I'm feeling the effects of being disconnected, without a community or an emotional home. This shit always seems to come up for the loners. It's a double-edged sword. I cherish alone time. Time to think, feel, write, and sort things out. It's second nature for me to be alone... or is it first nature? I don't know. I just know that I like much when I like it. And then there are times when I feel the effects of not being connected.
I probably could've chosen to stay more closely connected to my family of origin, but I couldn't wait to leave home, geographically and emotionally. My mother's needs burdened me and I had to get away. I had to know what life was like without her. I wanted to get away from the place where I lived because it had no life. At least, not for me. I wanted to leave for many reasons. Most youngsters leave the nest to go to college and experience the world, then come back... I used to go back... until mom passed away. She was my bridge to others. She was my bridge to everything there... She was the link to everyone. I fit because of her and since she's been gone, I've tried to tether myself to something.
When I was a little, younger version of myself, I needed down time. Like clockwork, actually seasonally, I became overwhelmed with everything. I hated the change in seasons. I hated too many depends and too many responsibilities. Any illness I felt was directed correlated to needing emotional care, and I needed a lot of it. That was the effect of a steady diet of trauma and uncertainty. And when I needed require or time to patch myself back together, the tip off was usually illness. Each season has its way of letting me know that it's times for repair. I've not had that feeling of needing repair in some years. But this winter has been relentless. It's been long and intense... many days of cold. And meteorological Spring arrived... on paper, but we still had snow. We just had snow on Sunday and today is Thursday. It has felt a little more like Spring over the past few days since Sunday.
For the past few weeks, maybe months, I've been feeling like I needed to grieve the loss of something. Just a bit of sadness. I remembered that this was the season, the month (March) that my stepfather and biological father died. It's been 17 and 18 years. You'd think that they would no longer affect someone, right? But that's not the case. Does one ever really get used to and unaffected by the absence of a father or mother? They created you and sustained your life on the planet through adulthood. And when they are no longer caring for us physically or financially, their emotional support continues throughout adulthood. And to not have that creates a void. I've grown accustomed to it but still the void is apparent. It requires one to be creative, at best. At worst, I feel un-anchored and untethered. There are no substitutes for our parents. No one else has there smell. No one else sounds like them. But there are others to love us.
My mother always found a way to be there when we needed her. When I had days like I've had over the past few weeks, she was there to patch me up. Just to be near her or to hear her voice when I was no longer geographically close, it made a difference. I could call her on the telephone. She was always there to pick up. She always answered the phone. I used to call her everyday while driving home from work. Lately, driving home has been rough for many reasons. And now it feels like no one is there. It's not true. There are others there, but they aren't momma.
I've always said and believed that all losses connect one to the other. I remember losing a ring after a breakup with a young man that I loved very much. I cried like a baby in the rain after losing that ring. I realized that I wasn't crying only because of the ring. Losing the ring was the on the surface... I was really crying about losing him.
We don't give ourselves a lot of time to grieve loss. We barely give ourselves permission to do it at all. And the losses keep stacking up one after the other. They just keep getting stuffed and tucked down. Until one day it says, "You can't push me down any further. You must acknowledge me. You will acknowledge me. HERE I AM!!" And this is what has happened to me. My grief wants to talk to me, and she's forcing me to listen. And I have to talk. I have to give voice to it because the energy needs to flow. It needs to move out of me. I talk. I move the energy when I write.
