It’s been 4 years, 10 months and 3 days since John left. My world imploded and exploded simultaneously. I measure the time now by season changes, years and privately important dates. No longer months, weeks, days, hours and minutes. There was a time when I did not think that was possible. There was only before John died, and after.
In that time I have been broken, devastated, despairing, anguished, shameful, guilt ridden, heart and soul broken. With each piece of time passing I’ve really struggled to understand exactly what and where I am in this remarkable and thoroughly cruddy journey. No one should have to travel this path, but in truth there are far too many souls that have no choice.
In a moment of reflection today, I realized that ultimately what I have been, for the most part, is lost. I lost my love and truest of friends, I lost a family, a future, a past, a normal, a reality and a present. I lost my innocence, I lost my naivety, I lost my ability to be carefree. I lost my real smile, I lost my mind, I lost my life, in short – I lost myself.
I am a survivor of the consequence of suicide and so are you. I have come through this despite myself and a mostly unfair world around me. I did not come through it unscathed. I did not come through it without issues and baggage; I did not come through this as the same person I remember. I did however, get to this point. I’m aware that I’m not fixed. I am a work in progress. I’m aware that there are twists and turns still to be revealed. Most importantly, I have found that in being lost, I have been finding my way all along. I just didn’t know it.
Up until today – well about 2 hours ago, I was so quietly desperate to have a way out, I forgot I was finding my way out. I’ve been impatiently and harshly demanding answers from myself and the mostly invisible universe, for a way that ironically would not have been my own. So this I think is a path that we ignore or just don’t see within our grief and loss.
In loving, we became someone else mostly without realizing it, so without them, without the life and beliefs we knew – we spin and flounder. We lose ourselves completely. We are so focused on our loss of them and how we are to blame for it and how we wished we had known and done more, that we missed a big point. We also lost who we were, not just who we became with them. We evolved from our solitary selves into ourselves with others and now we are evolving again. It takes time, effort and will to evolve – things we feel are often in short supply.
If John were here now, he would say “Babe, so that probably wasn’t the best decision in hindsight and no, I had no idea that my decision would have such an enormous consequence for you, my family, and friends I didn’t even know I had. I can’t change it, sometimes I truly wish I could, but I can’t. I was lost. I didn’t know how to find my way out because I don’t think I really realized how lost I felt.”
I would offer, “My angel, we all get lost, we all get overwhelmed, we are all disillusioned that our dreams and hopes didn’t materialize as we had imagined, but we get there. Not always easily and not without struggle and pain of so many kinds but we get there. Step by step, knock by knock, moments of pure joy, moments of realizations, moments of different kinds of love and experience. Life is just a series of moments, they constantly change, they evolve, they retreat, they endear, and they destruct but they keep going regardless.”
John would reply, “Don’t waste more moments than you need to, in traveling this new path you did not choose, because my path is not yours. I will never leave you because you keep me with you. You have to be lost to find your way.” He had many moments of brilliance!
I share this with the new and old, the practiced and the novice. It’s okay to be lost. You are going from point A to point B, with only a partial map filled in by others and your own experience. No one can control or imagine what happens in getting to point B. You just have to keep that as the end point and keep following the route as it appears.
I think the entire point of life is to evolve and adapt to what’s in front of you – we do this with experience and learning. None of us have a life handbook – well if any of you do, please drop me a copy. I have found a lot of joy in far simpler things. I laugh. I cry with happiness. I cry with sadness. I feel. I hope. I dream. I have found a lot of peace in my heart and mind and I have found that I am strong enough to face myself and that is good enough.
I may not have found my purpose–may not have found all the solutions I am looking for–but because I now know I have been lost in this new “me”, in this new reality, that I am finding the way. We all find a way. It’s one dream to the next, one personal realization to another, one step, one day, one 10 minutes – it’s a string of small steps.
Take faith in knowing that we can and do survive ourselves and this arduous journey. At times we do it alone, at times we do it with those we love, with strangers, and with those we thought forgotten or lost to us.
Patience, time, reflection, objectivity, a little self-kindness, stamina, endurance and faith in our capability – these are the tools and skills we have to develop. We can only get those through experience.
May joy and peace find you in every dark corner fold or wrinkle, stitch your wounds and ease your pain. May these experiences make you invincible!
