The Hum of an Air Conditioner

Yesterday, my therapist told me that grief is like the hum of an air conditioner.  Sometimes it's white noise in the background you don't notice.  Other times it is so loud you can't sleep at night.

I've been a bit frustrated that a year and a half in I still get moments of overwhelm at the anger, grief, sadness, etc. to the point where it does affect my sleep.  The nighttime hours are the hardest.  I thought I would be past that point.

She also reminded me of my delayed reaction to it all.  It was as recently as last week that bricks were still falling on me, another really good analogy she used.  There were all these things he did that I suspect my body knew and held in even though my mind did not accept, so they became these bricks suspended above me, ready to fall only when I finally recognized the harm each act did to me.  The gray car is one such brick that I feel has hit me several times as I unfold the layers to it and how interwoven it was throughout the length of my entire marriage.  Bricks probably aren't done falling so how can I expect to be past it?

Maybe the deception of myself was as great as his deception of me which makes it all that much harder to untangle and heal from.

Then on the flip side of that when the moment comes to do some sort of ritual to release some of it, the hum is so faint that the ritual has become unimportant.  In those moments, I don't even notice the grief as I live the quite amazing life I've built.

I suppose it is not the absence of my grief that I should use to track my progress but instead the fullness of the life I move forward into.  The goal isn't to eliminate the difficult feelings.  It is to make something great of them.  To grow.  To do better.  To develop deeper connections.  To build stronger.  To live.