Friday, January 17, 2014

Grief makes you crazy.

I don't even know how to describe the state I'm in right now. I want to cry and/or throw stuff and/or scream and/or burrow beneath my blankets and hide for awhile. I want people around me and/or I want to be alone. It's dizzying and completely nonsensical. I find myself labeling this state as "possibly bipolar" or "inching on borderline". When really, there's only one label that fits:

Grief.

I hate grief. It is unpredictable and isolating. It is nauseating with all of its ups and downs. It makes you push people away when you really want to hold on for dear life. It makes you rethink the world and life and all that existential crap you try so hard not to ever think about because, oh yeah, it's freaking DEPRESSING. It makes me scared, no, terrified to get closer to people, because what if I lose them, too? I couldn't bear it.

Then I hear God's voice, "Do you really trust me so little?"

You see God, it's not that I don't trust you, it's that I don't trust me. I'm the weak link in this equation. I'm the one not strong enough, brave enough, holy enough, to handle all this you gave me. You tossed one too many balls into my already shaky juggling act, and I'm just one blink away from screwing up and dropping everything.

And the panic-grief spins again.

It really makes me long for numbness, for the emotional wasteland I curl into when I'm all emotioned-out. It's a place that once held so much emotion, that it sucked all the color from the sky, all the water from the ground, and all the warmth from the sun and became a numb, empty place. Sometimes it feels good to be here, not feeling anything. But I don't feel God here, and that scares me.

I'd rather riding the crazy train of grief, yet feel God with me, than meander in the empty place all alone.

Really, I'd prefer to not have either of those states, but that's the thing with life - it was never meant to be easy. If it is easy, you're doing something wrong. You're not loving enough. You're not living enough.

And while my love for those close to me is what puts me in grief, its that same love that saves me from being a miserable wretch. Love renews and strengthens, even as the grief takes you for a ride. Love refreshes the soul, and brings light to the darkness. Because love is God.

I just need to hold onto Him until this revolving door of crazy-grief can simmer down. Actually scratch that - I need to hold onto Him always and forever.

Never let me go.