Permission

I went to the counselor today. Its always kind of astonishing to me how much crap pours out of me in that room, how much stuff is there boiling and churning right under the relatively placid surface. Its not that I don’t know there is pain and rage and denial and confusion all swirling inside of me I’m just amazed by how much is in here and by the forms it takes. Call me feminine but there is so much I just can’t figure out until it comes out of my mouth, or occasionally, off of my fingertips.

Just saying things outloud has a healing affect, like purging something rancid from my soul. But instead of being able to avoid the spoiled food and, therefore, its harmful effects my soul makes it, churning it out by the gallon. The need to vomit never ends.  

Today, while the ridding myself of poison was important and healing the thing that had the most profound impact was something that came in my ears, not out my mouth.

I told my counselor how isolated I feel, how crippled and paralytic, how every single every day activity is excruciating and how I feel like the world just spins and I can’t seem to get on. I don’t even want to. How I want so much to be able to do things and feel something other than blinding pain and remember my beautiful amazing son without collapsing to the floor. How there is no moment or area of my life that is even remotely similar to my life before Damon died. There is no place where the memory of him does not dance across my eyes. How I still have anxiety attacks and fits of uncontrollable rage and I watch everyone around me plan trips and get togethers and life. I am an outsider. I am utterly isolated.

She told me that she would be surprised and even a little suspicious if I had moved beyond these feelings. She said that she would be surprised if I moved to a season of ‘acceptance’ in the first year at all.

You might think that this would be discouraging or devastating news. Maybe tomorrow it will be but today it is such a relief. I guess I felt like I was supposed to be ‘getting’ somewhere I wasn’t ‘getting’ to. ‘When will you feel better?’ ‘When will you be normal?’ ‘When will you do….?’ Not now, not for a long long time from now.

I feel like I was given permission to grieve.