There are academics out there who study grief their whole careers. Volumes are dedicated to theories of surviving grief, the psychology of grief, the anatomy of grief, the philosophy of grief...it's an omnipresent emotion that we all experience at one point or another.
I haven't actually read any of these books. I have a wealth of personal knowledge and experience with grief; I feel it's enough to qualify me on some level to speak about it. What I want to address today is how grief, though it is controlled and tamed with time and effort, lingers in your brain and body to cause long term effects that can last our whole lives.
At least it has for me. It's been touched on in the comments section of The Grieving Room from time to time, and I see enough commonalities that I thought might make an interesting diary.
A special welcome to anyone who is new to The Grieving Room. We meet every Monday evening. Whether your loss is recent or many years ago, whether you have lost a person or a pet, or even if the person you are "mourning" is still alive ("pre-grief" can be a very lonely and confusing time) you can come to this diary and process your grieving in whatever way works for you. Share whatever you need to share. We can't solve each other's problems, but we can be a sounding board and a place of connection.
I would break down the long term effects of grief on my own personality into two categories. The first could be described as an effect on the way I choose friends, or how my grief has chosen friends for me. The second category is strange habits I've developed over the years that I feel are a direct result of grief I've suffered and survived.
In thinking about the first category, one line from a song runs through my mind as I type these words and ponder what grief has done to me. I'm sure most of us know it:
Hello, Darkness, my old friend...
I meet people all the time. I've developed the ability, as most of us do as we gain age and wisdom, to judge fairly quickly whether or not this person I've just met is someone with whom I might develop a friendship. Then there are those with whom I feel a deep kinship almost immediately. Invariably, I find out that these people I connect with quickly have shared a loss of some kind. It's not always a death; it might be a traumatic childhood. It might be mental illness in the family. They tend to have a deep peace about them, and take the knocks of life with a sense of humor and a lot of perspective.
Take, for instance, Louise. I love Louise; we bonded at work right away, and have had a long friendship. Several years after meeting her she confided in me that she had been sexually abused by her brother when she was a child. The funny thing was that it wasn't some sobbing, earth-shattering confession. She was explaining to me why there were certain things that she didn't like to do for her husband in the bedroom. She was kind of laughing when she told me, but watching me carefully for my reaction. I said, "Oh, Louise. Well, you now receive a free pass for all eternity from doing that particular thing. I hope Donald understands." She assured me that he was very understanding, and seeing that I didn't freak out at her confession put her at ease. I told her about my mother's suicide and we shared a small game of "Who's had the most trauma in life". (She won) Our suffering bonded us together in a deep, sustained way, but it's not the central focus of our friendship. Far from it. But it's there, and it's sticky stuff, as far as relationships go.
Louise isn't the only one. There was Genevra, who I adored the moment I met her. I could tell right off that there was something in her background that, though she was only twenty-one, and I was in my late thirties, made this woman far older than her years. Come to find out she had a sister with a severe disability, and parents who couldn't quite cope. Genevra acted as the third parent in that family from a very young age. She never blamed her parents or her sister; she had one of those very big souls that could absorb the hits.
I can now get down to brass tacks when I meet new people. There was the friend of a friend who told me about her father's suicide within ten minutes of meeting her. I didn't take it as an over sharing. In fact, my comment was that we needed to develop a secret handshake for easy identification. She winked at me, and we laughed. Instant, intimate connection.
I meet these people (they're usually women, is that strange? Perhaps men deal with grief differently. Another diary for another Monday...) and I recognize the Darkness in them. It's like an old friend who's always with me.
My old friend Darkness brings me friends, but He also makes me do some strange stuff. Stuff that not even my dear husband knows about, because I suspect he would think I'm a lunatic. I can tell Louise and Genevra about these things, and they understand, but my dear husband isn't old friends with Darkness, so I don't tell him.
I cry in the car. I sob uncontrollably in the car, when I'm alone. Usually the radio is on, and a song comes on, but not necessarily a sad song. The song "Squeezebox" by The Who makes me sob. Tell me that's not weird. Whenever Roger Daultry says,
Squeeze me, come on and squeeze me, come on and squeeze me like you do, I'm so in love with you...
I just bawl. I suppose it prevents me from sobbing at other, more inappropriate times, so I just go with it. There's a whole list of random songs that make me cry in the car.
I also fantasize about my family's death. It sounds completely bizarre, but I find it soothing. I feel like I'm practicing, because another thing Darkness makes me do is worry obsessively that my husband is going to die young. So I rehearse. This is what I would say, this is what I would do. That way if he does die prematurely, I'm ready. I won't be caught off guard. There's nothing I can't handle, as long as I'm prepared. It started with my brother, who inherited my mother's penchant for depression, but then I branched out to my husband, and as we had children I added them, too. I hate the days I do my children; they are brutal. If there's one thing I've learned in this life, it's that anything can happen, and sometimes the anything is awful, and unfair, and can involve children. So I practice my grief. I hope and pray that I'll never have a reason to need that practice, but I practice anyway, just in case.
Outwardly I appear normal. I'm a happy, effective participant in life. Most of us who have suffered heavy losses in life are, but there's that layer just under the skin that is darker than other people, people who have had easier lives. I can see through skin, though. I've developed some kind of x-ray vision that detects grief and suffering. I'm like a super-hero of emotion, able to leap over great suffering in a single bound, fly through the smaller losses of life with the greatest of ease, able to see through the thin layer of skin to the person beneath.
There are a lot of us out there, but like true super-heroes, the hapless general public doesn't even know we exist.
Here is a link to previous Grieving Room diaries