I never cried for my mother.
Don’t get me wrong, I cried, a lot. But it wasn’t for her, it was for me. More of a whoa is me cry. I never felt her loss and cried at the sadness of that. I never cried because I missed her.
I’m not sure what it was. I’ve thought about it a lot recently over the past few days, why I never cried for her, and there’s no one reason to pin it to.
Perhaps I was too young to really fathom what I had lost. Maybe I was too afraid of breaking to pieces so I immediately shut the valve off on the 5 step program that is grief and, very much like myself, jumped straight to the most difficult part: acceptance. The morning I found out she was dead I remember my first thought. It still rings in my head today as clear as the midday dessert sky:
My mother is dead and now I’m alone.
It was a single thought that never showed itself in my conscious mind frequently yet it rang with so much truth in my subconscious that it became the theme song of my existence. I created a hard impenetrable shell and I suppose there was no room for tears in the iron folds of my ice cold exterior.
Yet a little piece of me was broken and badly bruised. In my life I got along fine but I always felt cast away into an ocean, lost at sea and most importantly, afraid. Afraid of everything for no reason all the time. Maybe it wasn’t fear, but more of deep yearning for direction that froze me stiff at every angle in life.
I have to be honest, the shell I created as a result of fear to shield me from the world confused me. I couldn’t keep up with what I believed in around who, what I liked and why, and who my friends and enemies were. It was draining to juggle everything I was supposed to be while hiding who I’m not supposed to be all while working towards who I wanted to be.
When I met Anon, in hindsight the feeling I had was exhaustion. I was tired of running. Tired of running from myself and so I stopped. . . and everything changed.
All was right with the world and I arrogantly gave myself a pat on the back with putting my mother’s passing behind me and moving on – like a real grown up. Then about a year ago I called my Aunt and she told me she had cancer.
Oh no . . . not again. Please God not again.
I froze as my whole body became flooded with painful memories of my past and sickened at the thought of the story repeating itself. As my vision blurred from tears and my knees and breath became weak my aunt told me through her own tears “I’m not afraid” and I knew it was the truth. I took a deep breath and I said “Okay. It’s okay. I’m okay. Everything is going to be okay.” And I slammed the doors shut.
She died 6 weeks later.
My whole world fell apart. I went back to my old tricks and tried to bring out that dusty old shell but it didn’t fit quite right this time around so instead I covered up in a gentle coat of kind formalities to stay warm.
How are you? I’m fine thank you and yourself?
Nice weather we’re having? Oh yes, I’m happy about it.
Lea, I’m having this problem and I need to talk. Of course, yes yes everything is going to be alright.
Smiles and nods deflected peering eyes away and I only had moments of happiness while a layer of discomfort and agitation was always beneath the surface otherwise. I was detached – polite and sometimes warm, but far from it all.
No one ever knew that I was very sad, and very sad for a very long time. In fact, I barely noticed it myself as I stayed occupied with my formalities. Maybe some might have picked up on a coolness from me, but if they had and said something, I barely noticed.
Slowly but surely that sadness poked holes in my pathetic armor and it leaked out in peculiar ways. . .The first to go was bodybuilding. During my prep I thought about her all the time and many times I pushed through the pain of hard work as if every rep would pump blood through her body once more. I secretly hoped that when I was done and panting, she would come back and say “Alright. Here I am.” The grind of the gym became my escape from the pain and I inadvertently scorched her story deeper into it. Bodybuilding reminded me too much of her and so I slammed the door shut on it. I came home the night of my show and suddenly it felt stupid.
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It was a subconscious knee jerk reaction of some sort. I just didn’t have anything left to give after it drained me from the sadness I attached to it.
Then it was my discipline. I had not a care about anything. “I’m just living my life” my cloak of protection told me, and I thought I was okay with that but a deeper part of me knew that was a lie. I would start with the “Next week I’m going hard!” “After this weekend no more cheats!” and each time I did it, for a while at least. But I was back to my very old ways of starting with gusto and fading out just as fast. Fear crept up on me and the pounds on the scale followed; I knew I was well on my way to being over 200lbs again. In the midst of one of my fake spurts of motivation I signed up for a ridiculously intense Pilates class and in a month I got injured. My body laid down its verdict and I was not putting it through the ringer with my manic outburst anymore.
