Moving Further Forward

Sunday June 1, 2014

That illustrious time has come around.  It is June again.  And this time around I am intending it to be much less painfully eventful compared to last year.  June, 2013 was made quite memorable by virtue of all the unnecessary drama I experienced with regards to my health as well as a dispute I had with a local organization’s leadership that first began last June.  I wish this summer to be a memorable one but not by virtue of unneeded drama.  It is my desire to make this summer the best one of my life.  I believe I have a good chance of making this come true.  I already have this particular distinct advantage: I am in treatment to address the issues of what I would call my ‘deep past’…and the treatment has generally been going well.  I am quite likely in the best health of my life now.

As I sat in my friend Bryan’s car on the way back to Minneapolis this past Tuesday I found myself feeling drowsy.  In a state of heightened relaxation it seemed as if I was walking into that tender wound from when I was eight years old.  It was that wound that came to be after my father was nearly murdered.  The wound was a wound of grief, fear and sadness.  And the wound was based in the distorted yet comprehensible belief that I would not live to see the age of nine years old.  Grief is quite a burden for an eight year old to carry around.

It has become clear as I have walked this journey of recovery for nearly a year that grief has been at the core of the wounds I experienced in my childhood.  Unresolved grief haunted me for so long.  I can take some consolation in knowing I am not alone in this experience.  Some people experience grief that can never be fully resolved because the loss that produces the grief is one whose circumstances, despite all efforts to the contrary, can never be fully clarified or understood.  I think it only natural that we humans attempt to make some rational sense of loss…even when doing so is quite simply not possible.

As I noted in a recent daily post last summer was a summer in which I felt predominantly angry.  I was angered by my father’s inability to be available to my grief.  It quite naturally triggered the unresolved grief I felt from early in my childhood. 

I feel profoundly different as this summer season begins.  My anger is essentially long gone.  With this volatile layer removed I can now gaze at what was underneath.  What was underneath was an immense amount of grief.  And I hope one day I will find what is underneath the grief.  I don’t know when that will happen exactly.  I have set a goal for reaching that milestone.  I suppose it is fairly realistic.  Time will tell in that regard.  June, 1982 was a time of immense trauma for me.  June, 2013 was also quite painful.  I sense that June, 2014 will be much, much better.