Grief. And Hope.
Part One.
A butterfly wouldn’t be a butterfly—couldn’t even exist—if it remained a caterpillar.
The basis of its entire existence is on no longer being what it was before, on one thing ending and on another beginning.
When Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen (otherwise known as U2) landed in Berlin in 1990 to record their album ACHTUNG BABY, they were witness to something destroyed, and something being born. The Berlin Wall had come down one year prior, and in the joy, there was a frenetic energy, a chaotic energy of the unknown, and in that energy—in that celebration, that creation of unification—there was an eruption of new life crushing against the old ways, ways that were divisive before, ways that were oppressive, ways that were born out of fear, anger, pain, and control. The wall coming down was a collapse of the old structures. It was a reckoning.
A reckoning. As if the laws of nature roared to life, making up for lost time; lost time colliding with current and future time and unearthing a discovery from underneath years of suppression and suffocation, from a place that had stood still in time under an iron grip and that was now crashing against the progress that had evolved without it, leaving it behind. A reckoning. An acknowledgement of what was, and a realization of what was endured. Of what was suppressed and almost gone forever. Of what humanity almost allowed itself to throw away forever and possibly never look back and actualize.
So began the Herculean task ahead of reconciling a new order and a new identity with what the outside world had already become. What to leave behind. What to bring. What was lost. What was to be discovered.
In that reckoning, there was joy. Boundless joy. And, complex joy. Because much like other reckonings of this stature, when something ends and something new begins, there is every emotion. In her latest book ATLAS OF THE HEART, Dr. Brene Brown posits that there are 84 distinct human emotions, and I posit this reckoning in the destruction of the Berlin Wall, like other major global reckonings, elicited all of them.
Wonder, excitement, happiness.
Anxiety, overwhelm.
Regret. Guilt.
Compassion, love, gratitude.
Ttranquility.
Confusion. Contempt.
Pride.
Grief.
And grief, disguised as anger and fear.
And hope.
The opposite of grief is hope.
Hope has a sound. A dream has a timbre. A vibration. An undulation. An explosion that you can feel and hear.
In that moment when the members of U2 descended on a brand new Berlin, they felt the revolution. It was undefinable, and it was all over the place. It was hope and joy and anger and grief, everything in between, and all the repercussions. All of it.
That’s exactly what the album ACHTUNG BABY sounds like—the word “Achtung” itself meaning “Watch out!” in German. Watch out. A tsunami is coming, and while riding it is delirious freedom, drowning in it is terrifying struggle, and it transforms all of us. It is a storm. It is a zoo. And in melodically raucous form, the album opens.
Listen to it now.
“Zoo Station” by U2
I’m ready for the laughing gas / I’m ready / I’m ready for what’s next / I’m ready to duck / I’m ready to dive / I’m ready to say I’m glad to be alive / I’m ready / I’m ready for the push … Time is a train / Makes the future the past / Leaves you standing in the station / Your face pressed up against the glass.
The sound of that song is the look and feel of the wall crumbling. Rhythmically deconstructing. Breaking. Being smashed apart. The electric guitar—that crazy, frenetic, wildly passionate, howling energy—is like a machine’s gears grinding up again, the machine of life, if you will—the rust sputtering and spewing in wafts like an electric tornado of sand, the sparks a waterfall, a rainbow. Uncontrolled, ripping through the air, bursting out of nothing into uproarious life. Setting the world on fire.
It is a miasma of memories floating like a mirage into the ether, colliding with the sharp angles of the present day, their energies seeping into one another, merging. Dancing. Fighting. Reconciling. Dividing. Then uniting again. New ideas rattling through old metal, embodying the space between joints, expanding, creaking, clamoring through. Swallowing the past, wrangling the present, chasing the future. Violent terms. Violent times. Change is slow, or it’s violent. It is always a disruptor.
It is creation. Born from destruction.
Untamable, unharnessable evolutionary energy.
Before you can channel it and guide it, you have to let it ride.
*
if the pain was deep
you will have to let it go
many times
—yung pueblo
I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Janesville, Wisconsin, watching the delicate flurries of snowfall through the windows—gentle, wispy, cascading and then finally resting upon a river that is frozen, but that will begin to flow again in the spring. I’m over a thousand miles, nearly two decades, and a world away from that night, from that girl I was, but part of me will always be in that apartment.
That night. That apartment.
I’ll tell you about it. I’ve wanted to tell you about it for a long time. But I’ve been scared.
That night was my own proverbial Berlin Wall, built just for me, beyond which I couldn’t connect and grow for a very long time. My wall split me in two. I was no longer just one, but both.
