the water room
Image by Kazuend
Eight months since Jim died. I am two-thirds up the mountain of the first year.
Two consistently vulnerable moments every day are when I go to sleep and when I wake up.
So at those times, as soon as I feel the sadness or anxiety come up I just tell myself: You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay.
It seems to help.
Other than that, it’s just constant learning. Letting myself sometimes have that cry, like last Sunday night, right before bed, brushing my teeth in the bathroom—I felt a wave of grief come over me (the one that had been nibbling at me all day) and just thought: Okay. I sobbed really hard for five minutes and then, surprisingly, instead of going down the rabbit hole of devastation, I just got back in bed and went to sleep.
And seriously, what is it about grief and the bathroom? I theorize that the bathroom is the water room in the house. Showers and tears; water swirling down drains; you, naked and sitting on the bath mat wrapped in your towel; you, listening to the rain; you, cleansed, by rivers; you, finding oceans upon oceans inside your heart—open to more pain than you ever thought you could know.
On Monday night at bedtime, bedtime being the time I always seem to reckon with the “what is” of my life and see if I can go to sleep feeling decent about where I am, or better yet, looking forward to something the next day, I had this thought: You need to let go more. Let go. Let go. Let go.
And: You need to move forward with your creativity. This is life for you. Whatever it takes. Whatever support you need. You are going to go get that and your are going to move forward.
So many times the past few months I have gotten to a little empty space in my calendar thinking “Oh good, now I am going to get back to my next monologue,” and then I have just felt too depressed, depleted, and alone to write.
Words have come in fits and starts, but I can’t seem to get where I want to go. Or I have ideas about the piece, and then I feel lost in a swirl of possibilities and indecision. It has been a bit maddening.
It’s harder without Jim. He was always there with every step of my every day. He was my creative champion. Every artist should have someone like this in their life—their own personal patron saint who continually blesses them with the holy water of love and faith.
But that grit, that determination, that came into my mind Monday night this past week, it has made a difference.
Ever since then, I kind of have got back to work.
The ice is beginning to thaw and groan and crack. Rivulets of water are making their way.
It’s been a happy week.
It is a day-by-day process.
I just keep saying: You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay.