Heartbreak as the Opening

Sometimes you lose someone, and it breaks you- loss is like a chasm of grief that opens from the deepest place in your heart. A place so deep, it seems like it couldn’t even live in your body. As you clutch your chest, you feel like you’re falling into darkness, a darkness that crashes over you in waves, that pushes you under until you think you won’t make it…. But you do, you start to find your breath underwater, you learn to slowly swim.

It’s interesting how death, in the midst of overwhelming grief, also shifts your perspective on life. You find gratitude, you find each moment so treasurable, because god forbid you take someone for granted again. It’s a strange pain and knowing to lose loved ones- something I would wish on no one, but at this point in life I imagine we all know.

On the other side of that same aspect, it also makes you see who needs to be in your life and who isn't adding to it. In these moments of intense pain, when people wish not stay, hold space, or mourn with you, but rather wish you would give something to them... so clearly can you see who to let go of and who to hold on to.

This death, this grief, can be experienced in life too- when you watch someone you love choose a dark path, self-sabotage, or lose themselves in the chaos. These experiences are not the same, but they are both excruciating when felt to their extent. In one, you look desperately for the person you love to be anywhere on this earth and can’t find them, and in the second, you look desperately for the person you love while looking right at them, and can’t find them.

Heavy hearts all around.

In the end, I hope we live to treasure those we love, especially making time for the the people who have no qualms about showing you how much they value you. I hope no one I love has gone a day without knowing the depth of my love for them or their value in my life. For I couldn’t live knowing I hadn’t done my best to show you every day.

As I swim, I look to find my breath - here at the bottom. Will I swim back up again, will the pressure drown me, or will I find life in the abyss?

Perhaps we will all begin again.