Oh Christ, now you want me to be merry?
The family stood around the island, as they always do this time of year. We remember those we lost, and we celebrate new additions and challenges overcome. It’s an optional thing, if you want to speak up and remember what you are thankful for. I look over at the new additions to the family. For each we have lost, there seems to be a reincarnation breathing new life into this family. Nathan is just all smiles, TJ has come out of his shell and his personality is three times his size. My Aunt Bet, the patriarch, out of nowhere drums up a speech that tells of challenges overcome and the drive of the human spirit to persevere, regardless of what the statistics say.
It’s a textbook moment that Normal Rockwell could have captured in one of his trademark paintings. Excepting one thing—me.
I’m a shell, hollow. I dig deep for thanks—I come up with nothing. I’m ashamed to say this, but I am full of resent. It’s an awful feeling. Because these are the people who carry much of my burden without my knowing. These are the people who suffer daily the same loss that I have in their own way. These women lost a sister like I lost a brother, their grief is immeasurable just as mine. They’ve stepped in where they can and have attempted to reach out and provide me some comfort every step of my journey. I rarely accept the offer. It’s not built into my core, yet, to accept what feels like a foreign handout. It feels to me an admission of weakness, which I know it is not. It is just their unconditional love… I can’t grasp that.
I resent the fact that I, for some reason, was chosen as the vehicle of loss. I’m feeling sorry for myself. When they speak of loss, they shoot an involuntary glance my direction. I know it’s meant to acknowledge me and what I have endured. Yet I feel pitiful.
More than anything, I feel alone. I see moms and siblings, aunts and uncles. I see fathers and my resentment grows for never actually having one. I am alone in a sea of unconditional love. I am ashamed at myself for feeling like this. I feel awful that inside, my inner self is throwing a temper tantrum, and a new wound is opening that reminds me that I am not allowed these joys—that I am the vessel of hope, built for the specific purpose of towing my wagon of despair. When do I get to unhitch this satchel of hurt and leave it on the side of the road, allowing me to pursue the path I intended only four years ago?
This is when it strikes me: This is how it must feel for those who live in the darkness. All around them, there are reasons to rejoice, yet the little rain cloud persists on. This is what it feels like to look through the lens of hopelessness, of self-deprecation, of how truly alone a person can feel.
There is nothing anybody can say at this moment that will separate me from my embrace with my friend Depression and his sibling Self-loathing. It’s a scary place to be like the subject of a Caravaggio painting during his death and exile period. I stand for a moment on the shores of Acheron and see what it means to be trapped somewhere between here and there. It scares the living shit out of me.
My only solace is knowing—having been here before—that it shall pass. But this is the moment in which the lost and the survivor are one and the same. This is the moment where I am able to live for a moment in David’s shoes. It is an awful experience compounded by my own grief. I am superbia, avaritia, luxuria, invidia, gula, ira, acedia… I am profoundly aware of how deadly these seven sins are and how, if un-tempered, they could consume the mind whole and force the body to cause self-harm. It’s the scratching of the itch that should be well left alone if you intend in it healing. But you don’t—you scratch at it, only inflaming it and causing more harm.
As you come out of that awful place, you look back with a newfound respect and fear. Your whole perception has shifted, it’s a moment in time that changes you forever. How easy it is to give in, to slip, to allow it to overwhelm you and take control of rationale belief.
It’s counter-intuitive, really. It’s when we tense up before an impact when we should actually relax to prevent injury. It’s the natural reaction to grip tighter, to hold on with all our might when the solution is to let go. As I sat one and the same with where I expect David was, I kept telling myself, “It’s okay to feel this way, stop trying to control it, let go.” It’s okay to feel resentful—it’s an emotion just as happiness and content is. It is your “self” suggesting that perhaps there are more important things in my life that I am neglecting. Feeling sad and grief are all things we must endure in order to truly appreciate the good stuff.
As I came out of the dark, I looked into the eyes of those around me, each and every one of them had given up something they probably held as “so important,” letting it go to be replaced by those new things. I saw it in Becca’s eyes when she looked at her newborn baby. My cousin gave up being a girl and became a woman, a mother. I looked at TJ, my cousin, and Carlene, and I saw a family dynamic that required Jason giving up the carelessness of the days of Jason, Tim, and David gallivanting about without a care in the world. The purpose changed; what they live for is so much more. I saw Bettie, my aunt, a grandmother, which in and of itself still makes me chuckle inside, but I saw this next level of generations, which she had put into motion as had her parents before her, my grandparents—it is the cycle of things. I looked at Bruce and Mary-Ann and saw the unconditional way in which they collectively have been each others rock for so many years and how, when the going gets tough, they actually become stronger.
As the clouds cleared I thought, “I’m not there yet,” but here is the proof you just have to give up and take stock on what is really important. You have to be willing to let go and not tense up. You can only control so much, and above all, you have to take risks and be willing to put it on the line. You will get hurt, you will suffer, but the more you suffer, the more alive and meaningful the wins will feel. I’m not there yet—in fact, I’ve got a long journey ahead. There are scars to be mended, there are self-implied expectations that I need to let go. Above all, I have to learn to forgive myself—to give myself a pass and accept my own apology. And mean it.
I didn’t give thanks this year. I am okay with that. I am not sure how merry I will be as the holiday comes closer. There are good days, there are bad. Each Christmas carol and decoration is a reminder of great joy and tremendous loss. I’ll pull away from those who are extending hands and trying to help me forward, and that’s okay. We must crawl before we walk, we must walk before we run. Maybe I’ll accept a little help here and there, but I do know there will be little bubbles of letting go, and I’ll try to live in the moment and think about what I gave up to get there and then remember that whatever I gave up was likely worth it and try to put it lower on the “important” list or remove it completely.
But most importantly, I’m going to give myself a pass, as we all should do. I will always wish that David wasn’t so hard on himself—easier said than done. But having walked in his shoes, I see how incredibly hard it is to see the forest from the trees. I see how easy it is to grip onto the things we should letting go, and letting go of the things we should be fighting tooth and nail to hold onto.
