At the time I needed it most, I found many things that allowed me to invest in restoring my mental health. New Years eve 2019 showed me I didn’t have control. At the end of 2020- a tough year for everyone- I came to a head with my mental state. From it’s inception, it took another year before I could admit that I was not well and unable to overcome it on my own. I started looking for help and for tools that would allow me a life I could enjoy internally and externally. Terminal dissatisfaction cloaked in self-destruction made it so clear that I was not on a path to get the things I mourned and longed for. Self-awareness and surrender got me to the door, but it wasn’t until my grandpa’s passing that I stepped through. Witnessing my dad struggle with powerlessness and lingering devastation as his condition worsened, accepting what was coming. The months leading up to his death were littered with difficult decisions, especially after my grandma passed just as the pandemic forced people apart. They both struggled with that loss and heartbreak.
The last time I saw my grandpa, he was sitting in the backyard on a warm day in July 2020. My aunt was working in the garden as he looked on. To see him, he was a shell of the man I’d always known him to be. He stared blankly and defeated in her direction, seeing light move through space. He was nearly blind from cataracts which left him on the bench. He was resigned to reminisce about doing the things he loved: gardening and grooming his lawn. I walked up behind him and laid my hand on this shoulder. Through that plain white cotton t-shirt was only skin and bone. He seemed so frail for the stubborn son-of-a-gun he’d always been. We were in peak pandemic, so I wore my mask and spoke loudly hoping he could hear me. He identified people by their voices. Since I moved away over a decade ago, visits have been sparse, so he didn’t know my voice or who I was at first. My mom and I exchanged pleasantries with him, hoping for a small spark and or chuckle from the jokester, but he wasn’t there behind those eyes. He lived (at one point, begged to continue to live) at the home they had occupied for 50+ years, because the alternative was to walk blindly through halls of a building he didn’t know, in the hands of stranger, without the comfort of his best girl, grandma. It was COVID that took his last thread. After several bouts with prostate cancer, the wear of age and weary made this his final battle.
Watching time pass and the change that comes with it is hard to face. It reminds one of their own mortality and temporality of the time for those around. I saw my dad grieve and it forced me to face the inevitability of being in his shoes some day. Losing him. Losing my mom.
I left the house that day in July knowing, somehow, that it would be the last time I would ever see him alive. I wept silently as we backed out of the driveway, flashing back to Christmas with the tiny ceramic tree with multi-color glass lights in the picture window. Of all the MANY items tucked in their house, that was the only thing that I claimed during the excavation of clutter out of the cabinets and closets. I see it in the corner of my living room right now and hear his laugh and see his smile. It’s the best I can ask for.
Loss, no matter how prepared one may seem, is life changing. Rattling reality to a new configuration. The steadfastness of someone’s presence is irreplaceable, and as such, the landscape is never the same. How one sees their world is never the same.
Oddly enough, the first time I ever went to counseling/therapy was after the sudden passing of my mom’s dad. Not her father by blood, but it never mattered to any of us. He was the man I knew as my grandpa, and man of their family. Such an irreplaceable spirit. It was the first time that I felt loss so deeply that it tipped the scales I tried so hard to balance: my internal turmoil and external composure. At 17 I had no concept of what mental health was. I think we avoided conversation about depression and mental health because of things that had nothing to do with me, and everything to do with family history. I was both broken and terrified when I walked into her office for the first time. I carried around things like shame, guilt, paranoia, anxiety, hyperawareness of everything and everyone. It was the first time I trusted someone to hear my pain and not judge or dismiss my thoughts and feelings. The breath of relief felt was like standing on a hill top in a breeze. Free.
Decades, men, drinks, and several lives later, I ended up back at the threshold, knowing that what lay beyond it would be both pain and healing. With COVID protocols and online counseling services, I opted for a less traditional professional relationship with a therapist. Reflecting on it now, that may have been what I needed in order to remove the performative, people-pleasing persona I put on any time I struggle to get my bearings in a new relationship.
It was a battle against my own consciousness. Only the bravest can pause and reflect on the people that they truly are, without a romanticized filter or inflated status. Stripped down to the person they are to others, but more importantly, who they are to themselves. Once that truth is made plain, the next step is action. There were many things about myself that came to light that I had to acknowledge and consciously work to process. Things that came to the forefront were how cruel and unkind I’ve been to myself. The way one speaks to themselves and how they view their value and status in their own lives paints a picture, effectively setting the precedent for how they expect others to treat them. Most of the people one meets are not that cruel, judgmental or- more importantly- preoccupied with every word or action one may say or do. Removing the haunting dread and substituting it with something more positive and constructive changes every aspect of one’s life. Time and energy previously reserved for focusing on outside forces, are reallocated to focus on those things for which one may express gratitude. Choosing a different way to view oneself in context of their relationships, with a transformed and enlightened mindset.
Everything builds off of the internal dialogue. If I have learned anything, it is that any situation or relationship is going to be what I decide it will be. That leaves me with the responsibility to seek a clearer and truer narrative, if I want it to be a healthy and positive interaction. Not base my actions and logic on incomplete or false understanding. To see the lives of others in terms of their experiences, their trauma, and how it influences the person they are now, allows me the chance to experience them with new eyes. Seeing how others express their emotions, understanding that the ways they show that they care may not look like mine, but they also should not be perceived in a negative light. Assuming that things are done or said with ulterior or malevolent motives shifts the entire tone of that relationship. Perspective and understanding. Once you remove yourself from the center of everyone else’s universe and stop making every action someone else does, about you, it transforms the relationships you have and how you exist in them, with them. When the internal narrative shifts to align with this new perspective, you open yourself to healthy and mutually supportive relationships. The alternative is almost certainly isolated alienation. It’s too great a loss to resign to poor logic. We acknowledge our shared, but also singular, experience of life.
Shift the way you see, think and perceive, and life is never the same.
More to come…
Not for the Faint of Heart. 
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