Into the Darkness

About a year and a half ago, things were really good in my life.  I was training for the Boston Marathon – a life-long, amazing dream that I never thought would come true – and feeling strong.  Training was going well, I liked my job working with children, my family was doing great, and I had good friends.  As I was training for the marathon, I noticed a pain in my hip that had been building for many, many months, mostly unnoticed.  It had never really bothered me before, and I just thought of it as more of an irritation.  I had run marathons before without any hip problems.  But now this hip problem was bothering me on a regular basis.  It began to affect my running and the marathon was rapidly approaching.  I lowered my expectations for my performance in the marathon, and continued training, hoping my hip wouldn’t hamper my performance too much.

Then, two days before I was to leave for Boston, I got a call from my sister in tears saying that her husband had just taken his life.  A huge, shocking, and unexpected loss.  Even though I would miss the funeral, my sister encouraged me to go to Boston.  I planned to go up and see her as soon as I got back.  I arrived in Boston on Friday, and on Saturday night, I got a call from Dave saying that my mom was in the hospital for some random stomach pain, which we quickly dismissed. Mom was healthy as a horse.  It would take more than a stomach ache to slow her down, we insisted.  Monday morning, I ran the marathon in intense hip pain which still hasn’t gone completely away.  The plane ride home was excruciatingly painful.  I hid my tears as I poured my pain into my journal.  Perhaps my marathon days were over, maybe forever.  Another loss.   

When I got home from Boston, I repacked my bags and we all drove up to see my sister.  While we were there, I discovered that the sister with whom I had always been so, so close not only didn’t need me there, she didn’t want me there.  Our friendship had deteriorated almost completely.  Heartbreaking loss. While I was there, we heard together that my mom's stomach pain was really pancreatic cancer.  She was dying, and would possibly not last two weeks.  I raced home, and mom died a week later.  Huge, huge loss.  Mom and I had become very close in my adult life.  We had become especially close in the last six years since my dad died, also of pancreatic cancer.  She was a consistent, almost daily presence in my life and now she was gone.  Over the course of the summer as we set about dealing with my parents’ estate, I discovered that I had no real close relationships with any of my siblings.  I realized that I had no real relationship with my family.  Another loss.  When school started, I went back to work as a reading interventionist.  I loved my job working with students who struggle to read.  This year we were involved in a study through the University of Utah where we taught four struggling first graders at a time in an intensive, structured, reading program.  I arrogantly dove in head first.  However, the learning curve was extremely sharp, and I was not gaining ground.  Dave pushed me to quit the study, and quit my job if necessary, since I was struggling so mightily with this new assignment.  Another possible loss.

During the next several months, I felt myself surrounded by thick mists of darkness, an intense fog.  Sometimes, it seemed so thick I could cut it with the proverbial knife.  Everything I loved to do, I couldn’t get myself to do.  Slowly, either I pushed friends away, or they left because of life circumstance.  I used to joke to Dave that I was losing thing after thing, person after person.  Finally, this last spring, I sent out the last checks to my siblings for my mother’s estate.  It was closed.  Everything about Mom’s death was now finished.  Crash!  Loss.  Concurrently, Dave and I were both very sick, causing me to lose chunks of sleep almost nightly, for several weeks.  At the same time, it felt very much like I was losing my last, closest, friend.  Unbeknownst to me, our friendship had been changing for months.  I sensed it, yet could never put my finger on what was happening.  Suddenly, it became clear that the friendship as I understood it was forever changed.  Crash!  Another loss.  

I felt completely alone outside of Dave and my kids.  And, I became terrified I was going to lose one of them next.  So much of what had happened in the last year was sudden, shocking, and beyond my control.  I felt so completely powerless. I began to have panic attacks.  I had NEVER experienced a panic attack, and certainly never expected to in this life.  I am not a worrier by nature, nor am I a fearful person AT ALL.  I run and bike by myself in the very early hours with no concern.  I travel by myself to meet friends or family, and I have no second thoughts.  But here I was having panic attacks.  It was this indescribable, helpless feeling where my heart felt like it was in a vise.  Also, irrationally, I felt like if I could just throw up the horrible pit in my stomach I would feel better.  I hadn't been sleeping because of my illness, and that continued along with difficulty eating.  The crashes meant waking up from my fog, which meant that I had to feel the intense grief of all of the losses of the last year.  It was like waking up from a numb nightmare into a waking one. I wasn’t in only darkness this time, but a crushing blackness.  When Dave would come home from work, I would, at times, collapse in his willing arms and sob. In a way that I could never have predicted, I felt weak, vulnerable, betrayed by my body, and left alone to process this grief.  Anyone who knows me will know how much I HATED feeling this way. 

