Seeds of Beauty

My chest is heavy with grief. I often have feelings of loneliness, and yet, I’m happy being alone. What I’m learning is that the two can coexist in my heart.

My chest is heavy with grief, but I know this feeling is temporary. So I welcome the hurt. Without it I know I won’t be able to appreciate the growth on the other side.

“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out, and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”

— Cynthia Occelli

That is what I feel like.

The days are hard. Life is challenging right now, but I am the seed of tree that will one day stand tall in the amazons of life’s greatest terrors. I am grateful for this grief. It hurts like hell, but I am truly grateful.

Let me explain what has happened in the last month.

First, I learned that the company I currently work for is going to be acquired by another company. This is nothing new to me, I’ve been through a couple of these in the past. I’ve never been laid off, thank goodness, and I know I won’t be in this adventure either. However, my role, the dedication to creating it from the ground up, developing processes and enforcing a shift in mindset across the company – the fight I endured, will most likely no longer be relevant. Our new CEO and investors have a different strategy in mind. I understand the objective, but of course, we all want to know what’s in it for me.

Right now, no one can tell me.

I’m currently considered a leader, and I have a feeling that I won’t be that much longer. Now, granted, the role that I may fall into will most likely be a monetary gain, which is always great. I’m optimistic about that. But I am also one that cares less about money, and more about feeling happy in the work I do.

I’m grieving now, because I have mixed feelings. I’m grieving a loss that I may experience in losing the privileges of leadership, but I’m also satisfied moving into a position that I know I will be successful in and the freedom of not having anyone report to me, and the autonomy that comes with it. I would not be responsible for numbers, reports, or someone else’s success. I would be responsible for my own success.

I’m not sure if leadership is where I want to be. It may be my ego that is pushing me to be in that space. I’ll be 40 years old soon, and I thought I would be much higher on the food chain by now. I also feel like I should have an audacious goal to be the CEO of a company. Like I should be a powerful black woman leading the industry.

But I know with great power comes great responsibility.

The work I do is important, it’s fun, it’s challenging, it keeps my brain turning. But if I’m honest, what I want for myself is to ultimately do what I love. Write. Read. Run. Love. Travel. Tell my story in the hopes of eventually helping someone else. Protect all who will listen from getting stuck in a lifeless relationship or an abusive one – physical or mental.

I know I can’t help all, but maybe I can help one.

There is a selfish component in that too. Helping others, telling my story, also heals me. To me, that is more important than being a cog in a wheel that will keep turning whether I am a leader, a janitor, or a CEO or gone from the space entirely. We all want to feel important and needed.

Which is a perfect segway into the second thing that is causing me grief.

My marriage.

The one that still exists in my head. The perfect one. The one where I’m still allowed to love the man I met at 18 years old. The man that once needed me. The one where he is everything I ever hoped he would be. Supportive, encouraging, generous, kind to all life. One who loves unconditionally and takes responsibility for his actions. One who endures my sadness, and offers a place to land when I’m flying on the goodness of life. Someone who loves that I can take up space in a crowded room, and shrink into a small corner to recharge. One that loves that I am attractive to other men, and finds that to be desiring, and sexy because he knows my loyalty is to him alone. One that acts with integrity and honesty. One where I share inside jokes with. One who gets my goofiness, stupid jokes, and engages in my long climacticless stories. Someone who adores me, because I offer everything I want back to him as well and because I am simply a unique being in the universe – 1 of 1.

I am constantly grieving that.

And lately I’ve been feeling very lonely because not only does that man not exist in my ex-husband, but he has found someone else to love. That woman may be great. I’ve interacted with her a few times and I can tell she is a lot different than me. Which in itself is breathtaking.

Breathtaking as in the way your breath escapes you when you stub your pinky toe on the leg of a chair or coffee table. Unpleasant.

I’ve realized that she will be a part of my children’s lives whether I like it or not. OUR children. I’ve found myself grieving the territory WE once owned together. Now it’s being shared with an “outsider” and I am having a hard time accepting that. Logically, I understand the necessity and know that one day I will appreciate the extra loving hands. But right now my heart aches.

The emptiness I feel is sinkingly ugly, because I feel it unfair to experience. He was the cruel one. He was the two headed monster in my dreams. I miss him in the most complicated of ways, and I fear that I am a second thought to him now.

The thing about grief of a marriage, is that your emotions are constantly contradicting themselves. You love the person you once loved, and hate them because you once loved them.

I never want to be married to him again.

Even while I was crying myself to sleep last night, I felt a cleansing peace in knowing that I was crying for the absence of what I hoped for, and because I was crying because I know it’s healing. Not because I was in turmoil.

I welcomed the tears in my dark room, alone in my king sized bed where I sleep surrounded by pillows in the middle of my bed like a queen. I take up space in my own home in ultimate freedom. I am not shackled by the distrust, contempt and resentment I would often, sometimes daily, feel towards him.

In addition to grieving what is now out of my reach with him, I’m also grieving connection. I don’t have that right now.

My best friend is my sister and I am grateful for her. Without her, I’m not sure where I would be. She is someone I can reach out and hug, she is someone that will support whatever I’m doing. We dote on each other, encourage each other, cry together, or listen to the other cry. We have even stayed on the phone, sometimes in silence, while we work if we don’t want to be alone (we both work from home). And we also give each other the space to evolve when we need to.

I have a connection, but I feel that I need a romantic connection. The opportunity to love again.

Am I trying to fill the void? Maybe.

But I also know that ruminating on something that I cannot have with someone I once loved doesn’t help me move on. I also know that we were built for togetherness. Almost everything in this world has a counterpart. An opposite to their sex. We were meant to love and be loved by someone who will learn our crevices and kiss us in sacred places. Some to hold our hand, massage our feet, flirt and argue with. Someone who can infuriate us because they left dirty dishes on the wrong side of the sink, and yet makes us smile for the very same.

A partner!

We all need a partner in the crime and justice of life.

Let me also share, dating apps don’t really help. It’s actually very discouraging and detracts from the idea of love. The experience is unpleasant because you go in hopeful, but what comes out on the other side is almost always disappointing.

Anyway…

My heavy chest, my sinkingly ugly feelings of loneliness and lack of connection, and confusing feelings around my career exist now. They are breaking me. They are crushing the parts of my ego that I’ve been holding on to that may no longer be needed.

We break the ground when we build a beautiful home for our families. Women suffer the pain of creating and birthing a life with limitless potential. Our bodies are amazing in that pain acts as a warning system. We feel it because something isn’t functioning properly, needs attention, or repair. Our guts twist with impregnating intuition. When something feels off or unsafe, we feel some type of disruption. When we experience love and passion, we feel the flutter of butterflies that rises through our chest, pumping our heart in a romantic rhythm.

The grief I feel is a warning, a preparation that great things are inbound. It is preparing me for the beauty that will come in just living. It is teaching me how to find comfort in grief, because it will return, just like the moon and sun reliably show up every day.

I am wrapping it around me like a warm blanket – accepting it for what it is, while nurturing the seed that will explode with beauty from the destruction caused by it.

Thank you Grief.

I will always welcome your presence.