When a certain anxious or fearful mood strikes, when certain intensely pressure-filled decisions are to be made, when a collection of stressful things have fallen together—one after the next, like falling dominoes—and/or I haven’t slept enough for a while, and/or the children are particularly loud, my body and my mind take me back to that night, in that apartment, subconsciously and without my being logically aware of it.
My back slumps forward, forever forward, also forever pushing backward, railing against the palms of my ex-boyfriend’s hands, which struck quickly and deftly and knocked my breath out and my body to the ground.
I was 23. A woman. But a baby, still.
When new parents find out they’re having a baby girl, I think what comes immediately to mind is pink. Fluffy things, liked stuffed bunnies and fuzzy blankets. Taffeta dresses and big bows. Tiny hands wrapped around your fingers. Kissing tiny feet. ABCs and 123s. Swaddles, rockers, skin to skin. Coos, snuggles, smiles. First words, first foods, first steps. Writing her name, riding a bike. Painted fingernails, hair with soft curls.
When I became a mother in my 30s, if instead of having boys, I’d had a girl, I wonder if instead of filling up with hope and happiness and light and airy things, I’d worry about that night in the apartment. About her having a night in an apartment, too.
When are rites of passage supposed to occur, and how is one supposed to endure and transform oneself? Are there rules? Guidelines? Timelines? Is there a class to take? Steps to follow for evolving into balanced adulthood after being a victim?
They don’t have any books about this in the birthing section. They don’t sell these how-to kits by the diaper bags. I wonder how I was supposed to come out of this, if I’ve been doing it right. If there’s a metric for my life now (as opposed to before), if my metric’s different than everyone else’s, or if the same milestones apply—and when I’m triggered and my body scan goes code red and my mind jumps to fight or flight, if people will understand why I’m lashing out.
If a baby deer hears a branch snap in the woods, it will run for its mother. It is biologically programmed to run. It will still be programmed to run when it becomes a mother itself.
I was 23. I was working as a legal assistant at a plaintiff’s litigation law firm and had gotten into Law School at The University of Texas on scholarship, but had decided not to go and was trying to figure out my next step professionally. It was the middle of the night, and my boyfriend and I had a fight because I wanted to go to graduate school. He disagreed—and, as had become more and more pronounced in our relationship—he belittled my words and belittled my dreams and said “Who do you think you are?”
Who do you think you are.
Because he sensed graduate school for me meant a loss of control for him and possibly a life apart altogether for us. So he tried to manipulate me and make me feel like nothing, and make me feel ashamed, and at fault, as he was used to doing. And he did.
Who do you think you are.
Herein is the revelation that these words must have been a big part, all along, of what has taken me two decades to write this story, seven years and counting to write my novel, and all this time to pursue becoming a serious writer at all.
The fight that was initially just raised voices, and my resentment that it was happening at all, was going nowhere. I was tired, so I turned to get ready for bed. I think he sensed this, my resentment. He sensed me pulling away.
I see the girls with the fathers who clearly protected them. The fathers who intimidated for them, who drew lines that boys wouldn’t cross. Girls who were cherished, who were hidden, who were given advice and attention. Who have never seen things like this. You can tell from their carefree smiles. They carry an air of muscle memory that informs other people how to act. I’m in awe of these girls. I’m fascinated. By their fathers. By their mothers, who taught them boundaries. Not to excessively people please. Not to allow others to cross my boundaries so many times and so deeply that it becomes routine, and I don’t know who I am. When we’re young and inexperienced, we can unknowingly act badly and unintentionally hurt each other. That wasn’t what this is.
I wonder what it’s like to have a back that’s not burdened by the force of his hands.
A neck not whip-lashed from being shoved. Knees and hands that aren’t carpet-burned from the fall, from being dragged backwards across the floor.
A chest that doesn’t feel his crushing weight on top of it after he turned me over.
Arms and legs that aren’t paralyzed from being pinned.
A face that doesn’t feel like it’s on fire as he screamed sounds I never knew existed and would hence forth be haunted by forever.
Eyes that would forever see his—bulging, white, maniacal—and that would see the world differently from then on, always.
A heart that would know a truth that would break it.
Did I really think I could die? Really?
Impossible, improbable, an exaggeration, surely. Drama at its best. An overly-imaginative young mind that’s watched too many movies.
What I actually thought about what was happening, as it was happening:
I believed he was about to hit the living shit out of me. I didn’t know what else or where that might lead. I believed I was going to be seriously hurt. I didn’t really think at all, and my mind and my body braced for impact. My body instantly stiffened like a board, steeling itself. Becoming something other as I left it. I accepted that I was going to be beaten so quickly that it was as if it was already happening. I was ready.
