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.