Hey friends. Today is Thursday in case any of you were wondering. I know days seem irrelevant in the current state of the world, but I am here to remind of arbitrary things like the day of the week and how we are already in the middle of July… somehow. My past week has been a week of grief, strength, and, if I’m being honest, pure angst.
I have been on this up and down rollercoaster of emotions which honestly reminds me of being a teenager. If I had to venture a guess, I would assume this is where the angst is coming from. It’s wild to me that even as a 29 year old I can be transported back to my 16 year old responses so easily. However, I am still 29, so the rollercoaster just ends up giving me acid reflux and neck pain. I’m easing into turning 30 quite swimmingly.
Grief is a funny thing. Not a like LOL hilarious funny thing, but like a this is oddly familiar, yet totally foreign funny thing. Whenever someone I love dies, I am flooded with memories of all the other losses I have experienced in my life. My first experience with death was as a kid. We had barn cats that would always think it was okay to cross the highway and very rarely did they make it. Although, my pet cat Eric (named after Eric Matthews/the boy I happened to have a crush on in 3rd grade with the same name) really did have 9 lives. He was one of our only cats that got hit by a car and ended up surviving. My little miracle kitty. Then, the first human loss I experienced was in high school. It was an odd thing to feel suicidal while also mourning the loss of a teenage life. I think I stuck around in the ‘bargaining’ stage of grief much longer during that period of my life. “Take me instead. Her life was better than mine. Why wasn’t it me?” I remember thinking nothing can feel as painful as this loss, but I was wrong. Each loss cuts through me, without warning, and I lose my own breath when someone else loses theirs. What I have learned from each loss is how grief is not a straight line of moving on, rather it is a scar that we will always live with and while the mark may dim it will always remain.
For a long time I hated my body. (I promise this connects, just hear me out.) For a long, long time I hated my body. I would curse the way it looked and prayed that some how it could change. In the last few years I have worked really hard to not only be comfortable with my body, but to love it. Each mark and dimple no longer gets harsh words tossed at them, but rather each part of myself has felt a gentle touch and words of love. Part of the past hatred included my scars- both the physical and psychological one. (See I told you it would connect again.) In my discovery of self love I have also learned how to heal in the other parts of life. Those scars, those losses, no matter how painful are the result of deep and vast love. I no longer sit around in the bargaining phase, instead I think about all of the ways that life impacted me. I use a gentle touch and words of love to work through grief.
When I first started blogging, I didn’t expect to ever right about loss or depression or mental health or a number of other topics I have touched on. In the beginning it was about me documenting my weight loss journey. I’m pretty sure I am 10lbs heavier than when I first started blogging, so jokes on all of you. The thing is, I didn’t realize that writing would actually help me overcome this desire to change everything about me. I didn’t realize that all this healing, this whole time, was actually a way for me to understand the way I move through the world.
I celebrated my one year anniversary of blogging [with more fervor and tenacity] recently and I spent some time reading through old post. I got to read real moments of self-discovery that I can remember viscerally. I am lucky enough to be able to go back in time and feel parts of myself that I might have otherwise forgotten. Through this reading, as I was mourning, I realized all the tools I have in my toolbox to get through hardships. All the ways I have built a community around myself to fall upon when I am struggling. I will go through a million more hard moments in my life, but I finally realize that I will make it through all of them.
With a loss there is a moment where we look upon the persons life and wonder if they were happy? If they did all the things they wanted to do? The thing I have realized about these questions is that we are partially asking them because we want to be happy; we want to do all the things we want to do. So, as I continue to move forward with this new scar I am being gentle with myself, I am using my tools, I am leaning on my supports, and I am reflecting on all the ways death brings new life.
A[wo]men
physical, mental, imaginary.
round, square, heart.
scars come in many shapes.
love them all
as they are u
-seeing all of urself
Sarah Lorraine Robinson 