Back Into My Body
Grief is after Odd miracles
Silence is an odd miracle.
That's something I have been telling myself for months now. An odd miracle that leaves me wanting for more, even when I stack my bones at the wake of my grief. As odd as it is, it is also torture. In my quest for peace, I found music in silence. Found God. Found grace. I found myself. I found love. And I found death too. I knew how to stack my bones back into my body through every pain until I became whole.
Despite being a miracle, silence has been torture these previous months.
Recently, I feel bland in my own body but healing isn't pretty. It can be crying in your room at 3am, wondering where in your life went wrong. It can be panic attacks jolting you from the darkness of your own dreams, bombarded with questions you already have the answers to. Healing is watching you weave love around yourself with the empty presence of someone you once cut out a piece of yourself to. Very expensive but love can be expensive. Or what I thought was love which was now recognized as fear.
December last year, a friend wrote a letter to me, sweet words that wrapped themselves in a past tale. I won't forget this; ‘i have watched you bring yourself out from total darkness.’ I had tears biting the side of my eyes. D, has witness darkness swallow me whole and yet how I managed to bring myself out of it is still a mystery to me. It proves one thing, life is feeble. As feeble as it is, there are witnesses to your story. Sometimes, it is easy for my body to bend to a formed memory and yet, I won't still be able to tell the details of it.
It is the eyes outside your body that tells tales of how long you were out there in the sun, burning.
A few months ago, I held the hands of the woman I called mom. I watched her sharp mind crawl into the quiet of her dying body. Watching her breath heap in itself, struggling to sleep and eat. It was the first sign of the usual silence that had filled me. There are some kinds of silences you slip into, words become a foreign language. For some months, silence became prayers. Tears replaced feelings, sighs fed my hunger until I was out of empty air. I craved her smile, I wanted it so bad. We all did as we watched her body melt into her bones. I watched how words disappeared into screams of tiredness. ‘Maybe healing would come.’ I said. ‘God cannot abandon her now.’ I said.
Through the grieving silence, I heard my father's dragged steps, shoulders burdened by one more grief. ‘Pray for her.’ he said. How do I cold wax this silent scream in God's ear? Where do I begin to forged the words of pleas because my body isn't strong enough for just one grief. Would he listen? Her last breath was a quiet sigh, after a long night of waking her just to hear her voice. Who knew that that scream was the last I will hear from her? Who knew that her towering presence which had set me on my toes since I was a child would become so empty. That the ease I had into her nature would weave into quiet memories written on my body. This broken body. This same body that had refused to function since another kind of loss hit.
The month of March has become a graveyard to sit with quietly. To mutter a prayer for the dead who isn't truly gone. To blow a candle. To gather ash and smoke. Memories and pain. There are tears still beaded in its chains and some memories locked in a tiny corner somewhere in my mind.
There is one thing I know, Grief hurts the most on the grounds where loved once bloomed.
After the celebration of a new year, I saw death again. I watched the lights go off, in that darkness I had to hand pick images morphed into wildness because that's all I have left. I counted my steps in darkness and I have been scribbling her words as mantras to help carry my feet into the life meant for me.
When the death of a loved one happens, we talk about the process that took them away. The past of how they have lived but no one talks about after death. When all is said and done, what next? That silence filling every corner of the room, is what I call after grief. How do you storm back into the person you used to be in grief? What happens when no one you know is coming frequently to fill the void with the noise of kind words? What happens when all you hear is the echoes of what was lost shadowing you throughout? Does it last for the rest of your life? Or for a while. Is ‘We cannot question God.’ enough strength for the soul of a grieving heart?
For someone who has experienced life pauses, waiting seasons, small deaths and even the life of someone breathing out of their bones, I can say this boldly; Time Heals Nothing.
The grief is just the same. The good thing; you are not.
I am not.
I can say that my journey back into my body was filled with a loss. One I never wanted and expected. The other that I had predicted. I am learning to not be consumed by too much silence. Yes, it is an odd miracle; a massive space to build yourself back up. But trust me, you stay too long and you will be eaten alive. Now, I know Grief by its name. Its nature. I can bring the words out even while I still stare at some of my shallow pieces. I can boldly use the silences with grief words and turn the wheel of healing to accommodate all or most of me.
This is the first process after a long journey of coming back into my body. I am starting a new journey and it would not begin if the previous chapter doesn't close.
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Things I am Enjoying At The Moment.
Well, I know it's been a long time since I have been here. You don't how happy I am writing this after months of being patient with myself. I needed to write this, it's one of the locked windows blocking a lot of my creative wildness. As I begin a new journey in the life I am weaving myself into, I might be more comfortable confronting all my thoughts.
I have been reading a lot. I love literary fiction; it would always be my first love. But after that is Dark Romance. It is the only sub genre of Romance I can stomach. That's because I had a better understanding of the genre and my work demands me to know more of it. I'm currently reading ‘King Of Pride.’ by Ana Huang. It is the book two of The King Of Sin Series. I love reading about realistic relationships that stems through various identities.
Spanish Songs! Beats the sadness out of your bones. No it has nothing to do with the fact that I understand the language.
Recommending anything by Andrea Vanzo. If you are a full-time writer like me, you'd thank me later.
I am leaning towards God after a messy breakup. Seeing why holding on to control can be disastrous especially when you know something isn't good for you...
Observations and stories of everyday people. As an introvert, people can be tiring but they are extremely interesting… My language For silence comes very handy here.
That's all for now. Maybe next time, I’d tell you about this new journey of mine.
Until next time.
This is so nude! Grief changed everything for me. I grieved so deeply that I lost my "sight", but somehow, in that darkness, I began to see differently. Grief has a way of stripping us down and forcing us to rebuild, slowly, quietly. I’m learning that healing doesn’t mean forgetting or being the same again. It means accepting a new version of life, of self. That self that still carries love and memory, but now also carries resilience and hope. Thank you for sharing this post. It speaks to a journey I know too well
As someone who has only know grief for 26 months now, this was an absolutely honest read, and a gentle nudge, because sometimes when you meet grief, it convinces you that only you know it, and with that comes a certain loneliness, but you izogie, you're saying, I know grief too, and you're not alone, so thank you.