Why am I a polytheist?
Because Odin teaches me to have wisdom.
Because Thor gives me strength.
Because Loki tells me when I need to change.
Because Tyr reminds me to be fair and just.
Because Jesus shows me how to love others.
Because The Dude gives me permission to take it easy.
Hi there y’all, it’s Bryn.
So grief. It is a spiky ball of pain. It’s sadness, it’s fear, it’s disappointment. It’s relief, it’s fits of rage, it’s fits of sobbing and screaming and keening on the floor. For me anyway.Because for me, when something happens that needs grieving, all the grief I have ever felt is connected and not only am I needing to feel through the current thing that is lost, but all the things that were in any way connected to that loss.
Here’s an example:
When I was going through my divorce, it wasn’t only the grief of the marriage, it was the loss of the 15 year friendship he and I had before we ever started dating. It was knowing I would only have 2 of the 3 dogs constantly in my life. It was losing mutual friendships I knew would “side” with him even though we eventually stepped apart mutually and peacefully with love still in our hearts for each other and never asked anyone to pick sides. It was loving him and knowing we weren’t right for each other anymore. It was grieving the version of me who does love him and was right for him, because that was gone too. It’s being left with all the memories of the history and energy and time spent, being laid to rest.
I’m sure you’re seeing it, that what hardly anyone talk about is that grief is so multifaceted that you can’t know how much you will have to grieve when something happens until it happens and all the connections are torn from you. Until you are faced with this gaping hole that used to be a person or relationship that was a sustaining factor in your life. Now that one of the support beams is broken or gone, the house is falling down. It’s an entire overhaul of life to make stability an option again. And unless the other support factors in life are there and willing and strong enough to hold up the building while one sorts through the wreckage, this person writing, finds that structures crumble. That old systems that used to work great must also be overhauled. That every point of life that touched the support beam person or relationship that is gone, must be examined and built new, different, stronger.
As is evidenced by the first part of this spiky ball, the grieving keeps a comin’. So for me, the rebuilding, remodeling, reassessment and restructure never stops.
This year I have had 5 structural damaging grief events. I am not fine. I look fine, I am functioning. But there is so much damage and pain inside me that I am working through. And everytime a new thing happens and I want to reach for support, I remember that Ben is also dead. That the person who I could always reach for is at his own rest now. That I am left to open the grief of his loss again because I just want him to answer the phone and tell me he’s with me, he’s on the way to give me a hug and I am not alone. And when my childhood home burned, all the memories there, of life being lived, being released into the ether by fire.
How cleansing right? Until you look at the literal mess left and it’s a hearty reminder of the mess of emotions and memories I have to sort through, find places for. The tidying of this soul is an ongoing process, and life keeps throwing more messes to be tidied.
Grief is a spiky ball of pain, and I have found that as time passes, and there is some space and felt emotions that the spikes, they dull down a little at a time. And sometimes, like with grandma passing, it’s different and somehow easier, because 94 years is a long time to live for a person, and she has earned her rest. She deserves to be peacefully with the loves of her life and not to suffer. The losses that “make sense” are easier for me to come to terms with, so I try to find the sense in each loss. And sometimes the spikes dull, and even the ball may shrink. So while it’s still bouncing around in my heart, when it touches a sensitive place at least it doesn’t always lacerate, and tear the wounds wide open and bleeding again.
I just find myself wishing right now that there weren’t so very many spiky balls of pain bouncing around inside of me, stabbing at my heart and soul. I am sad, and I am tired, and I am tired of being sad.
It’s been a while since I have sit down and written anything. A lot has been going on in my life, well not a lot, but it feels like a lot because of how heavy the things are.
Early this summer (or late this Spring, 2024) my last grand parent passed away. She was the real matriarch of our family. She was the loving, foundation.
Losing people I love is always difficult for me. I have a long list of loss in my life, so long that I have C-PSTD around grief in general. For those that may not know, “regular” PTSD is usually something that happens to someone who goes through one traumatic event. Complex PTSD is a cumulative build up of repeated traumatic happenings.
Growing up, I knew about death. I was a farm kid enough to have raised our own cows for meat, and chickens for eggs. We had pet rabbits and I learned early what the food chain was. I remember vividly once, as a toddler, comforting my aunt because my rabbit had gotten out and the dogs had killed it. (Now is not the time to discuss deeply, but I am aware now how as a 3-year-old I was somehow responsible for the adult’s feelings), We had dogs and cats too, who we had to send over the rainbow bridge. Early in my life I knew what death was.
Then, one night, I was 19 or 20 years old, at the drive in with some friends. I got a call from my boyfriend at the time and he was frantic. He had gone for a drive with some friends of ours and had gotten in a horrific crash. The car flew off an embankment and immediately killed my two friends on the driver’s side in the car.
