"An Exact Replica Of A Figment Of My Imagination"

Maybe I shouldn't be reading this book right now.

Maybe it is "courting" sadness.

Maybe I should be slapping a smile on my face and focusing on the positive.

But that is what I have done my whole life - package away grief and be a "good girl" and not make others uncomfortable.

Suck it up and solider on.

So I am reading it.

And I am BAWLING (ugly faced, mascara running bawling).

And I am laughing.

At things like the "dwarves of grief" which I excerpted here.

It is a woundingly lovely memoir of grief and loss.

It is like an anthem to grief.

A tribute to loss.

I am filled with love for this sweet woman who lost her full term son, Pudding and her willingness to bring us in to her heart and world and share him and her grief with us. It is so intimate... so generous. I love her honesty and I love HER for laying herself bare. I cannot BELIEVE she GOES there. That she remembers this (hasn't blocked it out, is willing to expose it) and will recreate it on the page. Then the fact that she can do it so deftly and lyrically and doesn't use language to distance and protect but to invite and draw in. I am in awe of her writing and her spirit. It is humbling because I am so aware of how out of my grasp this feels - for so many reasons.

But can I just say that if you have ever LOST someone or grieved or suffered, her story (Elizabeth's and Edward's story) will resonate with you. It is so HONORING and tender toward loss and suffering.

I will leave you with one small excerpt from page 132:

"Of course you can't out-travel sadness. You will find it has smuggled itself along in your suitcase. It coats the camera lens, it flavors the local cuisine. In that different sunlight, it stands out, awkward, yours, honking in the brash vowels of your native tongue in otherwise quiet restaurants. You may even feel proud of its stubbornness as it follows you up the bell towers and monuments, as it pants in your ear while you take in the view. I travel not to get away from my troubles but to see how they look in front of famous buildings or on deserted beaches. I take them for walks. Sometimes I get them drunk. Back at home, we generally understand each other better."

I am not trying to make too much of my sadness or to compare it to hers - or yours - but I AM grief stricken over Mr. M's relapse. I feel like 23 years of grief and loss that I have been stuffing are throbbingly present right now, welling up and overflowing after YEARS of being denied. I am facing the LOSS that has accompanied Mr. M's repeated binges and disappearances and thefts and absences and job losses and abandonments (of me and the kids), not to mention the terror of if he would live and how I would be able to provide all by myself. This time as I stop denying and honestly look at my loss and pain, I have come face to face with the fact that I don't know if I have it in me to do this again. I am heartbroken and tired and grief-stricken. I might end up having to get a divorce. This will be a death of sorts - the death of a marriage and of a dream and of the future I THOUGHT I would have. (I KNOW I will have a wonderful future with new dreams, but this one will have died.) If I don't get a divorce, I have to face the fact that in 5 or 10 years (or in 10 minutes), it is highly likely Mr. M will relapse again and I will be blogging these EXACT same thoughts and shock and betrayal and abandonment all over again. Only this time, I will be 47 or 52.

I feel GUILTY and "BAD" writing this because I feel like in Recovery you are "supposed to" think positive and practice acceptance. But although it may not SOUND like it, this grief I am allowing myself to feel IS acceptance. I am accepting myself - warts and all. I am accepting the reality of my past 23 years. I am accepting that if I stay with Mr. M, my future will likely (not certainly) include relapse. And as sad as it feels, it feels kind of good - as I have mentioned - honest.

I am afraid if I am morbid and sappy and negative, YOU might not like me. But then I think SHEESH!!!!!!!! What is the freaking POINT of this blog if I have to be a people pleaser here too?!?!?! For goodness sake, this is my blog and no one has to read it if they don't like the way my mind works or don't like me. I do MORE than enough people pleasing and tap dancing in my off-line life to last a few lifetimes. So HERE... here on my blog, I will run the risk of not being YOUR definition of 'healthy' or wise or loving or accepting or positive or "in recovery" or "Christian" or whatever.

This is MY issue, no one else's... but I started realizing I wanted to edit what I wrote to be more uplifting and inspirational, humorous and insightful - whatever. Then I thought "THAT is not true" to where I am right now. It is not true to me and therefore it is unkind to me. So if someone were to visit and read my blog and not like it or me then I need to LEARN to tolerate my discomfort with that. If that is you, it is OK. You are allowed to not like me or my writing or my emotional place. I am not super emotionally ok with that. But I am not OK with Mr. M's drinking... and JUST like with his drinking, I am POWERLESS over you & your opinions and my life is unmanageable when I fret about it and try to control and manage your opinion of me. So I will ask God to grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change (you visiting or not visiting my blog, liking or disliking my blog, liking or disliking ME), the courage to change the things I can (Me and only me) and the WISDOM to know the difference.