heart, which I swore I wouldn’t do.
So now I am learning to ride these waves of profound grief and rage. It’s like surfing Mavericks after only two lessons.
I could shatter the sky with one scream.
Feeling joy is the goal, and I am happy to say that most of the time I feel it. There is joy in the sound of birds and of my daughter singing in the morning. And joy when I’m near my good friends.
But to feel that joy I also have to feel the pain.
That’s the part that makes me want to go numb again.