We talked enough that I could get some information from him about where they were and who was with them and call 911. He helped the other survivor out of the car, and despite both of their injuries, he pulled the other person up the embankment and to the side of the road where he could flag down help. I was in a panic for a good while, until his family told me which hospital he was taken to and he was stable. I also learned then that the other two people in the car, were in fact, dead.
This was my first brush with death and loss of human loved ones. The first two viewings I ever attended, the first two funerals I went to. They were my friends Lucas (18years old) and Sydney (16 years old). This car wreck changed our lives, my own and everyone in our community. I learned that I never need to attend another viewing, because for me, the last memory I want of my loved ones is them alive.
Editor’s Note:
I wish I hadn’t gone to my mother’s funeral. It was the last image I have of her and it is stuck the deepest. I would have missed the church service, but I was creeped out long before that. I showed up and smiled. I was just intimidated. I turned on the preacher’s kid and muscled through. I will also never be the same.
And I learned how mortal we are. I learned that you always say goodbye before you leave, because it might be the last thing you say. I learned to tell people that matter to me that they matter, because they could be gone tomorrow.
Several years later, my first grandparent died. My sweet old Grandpa “Weird”. The death of an elder is different than the sudden loss of young people. The is all this time to prepare yourself for the loss of our ancestors, watching them slowly fade. And Grandpa had dementia, so he was mentally lost to us years before his body and soul were gone. But I remember his funeral too, and that I had a panic attack most of the drive and before we went into the church.
Then, I worked in biomedical research with primates for 17 years. As an animal lover, I was always so happy to be able to be taking care of those amazing animals. To be there to advocate for them, and spoil them at every opportunity. But they were purpose bred to sacrifice their lives in the name of science. It was my job, for many, many years, to be the person who sedated and carried these animals, some that I had known for their whole lives, to the end of their study and necropsy. So, I just kept stacking losses, on losses. For 17 years I made friends and took care of those monkeys, and for17 years, I compartmentalized the losses.
It seems counter intuitive to say this, but I am going to glance over the 8-month period of time in which my partner at the time and I had to say goodbye to both of our heart dogs, his grandfather, his young cousin, and our friend died young and suddenly too. Needless to say, it was a bad time for us.
Then my first Grandmother passed, she was not the easiest person to love, but she was someone I could always call and tell her in full honesty the worst things I had ever done and she would save me from the shame spiral. (Which seems a little ironic, because I think she is also the one that taught my mother the same spiral who then passed that special skill on to me, but anyway) She would never sugar coat or deceive. She shot that arrow right through you because truth is. But she would never shame me with the truth, just ask the hard questions that allowed me to choose what kind of person I wanted to be.
Two years ago, my other Grandfather left us just before Christmas. I got to go see him not too much before he passed, while he was in the hospital. I got to go be there for my poor Daddy while his father faded.
And now we are here. Where I am I think maybe today even, at the one-year anniversary of sending my deaf and blind dog Duncan over the Rainbow Bridge. And Thanksgiving will be a year since my rock, my best friend, my brother Ben passed away.
Ben, I could always count on. He knew that trust mattered to me. He was the most consistent and loving person in my life since I was in 6th grade and he sat behind me in advanced band, where most 6th graders were not. HE played the baritone sax and I played the flute. And his brother was friends with my brother and I felt so special that I got to be friends with all of them. Our families were so close. Are so close still. I am so blessed to be able to feel so deeply for people, that it destroys me when they are gone.
Then in May, in the airport, on the way home from 2 weeks on the other side of the country to visit my partner’s family and My Leslie, I learned that my grandma was on her way out of this mortal realm. This one was really hard for me, because we got home and the next evening I went to house sit for a fried of mine. Not something I could just drop or call in sick to. So, I got to say goodbye to my grandmother on video chat. She wasn’t really responsive to most input from people in the room, she was barely conscious, but when I told her I loved her and that I would be taking as many of her plants to live with me as I was able. She perked up, she acknowledged me and tried to speak, which didn’t work, but I was so glad to know she knew I was with her too, even if only in spirit.
Now, even more has happened, there is always happenings, and will always be more happening, because I am still here. And I will continue to feel as deeply as I am able. Thanks for reading.
I have so, so much more to say, stay tuned for more.
I don’t believe that people don’t listen when someone throws a Molotov cocktail at their own preconceived notions of how wonderful they are.
This quote is from an e-mail reply sent to me when I was explaining a particular problem with which I am internally wrestling to the ground… like I do, in a “hold on, I have to overthink about it” sort of way. It was so astounding in its clarity, such a succinct rocket propelled truth grenade, that I felt it deserved top billing. This is because yes, I can apply it to this situation, but moreover, I can apply it to myself and the journey I’ve taken over the years to become a better version of myself.
