Grief is a Bitch

I didn’t expect it. It came out of nowhere. I mean here I was upset about something seemingly annoying so I was dealing with it in my own way. I do as I always do. I walk the beach, pause, connect to spirit/the Universe and ask for messages to help me with life. “Call your power back,” I heard. So I did. I stood on the beach alone, arms and palms open facing the water and I began to deeply inhale the “mist” of my power I envisioned surrounding the person I felt disempowered by back into my being. I can visualize it entering me.

Then I ask myself who else I gave my power away to recently and my ex popped into mind. I had paid him a genuine compliment a few days prior but he had to ruin the moment with a blaming tactic once again. Ugh. So I began again by visualizing the “mist” of my power on him. As I breathed myself back in, my annoyance of that interaction faded and I began to feel something else. Tears. I felt tears welling up in my eyes. “What the hell?” My power entering me was first of that conversation but then it took on a whole new energy and seemingly loss of power. It was the conversation we had the day before that. It was the one that he confirmed to me that he has a girlfriend.

Now I knew he had been seeing a girl for quite sometime but this was a new level. He was WITH her. They have a label. This isn’t just seeing someone or dating but it was a whole new realm. And while I am so happy that we have each moved on from our pained marital break-up and am truly happy for him if he is happy, I didn’t realize that I would be hit emotionally and completely blindsided by this. I do not want to get back with him. Our relationship is over and I’m eternally grateful we finally put it to rest but when the moment comes that you have feelings come up you didn’t know existed, well, you’re pissed off AND totally heartbroken.

First there was the thoughts and feelings of anger. “How the hell can he be in a commitment and I’m not?” Then there’s also the blame game, “How could he be in a solid relationship and fully accepted by another after all the shit he did to me and yet here I am, a loving, kind, caring, beautiful soul who doesn’t have that?” And of course, the self-pity party, “Why aren’t I enough to be in a committed relationship as I’ve been with my person longer than he has been with her?” I was playing a game of comparison that I never should have even been in. Comparison is like the devil in that you will never win and only get more and more angry. Plus, when you aren’t even in the same level of existence as another, there’s nothing to compare. That goes for each and every one of us here on the planet.

But then the truth really came out. It wasn’t the petty shit mentioned above why I was upset. It was grief. The overwhelming feeling of grief hit. I literally bent over in that moment and sobbed, hands to face, multiple streams of tears releasing from my eyes and barely able to breathe.

Pain. Horrible, excruciating pain. That’s what grief feels like to me.

But what was this grief? It’s not like I ever wanted to be with him again. I’m not jealous of another woman being with him. I’m not even envious that he is in this relationship, despite all the ridiculous initial thoughts that spun through my mind which was just my old, anxious attachment ‘neediness’ speaking. So seriously, what the fuck is this grief?

It’s another layer of burying the life that you once believed you would live with this person.

Sobbing. Uncontrollable, heart-wrenching, vomit-inducing, painful weeping. In other words, it’s like burying yourself alive or at least a part of you. That fairytale dreamer that blindly believed in magic at the beginning of the relationship or prior to it. It was that little girls dream to marry her true love, have that fairytale existence and be together forever until death. But that’s not what happened. And to be truthful, I never really looked at fairytales as horrible stories before but they really have some deep, dark, psychological shit happen in them which ultimately did come to fruition in my marriage and relationship. But what I had to grieve and put to final rest was that idea not the actual person. Unfortunately, our stories, visions and ideas we create for our lives usually end up being more alive within us than the reality of our existence.

So I let it flow and MAN, it was some deep and heavy grief.

You don’t quite realize how much your body holds on to things you’ve created in your life until you are faced with it. Had I tried to ignore it, it would have reappeared another day. I have found in this mega life change that it’s best to let whatever rise within a chance to feel it, process it and then allow it to release naturally. I don’t typically try to ignore or push down by using distractions or coping mechanisms to block it. In my line of work, I’ve seen too many do this only for those things to fester, build and explode in ways you would never want them to. I can’t medicate it. I can’t push it down. I welcome, with open, loving and compassionate arms to allow it to reveal itself to me so I can set it free.

How can I set it all free? I write. Scary? Absolutely but so necessary. The more I can be vulnerable to share, the more I give others permission to do the same. And this, well it wasn’t at all expected. On the surface I am elated for him and even for her because everyone, including the ones who have caused you pain in the past deserve happiness in their lives just as I do. This experience was all about me tapping into me. It’s in those creepy dark corners of our heart and psyche that something resides until it can be truly felt and let go of.

This was one of those moments. All of yesterday in fact was one of those moments. The constant triggers igniting that grief again and again. But today, it’s gone. Thank the Lord! Don’t know if I could continue that beast another day.

What I know is that when it comes up, whatever it may be and whether or not you can label or identify it, it doesn’t matter. Allow it to rise, hold space for it within you so you can feel whatever it is it wants you to feel and then naturally release it. It’s there for a reason and when you try to dissect it, it takes much longer.

Hold it with compassion and love. Then…say, “goodbye.”