grief subsiding

acceptance dot dot dot question mark

I wake up late, as usual, and my best friend calls me and she already knows what I’m doing and I laugh asking, how did you know that? She says, it’s in the way you took a breath. She says it’s a beautiful day, and I look outside of my window and yes, it is a beautiful day. What a beautiful day that would be wasted if I went to the Upper West Side. I get in my car and I drive down Jamaica Ave and a car tries to turn onto my lane when it’s my green light. I honk once. I honk twice. I honk thrice.

My best friend makes daal like my mom does. She makes badhacopi bhaji like my mom does. There is nothing warmer than homecooked Bangladeshi food. I am looking through videos to edit. I am taking pictures of flowers that look prettier as they’ve aged. I am having banana bread with a glass of milk.

At the gym I prepare myself to have a poor workout because it’s been months since I’ve been to a proper class. But I surprise myself. My best friend looks at me, she asks, are you high? I say no but I do feel a rush of energy. I feel locked in. Even after the session is over I keep jumping up and down in place, unexpectedly bubbly, and I ask my friend, why do I have so much energy all of a sudden?

Home alone. Therapy at 12. I am wondering about parents. I am wondering about parenthood. I am wondering what happens when a parent doesn’t listen. Is it hard to listen? Is it an intention not to listen? How can we be grateful for their sacrifices but also hold them accountability for their shortcomings? I ask my therapist questions. She says we will ask a lot of questions that don’t have answers.

But she also says, it will never be the way you want it to be.

It’s like ordering food at a restaurant that won’t make your order.

I ask, okay. So I was at this first restaurant for a while. I had some of the food, didn’t like it. Then, I left the restaurant. I got to a new restaurant. And the chef said, ‘yeah, maybe I’ll make something you like.’ But they don’t know how. They try, they fail, then they just serve me food that they like. Then they don’t let me leave. Why did I go from that restaurant, to this one? Did the service from the last restaurant condition me to accept the same treatment in this one? I’m still stuck in the restaurant!

My therapist laughs.

I say, he did try to make me happy once. Is it possible to hold the anger at all of his horrible behavior—but also hold separately the moments where he did try to make me feel happy? Because he did—he made me happier than I had ever been, before.

She says, that’s how a narcissist traps you. An intermittent cycling of good and bad.

I sigh.

It is easy to label things now. There is no self-gaslighting now. It is what it is, and it will have never not happened. He is what he is and it’s not mine to carry anymore. I’m chucking the baton of his burdens at his head and he can do whatever he wants with it now.

How to move forward?

She continues, there will come times when you add more things to your life, things that happen to you that you will want to hold onto. It’s okay if you want to hold onto certain things, but one day you might not have a need to. you can let newer experiences in.

He is fading. I don’t remember what his voice sounds like.

I am singing Defying Gravity in my bathroom, checking the shower temp to make sure it is perfectly warm enough, realizing that I can, in fact, do the Cynthia Erivo riff. I surprise myself more than I should. I forgot I was a classically trained singer. I feel like I am rediscovering versions of myself I haven’t seen in a very long time. I am noticing a correlation between my ability to sing without embarrassment and how far I’ve come in recovery. I don’t want my whole life to be about my recovery.

I ask my therapist, I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to ask you and how much you’re allowed to answer. She grins, says, I make my own rules. So I ask her about her own parents. I ask her, how do you know how much you can forgive and how much you can’t forgive?

She is taken aback.

What a good question, she says, and again, there is no perfect answer.