I can still feel this exact moment in my body. And as I evacuated my body. From head to toe. Of myself and of my body, yet not.
Because I now understand that I wasn’t alone in my body. I left myself, but God took over and got me through.
It was like both wearing armor, and being filled with armor, inside out. I was terrified, but I was somehow full. Not of peace. But of understanding. I succumbed. It was the eeriest, the most supernatural and yet natural state.
Who do you think you are.
People yell and scream when they feel ignored. People attack other people when they’re protecting themselves. Children threaten to break things or hurt one another because they don’t feel they’ve been heard. We’re all just trying to get our needs met and avoid pain. Who did he feel wasn’t listening? Who wasn’t meeting his needs? Not just me, but so many others wrapped into this moment: the father who left him, the mother who raised him alone, the high school girlfriend who cheated, the coaches who didn’t put him in the game. He was a terrified, angry little boy, screaming. Screaming so as not to be abandoned again. Screaming at me for his life. Screaming at me, threatening mine.
Him on top of me, screaming in my face. Me pinned to the ground, screaming back in his. His face and body contorted into a predator. Me, the prey underneath him, the beloved person turned into the hated thing.
His face red and maddening, veins throbbing on his forehead and arms, eyes that had gone elsewhere, not here. I screamed for help. I screamed. Over and over.
I prepared to be hit. Over and over. It was something that was very clear at the time, that this was going to happen, and I should prepare. And think of next steps, of being very, very hurt—blows to the head, blood. The possibility that he might rape me.
Yes. I did “think” I could die—or more accurately, know that it could happen. That it was about to happen. Both AND. But just as I succumbed to that notion, there was also no part of me that submitted to not being alive. Just my mind telling me to prepare for the experience, like a mother telling her child that the shot will pinch. But it will be over in a second. Just one.
It was the moment the ground opened up and rock bottom became a space for me.
A new reckoning. A new wall. And a place I would return to again and again.
The bruises and bloodied knees healed, but I’ve never forgotten his face or how I felt. How my body stiffened. And like muscle memory, would do it again and again.
I don’t know what saved me from being completely beaten up that night, in that apartment. But I was broken. In a way I wouldn’t understand for a long time.
From Wikipedia
Shiva (Hebrew: שִׁבְעָה šīvʿā, literally "seven") is the week-long mourning period in Judaism for first-degree relatives. The ritual is referred to as "sitting shiva" in English. The shiva period lasts for seven days following the burial. Following the initial period of despair and lamentation immediately after the death, shiva embraces a time when individuals discuss their loss and accept the comfort of others … During the period of shiva, mourners remain at home. Friends and family visit those in mourning in order to give their condolences and provide comfort. The process, dating back to Biblical times, formalizes the natural way an individual confronts and overcomes grief. Shiva allows for the individual to express sorrow, discuss the loss of a loved one, and slowly re-enter society.[6]
Is there an official bereavement period defined for deaths of other kinds? Would one consider domestic violence, the loss of home as a safe place, the annihilation of love, and the destruction of one’s worldview as being akin to the death of an immediate family member? A death. The death of childhood. The death of innocence. The death of perspective. What ceremonies are in place to mourn such a loss—which is, inherently, the death of one’s self? If I would have sat Shiva then and opened up in a healthy way to those who loved me, and got support from them, I might not be writing about this now.
Who do you think you are.
That moment was being pushed over the edge into the unmentionable unknown. And if no one is there to catch you when you go over the edge, how do you land? My father had just suffered his first major, paralyzing stroke. All eyes were on him. I lived in new city with a new job, away from my friends. I was almost completely alone. And I was being hunted by The One who was supposed to love me.
I eventually moved out, under much duress and fear. After that, he stalked me and made threats of varying degrees for some time.
I never knew where he might show up, what dark corner he might jump out from. What he might do to me, or to himself.
This was the era when I began my transformation into part wolf.
Werewolf, perhaps, which would come out when triggered, just as a werewolf is with a full moon.
I learned a deeper loneliness, which I’d already been acquainted with as a child. I learned how to metaphorically bark, how to use words to bite. Like the human animal I am.
I learned to suppress a rage that would quietly build and smolder until it erupted into the howls of my loudest moments. I learned to be scary to protect myself. Because no one else could.
Protection. Someone to have my back. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Maybe that’s why I’ve had so many guy friends. Older brothers to watch over me. And they have.