I’ve mentioned before that being panicked all the time allowed things to come out of my mouth that never would’ve otherwise, and when someone threw that Molotov cocktail at me, at first I was angry and popped off even more, because in the moment, that’s all I could think to do. But once the cortisol wore off, I did indeed take those words away and think about them, making them a part of my heartbeat and using them as fuel, onwards and upwards.
Things calmed down somewhat naturally, but when I started taking Klonopin,™ the adrenaline I felt during conflict all but went away. It allowed me to shoot water at the (very, very tall) flames. I could sit back and remember the day I wrote that the fire inside me could not be contained with water. I had to bring in a much bigger fire, and then rest and relax in the ash-enriched earth. Before that, anxiety kept my own fire burning, and those words got lost in the middle of the mess. It was a wonderful day when they came back.
In case you’re wondering, I do read my own blog like a stalker ex-girlfriend at 2:00 AM. Mostly because after time has passed, I am so divorced from my own words that they seem as if someone else wrote them. It’s deeper than that, though. It’s about learning to rely on myself and, God forbid, take my own advice. There are some entries where I legitimately say, “that’s so wise. I wish I had written it.” It’s a shock to my system to realize that it was me, just a different iteration.
The truth bomb for me was learning that my anger at the world was rubbing off on people in ways that I both didn’t intend and indeed wanted to inflict the pain I was experiencing. This is because sometimes there were innocent bystanders, and sometimes my yard felt threatened and I went off like a rat dog with a Napoleon complex (at 5’4 and barely 125, the description is apt). I still occasionally say things that have consequences I don’t understand, but so does everyone else. There is no way to predict or be responsible for someone else’s perception of reality. The difference now is that I don’t feel threatened, because most of the threat was my own perception of reality and not external stimuli. It’s my medication, though, that I credit with allowing the anger within me to dissipate, because without the suppression of anxiety’s physical symptoms, I didn’t have time to coolly and calmly calculate my next move. There was no, “I could say this, or I could say that.” It was just the “think it, say it” plan. Sometimes it worked well for me, because for all its faults, it was definitely authentic. I didn’t have time to put on the mask of “everything’s fine.” What really forced me to examine my thought processes was the old axiom that hurt people hurt people… something I knew logically, but hadn’t instituted emotionally. Making the connection between heart and mind had previously eluded me. And while I am still intensely cerebral, I feel that now I am using more parts of my heart than I used to be capable.
This is because once I “relaxed in the ash-enriched earth,” some of the dead spots left by years of emotional abuse as a teenager started to grow back… and I won’t lie, those neurons were at first part of the problem, raising my threat level to DEFCON “OH MY FUCK!.” Though I take full responsibility for my thoughts and actions, I also can’t ignore the context… because as I say often, I won’t make excuses, but I hope I can provide understanding of why something happened, because nothing happens in a vacuum. And that is where writing really helps me, because I don’t generally lay out that context for the people themselves, but on my own. It is not their responsibility to understand. It’s mine.
It is amazing, though, how much pleasure and happiness have come back into my life via self-reflection. People have seen me heal and have drawn their own conclusions, just from trying to explain me to me. I am no longer a tight knot of fear ALL THE TIME, which was my modus operandi for a number of years. Seeing how it was failing me allowed my life to expand, taking a detour when my mother died, but not stopping progress altogether. I just had to find different sources of unconditional love, because it’s the one thing my mother was capable of doing that no one else did (though they do now, because with my friends, there’s a recognition that it needed to be replaced somewhere). My mother was the only person in my life that was constantly on my side, never ever saying “what did you do?,” but “what have they done to my baby?” And this was even after I reassured her I was being a right tool and I deserved every bit of the karma coming around. It just never mattered to her. She was always on my side, no matter how I behaved, and I think that’s a mother’s love in a nutshell.
For instance, I think she’d hate that I don’t go to church anymore, because it’s not a comforting experience. However, I think she would understand, because it’s me. My belief that God is the source of every story ever told, that we are all subtractions of the divine, has never faltered. But when I walk into a church, all I see is her. She’s at the organ. She’s in the choir. She’s sitting in the congregation. She’s pinching my hand hard enough to draw blood when I’m laughing so hard I just cannot keep it together… and if she’s in the alto section and I’m far enough away with the sopranos, she’s giving me the death stare instead. If you’ve never seen my mother’s death stare, you just won’t even know the half of how…… effective it could be. Therefore, every single church service I attend doesn’t feel uplifting. It feels like a knife in my front.
I am sure that as time passes, so this will, also. But I’m not there yet, and if there is indeed a heaven and she is watching, I hope she realizes this… that life is always in forward motion, and belonging to a faith community (or starting one) will happen in its own time.
My theology dictates that there is no heaven or hell, just which one we’re bringing to the life we’re living right now. But that doesn’t mean I can’t imagine it. I can also imagine, as I do in all things, that I could be wrong. It has been known to happen…..
…which often leads to the examination of how wonderful I think I am, and adjusting as necessary, because I listen.
Stories That Are All True 