the state of existing but not yet being developed or manifest; concealment.
As quickly as I am prone to charge through life, there are times when I get so far ahead of myself I don’t even realize I have outrun my own feelings.
Until they catch up.
Which, it turns out, they have. In a number of dimensions.
Grief is strange and dynamic and unpredictable. It arises from many sources and usually takes no heed of how well-prepared I may be to greet it. I have been processing a lot of it recently. More intentionally in most cases, but also in ways that I did not plan for.
I realized about a year ago, as a very important relationship was developing what felt like fatal cracks, that I had contributed to the untenable conditions in a number of ways that I needed to address if I ever wanted to have a healthy and mutually supportive partnership.
It wasn’t complicated, on reflection, to identify the source of the impulses that hampered my ability to be present and open-hearted and participate fully in intimate vulnerability. I had endured unhealthy and harmful relationship dynamics from earliest childhood. My strategy for most of my adult life had been to tell myself – firmly – that those things were in the past, and that I couldn’t allow them to interfere with my current need to function. I had simply decided it didn’t affect me anymore.
This was surprisingly effective in some ways. I didn’t dwell on the past, I didn’t believe that the handful of habits I still maintained as the direct result of specific trauma were problematic in any meaningful way. I could and did experience joy and deep connection with others. All healed up!
My most recent long-term relationship was three years behind me and I had spent a large portion of that time reflecting deeply on how I had ended up in it at all, let alone stayed in it so long. I was conscious of the lessons I drew from it and felt sure I would not repeat them in the future. Full of unwarranted confidence, I charged full speed into a romance that would profoundly change my life.
It was only in situ – in amongst the intoxicating process of falling and being in love – that I began to understand I was not as healed as I had believed.
As much as he represented an exemplar in the kind of person I most desired, he also demonstrated a capacity for love I had never been on the receiving end of. One that came with full grasp of who I was from skin to soul. He saw me, understood what he was encountering, and loved me completely in response. I was always giving that kind of love to others, but had never felt it for myself. It was both blissful and occasionally terrifying.
Despite this, we challenged each other in unintentional ways. The default reactions we each had to stress/distress were not only dissimilar, they were frequently in direct conflict. I wanted time and solitude to reflect on my feelings while he wanted to engage in a process together. I would ask for space, he would ask for connection. I would retreat and he would pursue. I felt overwhelmed, he felt abandoned.
It felt like no matter how much I loved him, and tried to demonstrate that in a meaningful way, I was constantly letting him down, hurting him, or failing to meet his needs.
There were other dynamics at play that I won’t discuss here, but these pressures and others resulted in me developing a belief that we were on a core level, deeply incompatible. I ended the relationship in something of a panic, not knowing how to conduct a measured or cooperative process of closure.
This was a source of deep regret for me. I did not love him any less, but I did not know how to communicate my feelings in a conscientious way that would penetrate for him. And, there was also a part of me that hoped some time apart and growth on both sides might create a different result for us.
In retrospect, it was very clear to me that despite all the thinking and processing I had done with regard to my last relationship, that there were still deep-seated issues I needed to address beyond the scope of a romantic partnership. I understood as I had never done before, how the choices I made consciously and my instinctive actions too, were being driven in large part by the ghosts of pain I had denied still haunted me. And, that the only way to change that would be to bring those specters into the light once and for all.
I was able to reconnect with a therapist I had previously had a very successful working relationship with. I identified my therapeutic goals as being expressly interested in exploring and healing my unresolved trauma. I did this with the explicit intent of improving my own relationship with myself, but also in hopes of understanding and learning to cope with the ways that trauma informed how I developed and maintained romantic pair bonds.
And so the work began. I learned to listen to the cues of my body – telling me I was in distress – before responding. I learned how my hyper-vigilance recognized patterns long before my conscious mind, and that my instincts, though usually correct, were incapable of detecting whether there was a genuine threat to my physical and emotional safety, or if I was simply uncomfortable for whatever reason.
I also learned that a profound need for safety was at the root of most of my maladaptive coping mechanisms. Understanding it had never been present in any of my relationships with adults when I was a child, I learned it only came from within. Most meaningfully here, I only experienced it when I was alone.
My stepfather was a dictatorial man with a skewed sense of what discipline truly meant. To him, it meant immediate unquestioning obedience enforced with both violence and isolation. Every moment in his presence was unpredictable and threatening. I was frequently confined to my room for weeks and months at a time, only allowed to come out for school, the bathroom, or at mealtimes. I was always grounded for the summer. He later admitted that when no punishable offense presented itself he made things up to justify confining me. He said he thought it was the best way to “keep me out of trouble.”
The safest – though still not actually safe place in my world was my room where I was alone.
I never meaningfully learned how to regulate my nervous system unless I was by myself. Eventually the presence of others began to feel clamorous and confusing. I began to prefer being on my own; undistracted by the noise of another voice, disappearing into the pages of books where all was quiet apart from my own thoughts.
And so, many years in the future, I began to recognize that my instinct for space – to isolate – wasn’t born of a healthy self-reliance (though it would absolutely appear that way to any observers) but as a trauma response. Being alone, even to the point of painful loneliness, felt safer and more familiar than asking for help and comfort or learning to create a safe space that included anyone else.
Most of the work I have undertaken in the intervening months has been around reminding myself – frequently and often at length – that I am safe That I have taken myself far away from the people and circumstances that were so dangerous for me. That I have curated the conditions of my life such that sudden violence is vanishingly rare. That I have surrounded myself with people who care for me and who only contribute to my well-being and happiness.
When I am nervous and anxious, I remind me I am safe. When I am frightened and unsure, I remind me I am safe. When I experience a sense of overwhelm in a setting where I am surrounded by unfamiliar people and feel the urge to flee, I remind me I am safe.
All of this preparation was brought to bear when my mother died unexpectedly last June. I was more prepared to deal with the deeply conflicting feelings I had toward our relationship. I was more able to sit with my vulnerability and recognize how long I had already been grieving her. Being able to identify myself as safe allowed me to acknowledge deep harms that had been done to me at her hands and bring them into conversation with the healing I was directing toward other wounds.
It does keep sneaking up on me, at various moments. It surprises me anew each time, though it likely shouldn’t. I know intellectually the course of grief is unpredictable and ineffable. I also know that temporally, it hasn’t been that long since she died. Added to which there has been a lot of other upheaval in my life during the time since her passing. None of it is unusual, all of it is strange.
But it is not only that grief that washes over me and away at varying moments. It is heartbreak in retrospect. It is the dawning understanding that my incomplete healing was largely to blame for the end of a connection that felt like soulmates. It is disappointment that I didn’t have the capacity to nurture strategies of integration and repair I now possess, rather than submitting to the urgent need to flee my immediate – though significant – discomfort.
I do believe things happen for a reason. I also know the relationship itself was the primary catalyst toward the self-reflection and healing I am now giving so much effort and attention. The more of it I do, the more I realize I was living my life only partly aware of it. As I return to full consciousness, I am coming awake to all the ways I had closed off avenues of both pain and joy. I am reclaiming parts of myself I abandoned long since in an effort to make my life “work” better.
And so I am embracing my grief as proof of deep and profound love. Processing my anguish through the practice of presence and kind attention to my heart as it opens. That it took so long for it to fully manifest may allow me to do so with a greater degree of objectivity. It is still a gift to my future self to feel this fully, no matter how long it takes.
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