On Grief

I used to be a planner. Short-term. Medium-term. Long-term. I measured my life by the goals that I set and the milestones of achieving them. However, loving an alcoholic has forced me to live life “one day at a time”….. and it’s hard!

I am writing this on one of my “down days” — one of those days where I feel lost in the fog of loneliness and feeling caught in the grips of a sudden sense of hopelessness — and I am inspired to write about grief.

Last night as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep, a wave of sadness hit me like a tsunami of emotions. It’d been ages since I felt the need to just sit and cry. I cried until my pillow was literally soaked in my tears. I usually make small talk with g-d before I fall asleep (I wouldn’t call this praying, just more like pillow talk with g-d)… but tonight I felt an anger emanating from the depths my soul as I demanded to know what I had done to deserve this. I called g-d a sadist for the fact that Dev is everything that I’ve ever asked for…  except for this one major life changing thing.

 

I understand that not everyone ascribes to a particular religious or spiritual tradition, but my faith as a Vaishnava Hindu has been a significant source of strength in this journey.

 

As a culture, we mainly associate grief with losses related to the death of a loved one. We develop intricate and elaborate rituals to recognize and honor grief and to assist those who mourn. However, these rituals only recognize and honor certain losses and has specific prescriptions as to whom is allowed to grieve. Stephanie Baffone, an expert of grief and loss, reflecting on her experience as a grieving aunt writes:

“As a society, we’ve developed a mythical pecking order of grief that is not inclusive and mistakenly dictates what types of losses warrant support and even more grossly sets erroneous time frames around how long support should be necessary if at all…”

The grief related to losses or mourners who fall outside these established boundaries of “legitimate grief” is known as “disenfranchised grief” — grief that we a are not allowed to recognize for losses that we are not allowed to mourn.

The death of a loved one is the most recognized source of grief, but grief can be related to any kind of loss in any part of a person’s life:

• Leaving home
• Loss of health
• Death of a pet
• Change of a job
• Moving to a new home
• Ending of a relationship
• Graduating from school
• Loss of physical ability
• Loss of financial stability

In addition to the grief related to the loss of things that was, there is also the grief related to the loss of possibilities.

Before last night, I’d never taken the time to recognize and let out the grief that I was bottling up related to the loss of what Dev and I could have been and the way that I thought my life was going to be. I’d spend so much time worried about the what-ifs that I’d never given thought to paying attention to how I felt about losing the “normalcy” that so many people can easily take for granted. My entire life would have to change as Dev’s #1 priority would always have to be his sobriety. There were habits and behaviors that I would have to change. There were certain expectations, hopes, and desires that I would have to give up. Recovery requires dedication and commitment to “living in the cure” and might sometimes entail things that don’t exactly fit in the American cultural mold of romance.

 

Before choosing to enter this world of addiction and recovery I never noticed how deeply embedded alcohol is in our society and how much of our socializing is done around alcohol.

 

I consider myself a very level headed and practical person (Yes, I am trying to work on my fiery West Indian temper) but in these moments I feel spiritually paralyzed and emotionally bankrupt. This. Is. Grief. I woke up this morning and still the tears would’t stop. I showered  and dressed myself for work, but still the tears wouldn’t stop. I stood dressed and ready to go but how could I walk out the front door? How could I face the world with a smile on the outside when I felt so miserable on the inside?

I called in sick to work and I sat on the sofa and just cried.

I didn’t know where all this was coming from. It was like the floodgates of my soul and been blown open. Until now, I’d been preoccupied with working through my own baggage, learning as much as I can about alcoholism, and  trying to compassionately understanding where Dev was that I’d bottled up unprocessed feelings from perhaps even the first moment that I learned he struggled with a drinking problem. I also have my own battles with depression, and I knew that  depression + overwhelming grief could be a deadly combination.

I felt stuck. All I could think about was the growing sense of pain that seemed to be eating me from the inside. Rather than fighting against it, I knew that I had to try and just ride the emotions from this moment to the next. I googled “finding hope in times of hopelessness” and reading the experience of others who had been where I was that very moment seemed to validate my grief and eased the feeling a bit of being absolutely alone in this.

It’s for the moments like these that having a strong support system is essential. Although the pain might your own, sometimes we need others to help us navigate through it. When you feel like screaming “I want to get off,” it’s important to have those around you that can and will remind you that you do have the strength to get through to the other side.

Everyone grieves in their own way and I have no tips or suggestions to offer — I am still in the process of learning and working through my own. All I can do is offer the words of comfort that Dr. Harvey gave me as I sat crying in his office (He’d offered to hang around after seeing his other patients for the day so that we could talk):

“It’s OK to cry and feel this way. It’s expected.When you love deep, you hurt deep. This is why so many people are afraid of love and to actually love on that deeper level. They are afraid of the pain. There are two sides to love, the emotional bliss we all desire and the emotional death we all fear. What we forget though is that pain can be a blessing. On the other side of pain is a greater appreciation of and ability to love.”

I don’t yet fully understand how a pain this great can be a blessing…. but I’m trying. And at this time, all I can do is try.