Compassion Spring 2022

Spring 2022 - Compassion | www.tcf.org.uk 22 Ok, here’s the bit that I don’t quite understand. I reflected afterwards that I was pleased that I could still feel. Does that make sense? “But you were feeling pain mum.” Yes, and my reaction was very extreme but I was pleased to have had it. And I kind of understand it. I spend so much of my life now trying not to feel. I sometimes think that I’m becoming numb to so much. Other people react to things that I just can’t react to in the same way and things just seem so superficial sometimes. It was strangely comforting to know that I could still exhibit emotions that way. “Ok. Anything else?” Yes, and this bit is a little more complicated. I was relieved that I could still cry that way over losing you. In the beginning, I cried all the time. And of course we all know that grief is an expression of love and all of that but at least we understand that bit. Later, as the anguish subsides a little and you become acclimatised, sometimes, you stop in your tracks and realise that you haven’t cried today, or this week, or this month and then…well then you start to wonder why. How? How can you have stopped feeling that howling visceral pain? And if that pain is an expression of love, does not crying every day mean that you are leaving your child behind in some way? How do you get used to living with the loss to the point that you are functioning? How to you take your place in the world and appear normal when there is nothing about your life that bears any resemblance to normality. Am I making sense? “To some people, very probably mum.” I think what I’m saying is that I have been on planet grief for so long now that it feels as though the mask that I used to hide the pain is now a permanent fixture. Not a mask anymore but it has fused into me and I don’t even bother to take it off. I sometimes don’t even know which is me and which is the mask! So when I started to feel that raw pain again, I found me. It was real. And however ugly and awful and frightening, it was true me. I was feeling. I was free to release it all over again. Even if it was painful, it was normal. There, I’ve said it. It made me feel normal for a bit. And I’m glad. I don’t want to become so desensitised that I can’t feel pain because then obviously…..