Let the Mourning Period Begin

November 3, 2019

I’m not going to kill myself. I deserve better than that. And you can call this isolating, you’d probably be right. But here’s the thing. This is not something you can understand. This is more personal than anything I’ve ever felt before.

Beautiful things exist. They live. They were born and then they live. Sometimes for just a few short moments. Sometimes for what seems like an eternity. Regardless, they were there when they were there. And sometimes when they die, whether it is almost immediately or after a forever, it feels tragic. It feels like a tragedy that will never stop being a tragedy, that will never stop hurting like the greatest hurt that was ever felt. 

The beautiful thing that was my second marriage really was probably only beautiful within the first few months of us meeting. But I tried to hold onto that beauty for eight years and even longer after I left him. The heart’s will to hold on to a beauty, even after it’s long dead, is astonishing. The heart, both in body and in spirit, will persist in this effort “into the gates of insanity or even death”.

Some cultures have practices wherein they allot a certain time to grieve the loss of something beautiful. They may even have a thing, a group of things, an action or a coordinated display of things or actions, to stand in as the undefinable insurmountable reaction-experience of this beauty being dead. And it often will also involve a profound respect and recognition and honor, a genuine remembrance for the hugeness of everything that dead thing was and is. All the special moments and ridiculous moments and the hard work that went into its life. And this practice might involve dutifully carrying out this ritual in order to then move on and live the rest of life as it needs to be lived. This is very wise.

All these things that I’ve done or haven’t done, in response to my marriage dying….and these people that say they love me because they’ll be there no matter what but then can’t be because they’re human and finite and have their own finite lives to live – their fear when they’ve witnessed these responses of mine. All these things that have somehow supposed to have been representative of my pain my grief my anguish. Let them melt away in their imperfection and let these people that say they love me worry if they need to. I am in mourning.

This too is between me and God.