Grieved

August 29, 2018

She sits across from me on the antique love seat, a faded teal cushion over a darkly stained wooden frame. My eyes are tracing the creased lines of fabric in the obviously well-loved piece as I try to comprehend what she's saying. I almost can't accept her words. She says it so nonchalantly. She's sitting with her feet up on the couch, legs crossed, shoes left neatly side-by-side on the floor. She leans back and tilts her head slightly to the right. She's said it so simply and calmly. Like it's a truth deep inside my soul that she's only confirming, but it's a truth that my mind will not allow myself to know. She says it again.

"You don't need to cope, Madison, you need to grieve."

Grieve.

I need to grieve. To grieve me. To grieve the life I thought I'd get to live.

I came to counseling because I was desperate and afraid. It has been a few months that I’ve been eating well, exercising, sleeping seven to nine hours a night, drinking enough water, calling my parents, hanging out with friends, going to work, journaling, going to church, and nothing can keep the panic attacks at bay. I thought coping would be enough. But now she’s telling me that there are some things we cannot solve by coping.

But I've already grieved. I grieved four years ago when this started. I don't want to keep grieving because the funny thing about grief and illness is that I'm grieving a future and a life I only thought could be mine but never would be. Born with a malformation that would dictate my abilities, born without an enzyme that would shape my options, born with the genetics that wove these illnesses into every layer of my being, I never once had the option of a future I dreamed for myself. Can you imagine? While I was a child, at the very moment I was dreaming of the life I wanted, my body was growing against me. As a teenager, working for the future I hoped to build, my body was abandoning me. As an adult, with the autonomy and means to go anywhere and do anything, my body is truly the one in control. From the very beginning, my hopes, dreams, and aspirations went one way and my body went the other, never to be reconciled.

And I did grieve. The very moment my foot hit the ground outside of the neurosurgeon's office that Thursday morning, I turned to my mother, collapsed in her arms, and sobbed. I sobbed and I sobbed and I sobbed because I didn't know how to put into words the fear of grieving the life I had wanted and worked toward. My mother held me, standing on that pavement until the profound grief had worked itself into every pore of my body and I had sobbed myself speechless.

I cried again when they told me about the tumor. I looked at my doctor and asked if my lifestyle choices led to this. He stopped taking notes, looked at me, and said, "you didn't do anything to cause this." Despite the differences in causes, genetics or happenstance, there is still heartbreak. Heartbreak that ripples throughout your body and your life. How do I live when I must always grieve where I’ve been or where I am going?

Over time, I started to work through the implications of my surgery and illnesses. The fear behind all of the sobs that I could not communicate at the time, much less understand. I started grieving the concrete implications like ability and physical limitations, as well as the abstract, such as death of dreams and the lost relationships.

And I worked toward acceptance. With professional help, I worked toward acceptance. I started to look to the heart behind the future hopes and dreams. What was the motivation to the desire behind constructing my life and how could that still be made manifest within the very real boundaries my body set for me? And it worked. I thought it worked.

But here I am again.

Grieving.

Yet again.

I can't grieve. I can't open this part of my heart I'm damming up so very tightly. Her words threaten to break lose what I thought I had managed to contain, that which I can now feel starting to shatter inside of me and I fight, I fight so very hard to keep it all in place but I can't. I can't give weight to this claim and yet I have no control. I'm losing. It's slipping. The dam is breaking and as I rush to stop the leak with my hands and look up to see the vastness the dam was holding back, I see how wholly inadequate my effort to contain the body of emotion truly is, and I finally realize I'm afraid.

I fear the parts of myself that I'll see if I allow myself to grieve.

I fear I won't come out the other side of grief.

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