The Beast Inside
I have been wrestling with an ugly beast. For a while it bided its time, pacing behind bars, gathering strength until finally, a few days ago, it broke free.
I’ve always thought of myself as a relatively calm, mild-mannered person, but this week my anger was unleashed. I have wanted to hurl plates, kick the cat and find a tall lonely spot to scream at the sky. No one has been safe from my rage. Not the call centre workers I am endlessly on hold to, nor the friends and loved ones dipping in and out of our pain. Not even Matt. Quite frankly, I have been angry at the world and raging at the seeming unfairness of this situation: it just wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Last week I read On Grief and Grieving by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, which details the author’s infamous ‘five stages’ model of grief. Anger is one of Kübler’s stages, and while I welcome the idea of ‘progression’, I do not find the emotion an easy companion. Anger feels like a misdirection of my energy – a negative descent into the realms of self-pity. I am horrible to be around. My broken heart is leaking venom. I am no longer the wise old lady tending her garden that I wrote about a few weeks ago, but rather a petulant, self-absorbed teenager, stomping resentfully through this new life. Or, in my lowest moments, I’m an embittered old crone sitting alone in the twilight of her life, muttering profanities at the universe. Whoever told me it would get worse before it gets better was right. Dammit.
The counsellor who teaches me about mindfulness tells me that anger is a valid emotion. Who wouldn’t be angry? She reminds me to be gentle with myself – to be self-compassionate and kind. And frankly, even while I rage and berate the unfairness of Matt’s death and its impact upon our family, there is still the small, defeated voice in my head whispering: Why not us? Why not Matt’s death? We were not so very special … and the only thing we can be certain of in this life is that death will claim us all, at some point. Perhaps it was better this way – to lose love while it was still whole and beautiful – before damage could be done – before we could hurt or disappoint each other?
Still, when the red haze descends, it fills me up. It threatens to pull me apart at the seams and it needs release. Writing helps a little. I am filling pages of my journal with scrawled words, my hand cramping around the pen. And I think that’s why I keep posting here, too. At other times the urge to flee the house is overwhelming. I put my trainers and headphones on and head outside to stimulate some serotonin. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Running was something Matt loved and so it brings its own kind of pain – not just the pain of physical exertion but an emotional response too. To feel my heart pounding in my chest and my lungs burning can serve as a reminder of how alive I am when Matt is not. So when the running fails, I sit instead. I have a secret spot, a sheltered slab of sandstone positioned beside the harbour where I can watch the sunlight playing upon the water, the ferries navigating their way between stops and the dragonflies skimming the waves. It’s hard to appreciate beauty when you long to share it with someone whom you no longer can; but it’s still beauty, and the tears always dry – eventually.
Then, unexpectedly, a moment arrives as it did yesterday morning: my children sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast, me packing my son’s lunchbox and trying to hold back the tears that had begun to flow. I’d thought I was being discrete, but the kids must have noticed my distress because, wordlessly, they left the table and came to hug me; and for just a minute we were a three, adrift on the kitchen floor, clinging to each other in a fierce bundle. It was quite a moment. Powerful not only for the fact it reminded me how amazing they are – so young and yet so full of empathy – so full of their father’s love – but also because it felt for a fleeting second or two that we were no longer a three – but a four again, wrapped in Matt’s strong arms. And let me tell you, it’s hard to sustain the anger when a moment like that comes along and melts you to your hard, bitter core.