Big Arms Big issues

“What do you do?” “How do you stay busy?” “Aren’t you bored?” They ask, a wary look in their eyes, as if the thought of existing without a purpose linked to a paycheck is a sad, sad life indeed. I used to think so too, scoffed at the idea of a schedule-free existence, becoming a waste of space, a drain on society. And yet, I find my days filled with assignments, new deadlines, ceaseless projects. I suddenly have a new career.

What do I do?

I make coffee slowly, pouring languid circles, eyes noticing, for perhaps the first time, what the bloom looks like, noting the brown foam cresting at the surface. Stunning. I smell it, chocolate, fruit, earth. After years of rushing, I am only making coffee, not checking emails between pours, tapping out quick replies on Slack, slurping it down, and scorching my throat to jumpstart a day I’m already behind in. I pour my coffee into a mug and watch the sun climb into the sky as hot steam frames my face.

I practice yoga, in corpse pose on a blue mat I look at the ceiling, exposed timber held in place by silver nails, tendons connecting muscle to bone and creating a space for me to stretch out the ache that has made its home in my body. My mother’s death bought a house in my right hip, my divorce wrapped its way around my hamstrings, signed a lease, and tied them tight; Jason’s absence built its bed in my neck. With my heels planted firmly on the ground and hands raised high above my head, I stand tall in mountain pose to remind myself that, like those majestic peaks, I am unyielding. Everest, K2, Annapurna, Carley Faye Kammerer. Folding forward, I let the weight of it all hang loose alongside my dangling torso. I unfurl.

I visit the sauna, and I sweat. Enveloped in the sharp scent of wood and the crackle of burning stones wrapping me in a blanket of heat, I imagine my pain is a deep reservoir of metabolic waste within me. If I excrete it all, squeezing it through my pores, watching it run in rivulets down my legs and gather in a pool by my feet, I will reach the bottom. I won’t feel this bad anymore. This grief is Mariana’s trench, and I am not a skilled enough diver to find the floor.

I gulp the air. My stomach pushing out on an inhale and pulling in on the exhale. Diaphragm contracting. I’ve become aware that I haven’t breathed in decades. My anorexic lungs beg for nourishment, the clusters of grapes that form my alveoli writhing with the pleasure of a starving man receiving food. What does this do to our bodies, this withholding of breath? The world longs for a collective sigh.

I meet a friend for dinner. We sit across from each other in a dim interior, dark mahogany tables, and a leather chair that rounds its way across my fragile back. A candle flickering between us. We split a bottle of dark red wine, swapping updates and french fries, washing it down with notes of plum and cherry, reminding each other to sip water in between so our aging heads don’t ache in the morning. We gossip. Harmless snippets. “He’s really dating her.” “Did you hear my ex got married?” “Remember that time in college?” I catch myself doubling over in laughter. I slip into the moment. It feels good, these stolen moments of joy. Recollection flits around the edges of my mind, flirting with the truth. I am supposed to be crying, instead I allow myself the luxury of sinking into the night, lulled by the clanking dishes and background chatter filling the air, my friend’s smile, and the liquor. I’ll remember soon, but for now, I forget. 

I create. Writing without the need to achieve, to be compensated, to be the best. My life is no longer a competition I need to win. There is no prize for the words I pen, other than a testament to the life I’ve lived and the love I won’t forget. I’ve written 100,000 words, enough to fill the pages of a book, because I have so much to say and the person I want to say it to is the reason I am writing. It is nice, this way of being that does not hinge on “well done,” headlines plastered above a headshot, or endless accolades that never satiate me. Sometimes, I google my name and see the old me, but I don’t recognize her. I think about deleting all her pictures and disappearing, unable to live under that pressure that pushes on my lungs like the warm Indonesian water when I was 40 feet under.

I read books, fairytales only. No more manuals on how to grow a business or lead a team. I’ve thrown out the “how to’s” and blueprints for success. I lose myself in tales about other people in other worlds with other problems. Letting words and stories exist for the sheer joy of it, no other purpose than that, letting myself exist for the sheer joy of it. I have no purpose other than to be.

I read my Bible. Why? I don’t know. My relationship with God is at a stalemate. I can neither bring myself to hate him nor to love him. We co-exist in a silence that shouts, passionate lovers who have cooled into roommates. Perhaps it is the ritual of it. Since I was a crooked-toothed child with glasses larger than my face, my days have started like this. Coffee. Bible. Journal. I could no sooner break out of that habit than I could have reversed the course of events that put me here into this space, pregnant with sorrow. So I listen and then write, repeating myself but never finding an answer. Why me? Why Jason? Why this? Will I ever be happy? Why does everyone leave? Why do you hate me? Why does everyone else get what I want? Why do I work so hard for you but get nothing in return? Take me, not him. Black, angry ink against white, creamy pages, the same words, different days. 

I stand in the middle of my living room and let out a yawn that becomes a half groan, half shriek. With every breath, I seem to exorcize something important out of my being. It’s less grief, more rage. Rage at the unfairness of my life, at the friends who still get moms and husbands and children to tuck in at night, at the injustice of my cruel ex-husband getting remarried while my second chance has ended somehow worse than my first. It tastes good to scream; we should all do it more often. 

I go to regular therapy. It is there that grief makes herself most known. I sink into her for 50 minutes every week in that sacred time, letting her wash over me, losing myself in the abyss. I’ve learned by now that I can’t stop grief, I can only carry it, so I let her have her say when she violently forces her way through my ripped tear ducts, beating against my cheeks. I hold her. There is nothing else to do with her other than befriend her and let her remind me that what I had is worth crying for. By the time my therapist says “see you next week”, I’m desperate to pluck my eyeballs out and massage them. I wish I could wrap them up and put them to bed; they are so weary.

I go to trauma therapy. It is there I sit on a lifeless grey couch surrounded by dull looking books titled things like “The Body keeps the Score” and “Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing,” holding two buzzers in my hand. Bzzzzzzz. I dig into the darkest corners of my brain to bring out the memories I buried, the ones that threaten to undo me. Bzzzzzzz. I let myself be overwhelmed by panic, despair, fear, and the crushing weight of my powerlessness. Bzzzzzz I rewrite the script, changing the finger that points to me in accusation and declares me guilty to one of acceptance for so much that I cannot control. In the safety of a little office space in uptown, I force myself to remember. The only way out is through, they say. I haven’t found my way out yet.

I reassemble myself. I get massages where they dig their palms deep into my back and ask “what happened?” “Grief” I say. They nod, these healers who deeply understand that my body is a book their fingers can read, each knot telling a story, chapter after chapter of loss, ache and suffering. There is no happy ending, but each week they try to sculpt a new tale out of my spine. My chiropractor pulls and presses into my bones in a weekly standoff with my neck, which refuses to budge, clinging so tightly to its memories, protecting me, even though the threat is long gone. Sometimes I fear she’ll snap it clean in two, sometimes I realize I wouldn’t care.

I research, reading about my new ugly labels, Depression, PTSD, learning how others have lived with them. I try to force myself to do at least two things a day, even though all I want is to lie on the couch and feel the sun rise and set on my face without caring about where the time has gone. When I crawl into bed at night, I whisper “good job” because making it through another twenty-four hours is a victory all of its own.

It turns out I am not unemployed after all. No, I have a full-time job and I am working overtime. Clocking in and out every day on the same overworked timecard. Eying up the clock, longing for quitting time, but knowing I have hours, days, months, years left before it hits 5 pm and I can go home. My new boss is more exacting, demanding and punishing than all the rest.

Her name is healing.