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I wasn't completely honest with you today.
I tried to write a chirpy post about my weekend in my usual way, but as soon as I clicked "publish", I felt like a fraud. I wasn't telling the whole truth.
The truth is, a friend of mine died this past weekend in tragic, terrible circumstances. And I am reeling from her death.
I am moving through the thickness of grief, as if it were gelatin and my arms and legs are stuck in it.
Tributes to her are pouring in on Facebook and I cannot focus. I cannot level my gaze to that space that demands complete concentration and awareness because that's when I feel pain. And I don't want to feel the sharpness of pain. Just the dull, round edge, like the metal bars you hold on to when you're on the bus.
That kind of pain is okay.
And then I went to yoga today - mostly because I needed to use up my pass before it expires on Thursday (but also because I'm eating out every night this week and I need the exercise). And we began the class on our backs, in savasana. Corpse pose. Feet turned slightly outward, palms up, arms slightly away from the body, face relaxed. And as we lay there, taking deep breaths in and letting them out through our mouths, the teacher began to talk about our lungs. How our lungs hold our emotions. How our lungs, specifically, hold grief. And how, as we allow that grief to rise to the surface, we also allow our anxieties to be released.
So I breathed in through my nose, and cried silently on my mat.
How can we navigate through this thickness of grief? This fog that makes us dumb and silent?
How do we survive an absence that is permanent? How can we convince ourselves that this is real? That this is the truth? That this is not a joke?
How?
