Tears of Blood: Blue as me

“My grief lies all within, and these external manners of lament are merely shadows to the unseen grief that swells with silence in the tortured soul” W.S

“Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons” Pascal


Ask binlerce defa olur. “Love dies a thousand times.” Many a writers have so exquisitely detailed the pain of loss. Would we even have words to describe the pain had it not been for the ability of these writers to tell the truth in such an unabashed manner – all the while making it sound so beautiful? Perhaps there is no greater agony in life, save the loss of one’s health, than the agony of loss. The stages of grievance vary from one person to the next, but grievance follows a similar pattern. First comes, shock. This is when you find yourself acting completely out of character, a temporary case of irrationality, insanity ensues. Then comes denial. You expect to have the same routine i.e. receive emails or calls at the times you used to from your X. You delude yourself into thinking it is just a temporary stage and all will be good in a few days, weeks or even months. ‘All is good’ you reassure yourself, holding yourself tight..It is just a nightmare that has come too close to reality. A vivid one at that. We all have those. If you have already been through a major breakup before, however, you might skip this stage. Then a thought will strike you with unprecedented force: Life sucks. Thoughts of suicide might (or not) surge beneath that callous, stoic surface. But most importantly, you’ll come to a weary acceptance that this is as good as life gets. If you are a lucky soul on this earth and are surrounded with a nice cushion of family and friends, they might be able to convince you that a session or two with a shrink is in order. But if you are a member of the minority club of loners, then this will stage will lurk around in dark corners of your psyche for days on end. Bills will sit unpaid in your inbox. Some polished from your former life and some unpolished queries will hunker in the ‘queries’ folder, screaming to be be put to use. Everyone and everything will feel ephemeral, transitory, taking on surreal qualities. What you were most attached to, what gave a warm and fuzzy feeling will take on an ominous meaning. Think household pets. They will irritate you with that l’air of detachment. How could the suffering not be infectious?

You, the reader, might be wondering how came to dissect the architecture of grief so well. Psychology courses in college? Hardly, that was more than 15 years ago. It was October six years ago; fall was drifting away into an unbearable chill. I was at the end of my twenty-nineth year on the planet, and was living in the capital of murder, trying to support myself as an adjunct lecturer and teaching English to a bunch of bourgeoisie weasels from Latin America – taking part in the kind of urban life may 20 somethings find themselves in. Six years on, I still recall the heartache of discovering that he, who had been my rock, my crutch in a world I found intolerably cold, whom I thought would be a permanent fixture in my life had another life on the side. Beads of blood sweat draping my forehead, heart galloping at 200 miles, I read those carefully typed few words in his email box: “Bu gece maximumdayim” read the email. From a 19 year old.

Perhaps the greatest agony of this is the unraveling of the past before your eyes. Every heartache takes you back to the first piercing of feelings of loneliness preceded by abandonment in childhood. One by one, you relive those agonizing moments of abandonment at your most vulnerable stage. Then it strikes you that it is not just the loss of a person that you’re bleeding over, but the loss of an entire future. If future is an infinite succession of presents, then my present was my future. Dreams, goals come crumbling down at the mercy of a gigantic crane that is the dissolution of a marriage.

Then I am reminded of a passage from one of Mary Sarton’s books. Think of trees, she said, and how simply they let go, let fall the riches of a season. How without the tentacles of grief, they can let go of the brilliantly coloured leaves and sink deep into their roots for rejuvenation and sleep. “... Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go."

How I wish to be a tree now.