Losing Loss

I just woke up, got ready for work, read this article (the Boston Boxing and Fitness part) -- http://www.newenglandsportsmag.com/features/gonna-make-you-sweat.html -- and began to cry. I think my anxiety about letting go of Chris, and the time I have spent grieving, bubbled to the top of my consiousness and I had to let it out.

The boxing gym, at first, was a place I could go to expend some anger, punch the bags, work out to the point of complete exhaustion -- in order to kill my grief -- and feel as though I was out somehwere, instead of holed up in my apartment. The gym has always offered me a sense of community and a feeling that I ‘m working, along with everyone there, toward a common goal.

When I first joined, the one-on-one attention I received from the trainers was something I needed, something I craved, a knock-off replacement for the attention Chris provided me on a daily basis. I just needed to feel like somebody cared about me.

Reading the article reminded me about how the drill-sergeant training style made me laugh everytime I was there. The style was bizarrre to me and felt like jovial overkill, to the point where I didn’t realize, or mind, that i was being pushed far beyond any prior beliefs about where my limits lied. I loved that. I still do.

I’m moving forward. The boxing gym is old hat, now. The way I felt when I joined is fading and that fact makes me cry. What’s happening? I must be healing. Healing is painful because it denotes a parting of the familiar, a parting of helplessness, the reclaiming of a life shattered by death.

I’m finding myself simultaneously panicked and hopeful about the loss of my feelings of loss. My loss is all I have had over these past four years and, as strange as this may sound, I don’t know how to live without my loss. Loss has become love.

I guess I’ll have to replace that habit with a habit of happiness and love.

For now, I guess it’s okay for me to cry.

Fortunate

The inner-workings of the brain (I suppose ALL of the workings of the brain are “inner’) never cease to amaze me. My own nut truly is a puzzle.

I have been dating a man for the past six weeks, or so, and for the first time in a long time, I’m beginning to believe in the possibility that I could find love, again, whether with this man, or another. Love feels attainable. I really like this man, though, and he seems to really like me, too.

So, what happened? I fell asleep the other night and dreamed that the two of us were on the bus talking and laughing. Little by little, he began to change, until he got up, moved to the other side of the bus and laid down with his head in another man’s lap. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that his face was perspiring and that his face began to morph into my Chris’ face. His eyes went blank, the way Chris’ did when he died.

Neither Chris nor this man had blue eyes, but the eyes of the man in my dream were bright blue, much brighter than anything else in my dream. My analysis is that the eyes were unfamiliar and unrecognizable.

I remember being in my kitchen with Chris, near the end, and realizing that through his morphine haze (yes, he was up and walking, even then) that day would probably be the last day he would look at me and recognize me, the way he always used to.

Even though I feel very happy about this man I have just met, my brain is acutely aware of my fear of losing anybody else who enters the part of my life where love is concerned.

My fear is valid...at least 50% valid. Unless a couple dies together, one of them will definitely know the pain of losing the other, eventually.

That’s just the cycle of life.

I feel very fortunate that I am willing to go there, again. The alternative is a life spent alone.

Shneed