Then it was my writing. I realized one day, while writing about how I started writing, that it was my aunt who got me into writing to begin with; she always believed I had something to say. Well, in classic Leah form I decided that I am going to be the best writer that ever lived to commemorate her life and I would start by writing about everything all the time. Suddenly, I had nothing to say. Writers block that lasted longer than I can ever remember. I had moments of creative sparks (one to be honest) and the rest felt forced so I just stopped.
Then it was my job. I never expected to like any job that I had, but this job was too much. I overheard a sales person at work comment and say “We walk hand in hand with cancer patients.” After having lived through and grandmother, a mother, and now an aunt all killed by the same nasty, unrelenting disease I was disgusted by the greed; the willingness to say anything to make people believe you are on their side when in fact, you’re only borrowing their grief for profit. I was all too familiar with the painfully eroding effects of cancer and profit doesn’t walk hand in hand with such misery.
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An already brewing cynicism bubbled over; I hated the sound of their voices and I felt like a traitor for being a part of it. My tolerance for the old gerbil wheel grind started to weaken. The toxicity there was thick and it hung in the air like a wet blanket – I could barely lift my shoulders against the weight. I had no friends there and I felt I was on enemy grounds. I could no longer justify showing up for the sake of a paycheck so I quit.
When all those formalities could no longer be attended to, I sat quietly with no armor and no one but myself.
And I cried for her.
In that moment I realized that I was sad and had been for almost a year. I miss my aunt dearly and in the grand scheme of things, my whole family, who has been tragically thinned out by this ruthless disease. I cried harder and more until I was tired of crying and then cried a little bit more. Something incredible happened after; a feeling of immense gratitude and love washed over me and for the first time in a long time I felt like myself again. I cried the next day and the day after when I thought of her but I feel as though I’m finally healing and I can start to build again.
What intrigues me is the path I took to get there, it was as if I was being guided, perhaps by sadness or maybe more simply fate and ironically in order of personal importance to me. Suddenly quitting bodybuilding, getting injured, writers block and the toxicity of my job almost needed to happen for me to just be sad, which was my true form in those moments. This true form was more comforting than my defense against it.
Here I was thinking these are the things that make me happy and somehow define my place in the world, but they are like outfits if you will — only conversation starters and expressive outlets. These ‘outfits’ we put on don’t fit if we’re bloated with sadness or shriveled and shrunken by pain. Maybe we can still get away with wearing them, but they’re uncomfortable and make us grouchy and impatient. I feel oddly relieved after removing the layers that started to become heavy seemingly out of nowhere. Something inside needed attention paid and although at the time I didn’t realize I had much bottled up pain, I’m grateful that at the very least I had the courage to lose my mind just enough to pay attention to my heart. It’s not about what’s going right or wrong on the outside, but the inside that guides you, and as long as you don’t fight it, it will guide you exactly where you need to be.
Running from my own sweet grief turned my life against me, but accepting it brought me back to life. Heartache is true, and from truth we can always recover and, most importantly, grow.
It’s the inside that counts – an odd concept to me. One of those things you think you know, but somehow you don’t know until you experience it sitting in the front row.
I don’t know what’s next for me, a small piece of me died when my aunt did, and something else will grow there. I’m being watchful, but maintaining a resolve to not become a slave to expectations. Maybe this article is not the end of my writer’s block, maybe with physical therapy I won’t be strong for another year, maybe I will hate my new job even worse than the last.
I do know that the worst of the storm seems to have past, I am on my way to recovery in mind, body and spirit. Maybe in this period of growth I can reach further back in the past and get better stitching on the cut I hurriedly mended 14 years ago.
For my Auntie Reenie, who may not have been the first person to believe in me for absolutely no reason at all, but who certainly was the first to show it. I will never know why, but I always knew from the very beginning it was real; so real that I can still feel you. I love you more than my words can express, and I miss you.