A Series of Unnamed Griefs, pt. 2

[Second unnamed non-death grief]

n. a second growing-up, a reckoning, a barely-life crisis, a late-stage blossoming, a disoriented emergence from the chrysalis, the baggage that comes with a second chance, the not-childhood and not-adolescence and not-adulthood, the feeling of awakening from a long slumber and not knowing the room you’ve found yourself in, a grief that asks: “What do I do now? What do I want from life now that I have to live it?”

When I was a teen, I thought I would die young. I’m still unsure where this belief originated, but I have my guesses of how it was left to grow. I was born on the coattails of the death of my grandfather, born into grief. I was raised by caregivers who suffered mental illnesses, and experienced my own. Now in my 30’s, it feels as though life has just begun, or even started over.

I have loved ones who, after experiencing passive or active suicidality in youth, are staring down their 30’s and 40’s, asking themselves how they’re supposed to do this when they did not expect to live this long. They traversed that ambiguous concept that is The Future, and are now having to figure out who they are, what they want. The trajectory of their early lives catered to a singular goal: survive. That’s it.

But what comes after survival?

The fact that life could be just beginning is exciting and it hurts that it’s taken so much time. It’s a longing for those lost years. That they could have been spent building. That there could be another version of you who never had to experience the hard things that happened, and that you’ll never get to know what that version looks like. If only you would have gotten what you needed then, to have the safety, the courage, the stability, to begin.

It’s grief for the disorientation of being dropped into a phase of life where you are “supposed” to have it all together by now. It is time to make decisions, so many decisions. Now you know that future-you exists, you must care for them. Life isn’t supposed to be a race, but what about the fact that some people got a head start?

What does it take to design a life you never expected you’d live to see? What can be harvested from those survival years?

A Poem

Be like a bear in the forest of yourself.
Even sleeping you are powerful in your breath.
Every hair has life
and standing, as you do, swaying
from one foot to the other
all the forest stands with you.
Each minute sound, one after another,
is distinct in your ear. Here
in the blur of mixed sensations, you can
feel the crisp outline of being, particulate.
Great as you are, huge as you are and
growling like the deepest drum,
the continual vibration that makes music
what it is,
not some light stone skipped on the surface of things,
you travel below
sounding the depths where only the dauntless go.
Be like the bear and
do not forget
how you rounded your
massive shape over the just ripened
berry which burst
in your mouth that moment
how you rolled in
the wet grass, cool and silvery, mingling
with your sensate skin,
how you shut
your eyes and swam far and farther
still, starlight
shaping itself to your body,
starship rocking the grand, slow waves
under the white trees, in the
snowy night.

Susan Griffin, “Great As You Are”