I had never felt anything like this before and I was clueless as to how to proceed.  I was already doing what I thought I should be doing, all of the "church" answers:  read & study the scriptures – check, go to the temple regularly – check, pray mightily – double and triple check.  It’s a different prayer when you start “Father in Heaven” or “Heavenly Father”, and instead begin with “My God, My God, why hast though forsaken me” or, as my good friend told me, “Dad!  Help me!”  So, what now?  

First of all, in desperation, I realized I couldn’t be an independent hermit anymore. I found I had to reach out to someone, anyone.  In tears, I reached out to some of my friends that I had pushed away, and one that had pushed me away.  By reaching out, I realized two things: 1) that one good friend that felt pushed away, and was just waiting for me to reach out to her again; she has become one of the main sources of my strength and support. And 2) that another one of my good friends was in the same pit of despair as I was; I just couldn’t see or feel her because of the darkness.  We have been traveling through this journey together ever since, drawing strength from one another, “bearing each other’s burden” sometimes on a daily basis.  I also found a great new friend that said she had been wanting to reach out to me for the last few years, but wasn't sure how to go about it.  By sharing my pain, I also have been able to start reconnecting with my sister.  She and I were both very surprised to find that even though circumstances are very different for each of us, the similarities we have found have been striking.  I'm not sure we could have started the process of finding each other again if we didn't share such a painful bond.  Also, one day at work, my lack of food and sleep had caught up to me at last.  I realized if I didn't get home very soon, I was going to pass out.  One look at my supervisor told her all she needed to know, and I raced home as quickly as I could.  Luckily, I work right by my home, so I made it home just in time.  Thank goodness I didn't pass out on the sidewalk. ;)  Once I returned to work the next day, my supervisor, and friend, and another friend asked what was going on.  I finally broke down and told them what I was experiencing.  My friend told me that she experienced the same thing after her father died:  numb for a year, a crash, then overwhelming grief.  It was such a relief to hear that others had gone through a similar pattern of grief.

As I have shared my experience with these few close friends, and on a limited basis, in a Relief Society lesson, what I have discovered is that we all struggle.  We all suffer, in our own way.  Many people have come to me to tell me that they too have experienced, not my same story, but the same feelings that I have.  I have been able to relate, in a way I would never have been able to before, to feelings of intense, shocking loneliness (even in a crowd of people, or with my beautiful family), grief and loss, jealousy, to having an acute hit on my faith that I thought was rock solid. It seems that each of us have had our faith attacked at our very core, in a place none of us knew existed.  I got to experience a tiny, tiny taste of the unifying phrase, “I know what you are feeling” and “I’ve felt that exact same way myself.”  

I found myself trying to figure out what to "DO" to make these feelings go away.  I felt like I was in the middle of a "PBS Sherlock" episode.  All I needed to do was figure out what I needed to learn, or do, or understand, and the pain would go away.  End of episode, return to strength.  Hooray!  Test completed.  Much to my great dismay, other than making some changes, time seems to be the only answer to the frightening, frustrating, puzzle.

So, what has helped?  A consistent emotional connection to and from my friends, exercise - biking seems to be especially helpful, Dave's ever-willing supportive and understanding ear, and his uncanny ability to put into words what I am feeling, a slew of Ensign articles - past conference edition and monthly editions, and constant prayer.  I can say that I know I couldn’t have gotten through the most difficult times without the help of the Lord.  There were days when I would pray fervently that I could not get through THIS day without His help.  Each time, there would be just enough of the feeling of the spirit to help remind me that He was there.  He wasn’t going to take it away from me, because even though I have begged and begged, I’m guessing He knows that it is important for me to figure this out, mostly on my own.

How am I doing?  Thank you for asking. ;) I still mourn the loss of the relationships that have been damaged.  I still miss my mother (even though sometimes she drove me crazy and I probably did the same to her, let's be honest).  However, I think I'm finally improving.  I haven't had a soul-wrenching cry for almost a whole week.  Success.  Although I have had times where I have been good for days and days before regressing and have a really, really bad day.  Two steps forward, one, two, or three steps back.  A week is good, and I feel optimistic about the near future.  That doesn't mean I'm out of the woods.  That means the low-level gut ache is bearable.  I'm learning how to push through the pain.  I can even forget about it at times.  I have faith that when (and I do believe it is "when") I climb fully out of this pit and back up on solid ground, I will be stronger, wiser, more compassionate, kinder, more understanding, and ultimately more Christlike than I was before I fell off the cliff.  The hard part is, when I'm running a marathon, I always know when it will end: 26.2.  I know if I can just get there, 26.2 means release -- emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually.  This particular marathon has an end, I believe it does, but I don't know where it is, and I don't know which mile I'm currently running.  Here's hoping I just passed the 24th mile marker, and it's all downhill from here.  I just keep envisioning the finish line and hoping it will end like all of my marathons end, with me in the arms of a good, loving friend, weeping in relief.

I do have faith, I do believe.