Letting the Grief Flow
Image ID: a green bowl filled with water and slips of pink paper with writing on them sits on top of a wooden picnic table.
Content Note: discussions of rape, problematic substance use, and sexual assault.
This weekend I went to the water to perform a ritual for the New Moon in Cancer. Inside of my journal were eighteen slips of pink paper, each holding an old belief on love, intimacy, and connection that one of my parts still clings to. They’ve been sitting in my journal for almost two months now. I’ve been waiting for the right moment to release them.
In my last therapy session, my therapist told me “When we get stuck in the limiting beliefs, grief doesn’t get to flow.” I’ve been sitting with the weight of this realization. I know that I’m ready to let go of these old beliefs, but my parts (fight, flight, freeze, submit, and attach-cry) aren’t as ready as I am. Because they know that when we let go of old beliefs, we come face to face with the grief of holding those beliefs for as long as we did, and the grief of whatever events led to us creating those beliefs to begin with. It’s a doubled mourning. And I can understand why these parts are terrified to let the water of my grief flow.
Something inside of me knows that I must return these beliefs to the water, that the water itself can hold them for me now. And so I walk down to Lake Ontario with a dear friend, and along the way we find the most magic picnic table, covered by trees, where we can look out upon the water. I take this green glass bowl that I thrifted down to the water, fill it with water, and place it upon the table. I then bring out the eighteen slips of paper and I read each one out loud.
I let go of the belief that I will be alone forever.
I let go of the belief that “they’re never coming back.”
I let go of the belief that intimacy/love = grief/loss
I let go of the belief that no one is safe, not even myself.
I let go of the belief that I must push others away before they push me away.
After I read each one aloud, I place it gently into the water. And soon I have a bowl of pink slips curling in on each other, as though they’re some eighteen-legged sea creature holding and caressing each of its limbs. When I’m done, I thank these beliefs for all that they did to keep me safe for so long and I release them to the water.
Of course, letting go of old beliefs is never as simple as a singular act. It is a practice. Imagine that you walk across a field to get to school everyday. Intuitively, your body will take the same path each time. It takes a while before the grass, once standing, succumbs to the weight of your feet. Eventually, the grass vanishes, and a dirt path takes it place. The more you walk that path, the bigger and deeper the path becomes. Let’s say one day, after all of these years, you decide that you want to create a new path. For the first couple of days, you remember your intention to walk this new path. But on the fourth day, you find yourself back in your old path and you’re not sure why. Muscle memory. Despite your desire to create a new path, your brain is wired towards the familiar.
When I think about healing all of the trauma I hold around sexuality and intimacy and love, it’s like a pathway I’ve taken for over twenty years of my life. Both literally and figuratively. As our brains develop, we create neural pathways that tell us how to act. The great news about our brains is that their plasticity makes it possible to create new neural pathways throughout our life. If I’m working with twenty years of conditioning, then it’s going to take a lot longer than I’d like to see those changes really stick. Sometimes I feel deeply frustrated by this reality. And then I remind myself that I’m practicing something new. It will take time, but with practice, I will see things start to shift. And I have.
I offer myself these reminders when I wake up this morning with an old belief crashing up against the shore of my mind: “everyone else gets to have emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy. Except you.” I’ve recently come to realize that some part or parts of me do not believe that I can have emotional and sexual intimacy at the same time. This belief makes sense given my history. At fourteen, I was raped by an older boy, who went on to tell everyone that we’d had sex. His words spread like wildfire and I entered high school alone, abandoned by my best friends.
Desperate for connection, and unable to process what had happened to me, I sought out similar experiences again and again. I’d get high so that I could dissociate, and I’d hover above my body as some new boy used my body for his own pleasure. At the time, I believed that I was getting intimacy. But I was accustomed to accepting whatever scraps of connection I was offered. It would be hard to say that all of the sex I had throughout high school was consensual. I was either too high or too drunk or both to really consent to what was happening. There is so much grief underneath this realization.
As an adult, I’d continue this pattern. I’d entered relationships with men who’d abuse me, sexually, emotionally, physically. Eventually, I’d get sober and I’d start therapy. The last relationship I was in was so emotionally abusive that something in my broke. I was no longer able to be the super high functioning student I’d always been. My night terrors increased. Panic attacks were a daily occurrence. When I started therapy, I had an epiphany that would make Freud so happy: all of the boys and men I’d been with were either just like my father — incapable of expressing emotion and supporting me emotionally — or my brother — emotionally volatile.
After that realization, and the end of the last abusive partnership I’d be in, something shifted. I started a relationship with someone who could feel his feelings and hold space for mine. And I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, because surely this couldn’t last. While our partnership lasted almost four years, I’d look back on it later and realize that so much was kept from me. I received more emotional intimacy than I’d ever had before. But it still was so much less than I deserved. I was still surviving on scraps.
I have yet to have a partnership where sexual intimacy and emotional intimacy are present. My current partnerships are platonic. I desire non-platonic intimacy so greatly, and yet it hasn’t found its way to me yet. Over the past year, I’ve had two sexual encounters. Neither of them worked out well. Both partners were unable to show up emotionally when I needed them to. One got abusive. The other one disappeared. I’m trying to not look at those attempts at non-platonic intimacy as failures, as some evidence that I’m cursed to repeat my pattern again and again. But I can hear my different parts screaming “See! See! This is what happens when you try to have both!”
I hear them scream and I know that they’re just trying to protect me from my grief. Oh, so much grief. The grief that a fourteen-year old was raped and then slut shamed for it. The grief that teenage me did not recognize how lovable they were, and so they gave themselves away over and over to boys who didn’t deserve them. The grief for the string of abusive partnerships that young adult me thought were love. The grief that we live in a world that teaches boys to take what they want from girls and women. The grief that I hold within me so many sad, sad stories about love and intimacy and connection.
I’m trying to let this grief flow. My therapist reminds me that the grief feels so much bigger than it actually is. Because as adults we’re so much bigger than our younger selves. We can hold the grief now. And, if we’re lucky, we have humans in our lives that can hold it with us. I’m grateful that I no longer have to be alone with my grief. And so I sit here, and I let myself feel the tears that run down my cheeks. I place my hands over my heart and I let these younger parts of me know how sorry I am for all that they went through in the name of connection. I let the grief flow.
Image ID: a photograph of Margeaux walking back from the lake with a bowl of water in their right hand, as their left hand holds up their dress. They’ve got a smile on their face and behind them is the sparkly blue lack and in front of them is a shoreline covered in rocks.
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