Does time really heal?
Is it healing me now?
Or is it just moving this experience from short-term memory to long-term memory?
Is that the same thing as getting better?
Or am I just starting to forget?
If I'm forgetting, why do we call that healing?
Some gentle force has arrived to start the sweeping, and organizing, and boxing up. The rawness, the insanity, the suffocating in the chest, the sitting-and-staring; the resistance to work, to health, to being part of anything else; the rejection of anything that would separate my mind from the tiny, sad, sweetness of her... these things are now scheduled for removal to long-term storage.
I remember days when I would have given anything to feel just a little better, to get out from under the fog. When I begged to have this pain taken away. Now the clean-up crew is here, and they are unwelcome.
It's not that I fear losing her. She's just as gone as ever and just as with me as ever, and nothing will ever change that. It's that I'm skeptical.
This healing process - is it for real? I mean, I know it is time to start going to the gym and eating better because it suddenly strikes me as weird and totally insane that I haven't been going to the gym or eating better. And I kind of can't believe I don't have a job. Didn't I have a job at one point? Why didn't I get a job again? Oh yeah, I know why. I should find a job. Something inside me is telling me it's time to change - and I guess that is healing.
But this passage of time? I don't trust it. The movie I'll have of this experience in my long-term memory will miss things. It won't play like a videotape. It will be imperfect. But I have to accept this. Long-term memory will let me keep functiong - instead of being how I've been for a year - remembering her birth by reliving her birth. Repeatedly. I can't keep doing that, or I'll never live anything else. But even with the post-traumatic anxiety and the guilt and the tears, I'd rather relive it, because it keeps her close. And because it keeps me from forgetting.
I think this is a special evil for the babylost--the most painful, traumatic moments of our lives coincide with the only time we got to spend with our loved, lost child. So it's hard to feel grateful when we start to feel better.
I've heard those further down the loss road talk about integration--about integrating their grief and their child into their lives as they move forward. And about how this is different from "getting over it." That makes sense to me, and it probably has something to do with time and long-term memory. But it also sounds like something that should be intentional, created with care, and maybe even have a spiritual component to it. But how does it really work? Am I integrating? Or forgetting? If the intensity is lessening, is that because on some spiritual level I am healing, or because my amygdala and other brain parts are doing memory consolidation? And does it really matter? I wish I understood better.
Time is doing it's thing. It is carrying me downstream from this experience, changing my perspective on it, changing how I think and feel my way through it. And I resent it. Which just goes to show you how insane this loss has made me: I can resent anything, and I resent Time. Time is pissing me off. Time, the great healer, has not asked for my permission to pass. How dare it! How do I know what it's up to? Maybe it's not healing me at all, just stealing my memories, which are, frankly, all I've got. Oh yeah, and some ashes. And a little pink hat, a few footprints, and a stack of unworn baby clothes.
This is, of course, all about control, and how I hate not having any. No control over losing her, no control over the grieving, and now no control over how and when I feel better. I am at some kind of transition point, and I am so uncomfortable that I'd like to crawl out of my skin. Once again, there's nothing for me to do but let time pass.
Just curious: Is time healing you? Do you believe that it will? If you feel you are healing, integrating, or even just changing, is that something that just happened to you? Or something you intentionally created? How is your patience with the process holding up these days?
Tuesday, June 1
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13 comments:
i have no patience. Time and healing can kiss my ass. The only ting that will make me better is a live little person in my arms. We are starting negotiations to that effect this weekend.
Time passing makes me itch. I have no patience, because as time passes I feel like I am going more insane with longing.
I don't believe I will ever be healed. Time has allowed me to learn to live with this fucking nightmare, but I don't think I will ever heal. I like the description of moving the pain from short term to long term memory. That makes more sense, because I can conjure acute pain pretty much at will...just think of the nurse's back as she leaves the room with her for the last time.
Your post rings very true to me, because I struggle daily with the same feelings.
Time does strange things. It lessens the ache, some, but also makes me feel farther away from my daughter. Now more than two years out there are many moments that I can hardly believe all of it happened. Distance, perception, whatever; it serves to make me feel a little bit lost. I don't know if "healing" is the right word. It just feels, different, somehow.
No advice, but know you're not the only one who feels like this.
I don't have any patience either. I also really dislike the lack of control. I actually feel better than I think I should. I think I should still be under a rock and not functioning. Everyone around me that cares says they can't believe how well I'm doing. I'm not sure it's healing, though. I think it might be numbness. Bursts of sadness and anger make it through, but for the most part I am trudging through my life with little interest. I get irritated when my husband tries to make plans. I cannot make plans. Doesn't he know that plans for hope only make it hurt worse? I feel forced into "healing". I want to stay with my son, just a little longer.
I am changed and I don't know if that means healing or integrating. Probably neither, or both.
George felt a long way off but now, going back to the same midwife and the same hospital he feels strangely close again.
I think all you can do is go with the flow.
xxx
I tend to think I'm just forgetting as time passes. Or perhaps consciously opting not to remember. I can't decide which would be worse.
When I actually think about my daughter, her body, her little limbs, her ribs that rose and fell, her blue eyes, how it felt to hold her. To think that she died. That tiny little girl of mine died, that I watched her die. I can hardly bear it. I can still scarcely believe it. Even after all the time that has passed since that day.
I don't feel healed. And yet I know I must be, just a little healed or changed. I couldn't sit here typing if I hadn't. I'm crying as I type but I'm not balled up in the corner sobbing my eyes out.
Everyone says that I'm doing better but somehow I can't imagine feeling worse. I suppose I must have done? I must have felt worse than this dull ache? Perhaps I just choose not to think about how I felt at that time either?
Tash gave a great description of how time changes thing a little while ago, that we subsume these experiences, they become a part of who we are. Perhaps that is closer to the truth of what is happening? Integration sounds a little too friendly and accepting for my liking. Subsuming sounds more like engulfing to me.
Resenting time with you Jenni. I also wish I could crawl out of my own skin from time to time. x
It will be 2 years for me on Friday and it's just as acutely painful as it was when it just happened. Granted, I don't feel devastated moment by moment anymnore, but I relive her birth and holding her afterwards, and her funeral, ALL THE TIME. I can conjure painful memories at will, and I cry daily for her. Maybe this is how I've integrated the pain of her loss into my life. But it hurts and I suspect it always will.
I feel more distance. I thought for a while I could separate out the good memories, and to a small extent I can, but to get the full intensity of the best, I have to let in the worst.
And with his third birthday, things feel different. I am more aware of the three year old he isn't, where before I was just aware my baby wasn't here. Does that make sense?
And there are still days when I stop and say, "This is my life?"
I knew from very early on "time heals all wounds" was a saying that was going to piss me off. I remember my mum saying it to me over and over (and mum has been great, truly) and I would sob back to her "no it doesn't! It just takes you further away!" It had only been a matter of days, weeks maybe, but I knew. I just knew. Time is bullshit.
I think you're right - it shifts to long term memory. And maybe we are also starting to forget a bit, too. Block things, I don't know.
Try as I might though, I can't block it all. Nor do I want to, I guess. The horror of those days is all I have of her. I can take myself back there at any given moment.
This post was brilliant. I especially loved:
"Time is doing it's thing. It is carrying me downstream from this experience, changing my perspective on it, changing how I think and feel my way through it. And I resent it. Which just goes to show you how insane this loss has made me: I can resent anything, and I resent Time. Time is pissing me off. Time, the great healer, has not asked for my permission to pass. How dare it! How do I know what it's up to? Maybe it's not healing me at all, just stealing my memories, which are, frankly, all I've got."
Love to you, Jenni.
xo
I read something someplace about how the more intense your emotions around something, the more detailed your recall from long-term memory. Which makes sense, and there is actually the amygdala has a special role in this process. There is some comfort in that, and makes the level of intense recall that we all experience possible.
I don't believe I will ever be healed either. I am permanently damaged. Living with the nightmare, yes. Being taken further away, yes. Numbness, being subsumed... it's like we need a whole new language for this.
Thank for your responses. Thinking of everyone.
beautiful post. did you submit yourself when glow called for writers? because this would fit there perfectly.
i wish time would slow down. i can't believe how much has passed since the end of november. it's terrifying to realise that next november is suddenly closer than the last one.
Seconding B. You are a wonderful writer and I would love to read you at Glow as well as here. x
Something inside me is telling me it's time to change - and I guess that is healing. -- Yes i'd say it's healing alright.
One of the most powerful things I was told was to embrace the whole grieving process - not to rush it, or question it, but to accept it. It removed a lot of the pressure I felt. As if we don't have enough deal with after the loss of a baby - we get caught up wondering if there are 'parameters' we have to abide by.
In my case, they were imposed by other people who had no business judging whether or not I was grieving 'correctly'.
If I had to answer your question about time I'd tell you that although my opinion changes often, I tend to beleive that time is more friend than foe.
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