The body doesn’t forget, and even though he didn’t beat me up, my cells stored the shock of that experience so that it manifested in conscious and unconscious ways, for years, through all that I have been, and all that I am. It is a forever reckoning that I’ll continue to push through and push against. Work and struggle through, and transcend.
I’ve been afraid for so long. Trapped in that apartment on that night. But I’m not inside that apartment anymore. And it’s morning.
My therapist taught me to source self-compassion, instead of fear, for that night. If feeling self-empathy is like a warm, all-encompassing cleansing, then that is what I finally feel now when I access this memory. It is a warm shower washing the anger away, washing away the most intense and haunting fear of my life. It is fear floating away, disappearing and dissipating from my body, freeing my mind.
Not pure. But clean.
Now, I attach love for myself to that night. I don’t run from that apartment anymore. I reach for that terrified young woman I was, and I hug her tight.
*
I think Hope is walking toward something, instead of walking, or running, away.
Hope is being healed.
“Healing,” as Yung Pueblo says, is when you intentionally decrease the tension you carry in your mind.” Because healing is also acceptance. Acceptance and healing are the walls coming down—in my mind, in Berlin. In us all, all over the world. And acceptance manifests hope, because acceptances is the great equalizer that makes everything OK and, therefore, gives you a solid foundation to build upon.
Yung Pueblo says, “Even though the trauma or hurt you went through, which fueled these patterns, was not your fault—especially if you were a child when it happened—the healing of these patterns can only be done by you. People can certainly help you, but it is your intention and effort that will help you evolve past the hurt you carry. If there is one thing to focus on for improving your life, your healing should be it. If you want to build a better life, you have to concentrate on what impacts you the most, and without a doubt that is the relationship between you and your mind. If you get deep into your healing, the effort that you then apply to achieving your aspirations and dreams will be much more efficient and produce results more quickly. A healed mind is incredibly powerful.”
In healing, we can realize empathy for ourselves and what we’ve endured. This acknowledgement is made possible by the reckoning. We will be better because of the reckoning. It causes us to evaluate and assess our lives and make changes to our priorities and processes. We can use this time to stand still, in order to move forward. We can use this time to put ourselves back together. We will get through.
The aftershock, after the reckoning. The mourning. The beautiful sadness of what was endured. What was lost. The contemplation of what is to be recovered.
The aftershock, followed by the aftermath. The acceptance of, or the denial of, what is. The succumbing to, or the rebelling against.
The aftermath, followed by the silence. The silence, as stark white as the snow.
The silence, followed by the afterglow. The afterglow, when anything is possible. When there’s hope.
What happened to us isn’t our fault, but how we deal with it is our responsibility. And when we’re done letting nature thrash us about, we discover grace. We can channel our higher selves—through the aftershock, and the aftermath, and into the silence. We can be fully present in the experience. Here. Now. We can be present in our bodies.
That night wasn’t the first time I’d left my body—I’d had practice through the years and through childhood trauma and all of life’s trials and tribulations. In fact, we all have. I’d left myself many times, over and over, when I was hurt or scared, and often not even conscious of the present circumstances or fully aware of what I was doing. I’ve been away from my body, off and on, for a long time and never fully dealt with it. I was split into two by my wall. Now I’m one again, on the path of the reckoning. Right now, things are starting to feel more quiet.
We can practice self-love by practicing self-connection through focus. Through our presence in the now. Through searching for unity in the reckoning, and often times, by just—at first—letting it ride.
“True self love,” says Yung Pueblo, “is multi-faceted and includes radical honesty, positive habit building, and unconditional self-acceptance. These three pillars work internally and externally to generate and support an enduring sense of self-love …
Self-love and healing are deeply intertwined, and if you take one of them seriously, the other will be immediately activated. They rise and fall together. Similarly, if the two are flourishing, a profound transformation is bound to take place.”
I’ve wanted to heal for so long, but I was never going to be able to do it without loving myself, and I was never going to love myself until I fully returned to my body, reunified myself and became one. I had put other people, things, and ideas and concepts that aren’t true to who I am in front of that. I couldn’t get there. I can’t do that anymore.
Acceptance is the first step to change. It is the quiet—the silence, as stark white as the snow. It is the foundation built strong because of, and in spite of, change—and through enduring grief—and through navigating so many things we can’t control.
Hope is the wall coming down. Grief is also the wall coming down, because we realize why the wall was built.
Hope is a revolution. Grief is also a revolution, because grief is acceptance. Acceptance is a revolution, a pathway forward.
If grief is a death, then hope is a rebirth. Each is necessary for the other.
Both are necessary to who we are.
Who do you think you are.
I am these. I am us. We are everything.
