Jess' Jamaican Diary Entry #4: Grief Work

I'm getting tired. The kind of tired where you can't seem to sleep enough. We have been active, out and about nearly every day since arriving and I think it is just finally catching up to me. More than that, it has been a lot of connecting. Energetically, I'm exhausted and have been trying to think of things I can do to rejuvenate or kind of...catch my spiritual breath so that I can persist on through the trip without disengaging. But truth be told, I also haven't wanted to listen to the silence lately. Because I can feel a loss coming. This notion of unapologetically asking for what you need has been very present and ripe for me. Yet there is still a hesitation at saying what I need knowing it could cause a huge loss. Never one to handle heartbreak well, I try to tell myself all the things I would say to a friend facing the same dilemma....and sadly that leaves me with the option I don't want to choose. So I am waiting. This isn't really helping my energy either. I had this notion that all work is grief work; that we are always perpetually moving through stages on a grief cycle in various degrees of acceptance or denial about losses of some sort. Sometimes ideals, sometimes dreams, sometimes people. I always claim that I never lost anyone and that is why the idea of it--foreign--makes me so nervous. But the truth is I have lost someone, and losing him changed my entire life and I really don't know if I am up for that sort of loss again. Because it literally nearly broke me.

So with the culmination of the two things, I've been drained. Feeling absolutely depleted and close to empty...Also, and I guess I haven't quite talked about this but I have been working on forgiving myself for something that happened while I was home. It is funny how despite the immense amount of work you expend on growing, developing, maturing, one situation can knock you back to square one. The trick is how long you believe you deserve to stay there. I know better (this time) so I didn't plan on staying long, but I realize I am still angry read: disappointed in myself for it. More grief work I suppose, mourning the evolved me I thought I was and accepting the me that I am, the flawed me that didn't do better when she knew better...and even as I write that I cringe. I constantly grapple with loss of who I thought I was, and I don't think it's a bad thing, but it sure as hell never gets easier.

I guess I'm just in it. Working a lot of things through in my head and walking through the physical spaces kind of like a zombie. I want to come to some kind of resolution soon so that I can be here, now. A resolution that does not include sweeping things under the rug but actually addressing them head on so that I have real peace surrounding it. That's a change. I think previously I would have been okay with peace even if it was temporary or superficial. A clean room but a messy closet, so to speak. However, not any more. And that's harder but I believe it is a good thing.