peeling off another layer

You’d think I’d know by now. I’d recognize this pervasive sense of sadness, I’d sit with it in grace and compassion instead of anxiety and judgment. “What’s wrong with me?” I’ve been thinking, the last week and a half. “Why do I feel so miserable?” It was like a killer case of PMS—edgy, unhappy, uncomfortable in my own skin. But the moon has only now rounded to fullness, and I’m nowhere near being able to blame PMS for my miseries.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I blubbered into my Tusker the other night, on the balcony at Tacos, looking down on the late-afternoon Sunday pedestrians of Nairobi. My fabulous new friend Stephanie said nothing, and soon I was pouring it all out: divorce is so sad, and sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing in Kenya, and it’s so hard to be gracious with myself for not wanting to stay in a marriage that was starving me. Stephanie has lived and worked in some of the toughest slums of Nairobi and she wasn’t about to be daunted by sitting with a snotty-nosed mzungu weeping into her beer—though, fresh from Masai Market with a big hand drum in tow, more hideously foolish we could only have looked if we’d both been wearing a khaki, snap-up, multi-pocketed safari garment or two.

But being the snotty-nosed mzungu weeping into my beer bore rich fruit, because once I’d sniveled it all out, I sat back in surprise: “This is just the next layer,” I said. “I’m processing another big loss in my life, and this is what it feels like when I peel another layer off.” A couple years ago, I’d have recognized this for what it was at once. But the passage of time has made these stages fewer and further between, and I didn’t even recognize this one till I finally put my feelings into words to the longsuffering Stephanie.

God, am I grateful for a good girlfriend here.

I woke from a dream of him this morning, aGAIN. He’d pulled in for one evening on his submarine. We’d agreed, suddenly, joyfully, to reconcile. Where does my subconscious get these things? With my conscious mind I remind myself a dozen times a day that this is best, this is right, we were never going to make each other happy, we had a weak foundation, our marriage was never meant to be for life. Then my subconscious throws some happy reconciliation dream at me and I wake, half giddy, half distraught, knowing the journey isn’t over yet.

It’s hard to let go. It’s even harder to let go with grace. I loved my husband deeply, and was deeply loved by him. The undoing of our marriage was sudden, unforeseen, and vague. At Christmas we could have worked things out, no question; instead I sabotaged and sabotaged it, determinedly, even while weeping with longing to stay his wife. Once again my conscious and subconscious were at war. There’s a black dog and a white dog fighting, which one wins? The one that has lurked beneath the surface of your marriage for nearly three years, occasionally boiling over with passionate conviction, demanding at last to be heard.

So I have learned, these past six months, to sit with grief in a new way. After my mother died and Josh deployed to the middle east, I threw myself into grieving with the abandon of the brokenhearted, because there was no hiding from it anyway; at the least, I could hope that being truly present in anguish now would pave the way to being truly present in joy later on. Paige’s death was a massive setback, but even while I navigated the unexpected rage I felt over losing her, I knew this much, that I MUST feel it. I’ve learned to sit with the hard feelings, looking them in the eye, feeling them with every cell of my devastated soul—I don’t run away from sorrow anymore. But everything about losing Josh has been different. Because this was our CHOICE. Because he’s still alive out there somewhere; I’ll see him again. He’ll still be hilarious, he’ll still be handsome and kind. He’ll never be mine again. And herein lies the heart of the whole matter—because possessiveness, with me and perhaps with most of the world, was in many ways the root of my love. Marrying Josh meant I owned him, he always had to love me and be mine, he always had to get my back and be there to rely on. He was my artificial sense of security in a world that had become horrifyingly unsafe. Possessing him meant I could shift the burden of my doubts onto him: am I good enough? Of course I am, Josh loves me. Am I beautiful? Of course I am, Josh is attracted to me. Am I always going to feel so sad? Of course not, Josh is here to cheer me up. Am I ever going to be normal again? Who gives a crap, I’ll cry and Josh will hold me and I’ll be able to ignore the bad feelings for awhile.

Josh was my ultimate painkiller. Owning him meant I could rely on the fix for the rest of my life. Leaving him meant I was back on my own in the cold scary world again, with nothing to numb the pain. This is a totally different sort of loss to sit with. This is part of why it’s been so difficult to let go with grace.

This is why, months into my new African life, I spent a week and a half in a gradually-building storm of anxiety and gloom till finally, blubbering into my beer, I recognized my edginess for what it really was: just fear, Anna. Just the ongoing process of adapting to change.

So Stephanie and I clinked our bottles, and when I got home I sat awhile in the dark, hands over my heart: I forgive myself for how hard this is. I love myself even though I’ve made mistakes. I accept myself and how much it hurts to lose this man, and I embrace the pain. I know, better than many women my age, that the only way past loss is through; four years after the cancer diagnosis heard round the world, I know how to hurt! And I know that only by making friends with the sadness do I stand a chance of ever feeling it melt away. So I let myself love Joshua even while inhabiting the relief and terror of being on my own again. I pray for his safety and well-being with the same earnestness sometimes bordering on desperation as when he was still my partner. I will sit with the pain of releasing him for as long as it takes. Knowing that, in the end, I’m finally loving him honestly in a way I never did while we were married.

Someday I hope to crawl from the trench of these losses and finally be a renewed being. I’d like to be gracious and centered at all times, guided by wisdom and love. I’d like to look change in the eye unafraid: come on in, change! Step right up, loss and sadness and pain! You don’t scare me anymore, I am enlightened!

Until that day rolls around…I sit with the peeling off of one more layer. Hmm, wonder if this one will hurt too? Yes, yes it does. I’m gracious with that much at least. I don’t care if I’m messy as long as I’m honest and I don’t hide. I loved my mother, I loved Paige, and I love Josh. Love hurts. Healing does too. Growth is the reward… and that’s what I cling to.