Everything Changes

Everything has changed. As they say, "nothing stays the same." The air drifts, but there's no time or flavor left in it. Heartache is a flavor, that sits on the back of the tongue, and constricts the top of the throat. Memory? Well, memory is the only place where I can hold you now, and memory has a presence that leaves my chest robbed and empty. Day after day, after day; where I go, there you go too. Everything has changed because in every fucking thing, I see you...

The number One most devastating event we can experience as human beings is the loss of our loved ones... No matter what we have going on, or how busy our lives become, nothing can put a full stop to life like the death of those dearest to us. There is no consolation for grief. There is no secret switch to turn the pain off, or proven ten-step program to moving on. Even if there was, we wouldn't choose to, because in our grief we are able to hold on to them, just a little bit longer. Nothing is more painful than trying to let go when everything inside of you is anchored to that which you are trying to let go of.

Death is as real as life gets.When confronted by the death of someone close to us, we are forced to examine ourselves and our lives. We are forced to examine and separate that which is meaningful, from that which is not. This is why life can turn on its head, as the entire world seems to flip upside down, and turn inside out on us. The true value someone holds in your life is made blatantly obvious in the hole they leave behind. That hole, that immutable yearning, is what we know as Love.

Love is a four letter word that we often throw around loosely. There are varying degrees of love perhaps, but there is nothing quite like the love we have for those that brought happiness into our lives, and then departed from them, leaving no trail for us to follow. Love is the reason for our grief. Love is the pain of a broken heart.

Love has no "on" or "off" button. We don't choose to love, or choose not to love... We love because we cannot resist doing so... We love because we cannot help but to love... It is OUR Ideal Nature; to make the connection of LOVE. Love overcomes all things, even our selves in our deepest moments of grief. The tears, the weeping, the wailing that may occur at all of hours of night; that is our Love... The pain, the suffering; even these are manifestations of our deepest Love.

We spend our days going in and out of each other's lives; at home, at the office, at school, at work, at a ballgame, at the movies, shopping, vacationing. We all know that anything can happen at any time, but there really is no way to prepare or to expect the unexpected. One day we are here, the next we are not. We often don't realize the extent of how much people mean to us, because while our conscious minds are busy managing our day to day events, it is our subconscious framework that becomes intertwined like a tapestry of relationships, weaving itself in with the tapestries of others. At a subconscious level, we can be so tightly drawn together that the abrupt removal of one tapestry cannot occur without disrupting the entire framework of the others it has been woven with. That entire framework is our personal "reality."

Grieving is a natural process. It can last anywhere from days, to weeks, to months, to years, depending on how close the individual is to you. Some spend a lifetime in mourning. The danger that lies in grief, is that it can, in fact, crush the wind from anyone's sails. The framework of our reality within can be so frayed and torn apart that functioning with simple day to day tasks can become daunting mountains of responsibility. Some never even make it out of bed. How we cope with these feelings of grief and remorse can deeply affect the way we lead or don't lead the rest of our lives.

On June 6, 2012; a 22-year-old friend and co-worker fell 65 feet to concrete right before my eyes. I held his head in my hands and talked to him in what would be some of his final moments. What was likely twenty to thirty minutes felt like hours as we waited for the paramedic helicopter to arrive, but he was already losing consciousness and life, fast! Nothing can prepare you for that moment when someone you know is fighting for their life, and the only aid you can offer is the sound of your own voice... I told him All that I could think of to tell him. He was loved, I let him know that he was loved... He died that Wednesday morning and the effects of that moment went on to shatter my sense of reality for many years to come.

I attempted to bury my grief, and the trauma of the incident for several years, as many of us do in these situations. What I found, of course, is that this single moment in time kept resurfacing in different ways. At its worst, there became viable physical hallucinations, and a sense of fractured personalities presenting themselves and shifting in rotation in as little as a few hours at a time. At one point in 2015, I could describe myself as "a pendulum that would swing from being ok, into a deep lull or sadness, into a violent and uncontrollable rage, back into an exhausted sadness, and then up into being ok again. This swing could happen completely and as intense as the moment of the incident itself and within less than a couple hours time. This would repeat itself daily like I was on a wheel. Day in and day out, these mood swings were coupled with and often triggered by physical hallucinations, which I knew weren't real, but what is more terrifying than seeing what you know is not real right in front of you?! There is a saying, "an issue or a problem will present itself many times, until the lesson is learned." It became a thing to say to my therapists, "He fell once, I've fallen a thousand times," meaning my mind was going on and on like a broken record. I was continually replaying the incident in my mind, reliving it, unwilling to let go. I had a promise to keep, "I won't lay your head down." But what did that promise really mean, and how was it actually affecting my mental and physical health?

It took a solid four years to mentally process what had transpired in less than thirty minutes. The grief I endured, I would endure inevitably if it could somehow revoke the event and the process he endured. The reality is, no compromise can be made. There is no consolation for grief. There is no consolation for the grieving.

The reason I am relating this story to you is because it taught me some very valuable lessons about life, death, and about love. Since the date of "Lucy's" death, I've lost many other friends and family. I've been to more funerals in the past few years than I'd care to admit. I know what it's like to wake up every day, and as the light enters the room, so does the pain in your chest knowing that this isn't a dream, that the reality of tragedy has already been long in motion, replaying day after day, after day... These are the days of "our minds."

"Trauma" and "Grief" are two separate things, but when coupled together, they can leave a devastating impression on the psyche. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), can both stem from the effects of experiencing trauma. If you or anyone you know is struggling with the effects of trauma in their lives, it is vital to reach out to them or to offer a source which can support such specific needs. We are not alone in our minds! That must be known to all of us right now, we are all in here within this collective consciousness together; whether we realize it or not. You are not alone in this experience. No one knows what you have specifically endured, but the way in which the human mind works is reflected the same in all of us.

The greatest difficulty I had in dealing with these events was finding someone who could relate to such things which others rightfully found too intense to hear. I spent the next several years looking for a way out of that pain. I found it, but it wasn't in any therapist's office. The answer had been within me all along. The answer lies within you.

What I have personally taken from this experience, is that in either case, grief or trauma; support may be a defining shift from losing yourself and giving up, to getting up and trying again another day.Everyone deserves that possibility. As you live, those you grieve for live on through you. The answer lies in living. The answer lies in Life. The answer lies in giving yourself, to every day, to every moment. To getting up before the sun comes up, and saying, "This is for you"... One day that sun will rise, and every individual on this planet now will be gone from it, including you and I. Until that day, this life is not yours alone, this life is not mine, this life is OURS... What we make of this now is tomorrow's stepping stone, but even tomorrow will only exist as "NOW." "NOW" is inescapable. Now is where you experience this pain, but that pain does not exist now... Not in a true sense.

It's not real, in the sense that it's being manufactured by the mind. The mind may be a daunting thing to take ownership of, but it is within your power, I assure you.

Perhaps the most fundamental thing to know about grief is that Grief is Love. Thatfeeling which can only be pointed at with words like "forever" and "always" will carry on with you, and it will carry those you love with you too. That is where we hold each other, and where we hold on to each other, those in life and those who pass in death; we hold each other in mind... We hold each other within. When you leave home or the office, work or school, wherever you personally experience interactions with other people, where do those interactions take place? In memory now yes, but even then; where did you experience the interaction?Within you... We casually say goodbye to people all the time, saying goodbye forever adds an entirely new dimension, but in truth, all that we ever knew or will ever know of each other is within us.Everything is within us.

The very nature of reality is an inner projection, taking place within the structural framework of you. You are more than a body. You are more than the thoughts running through your mind. Notice how we call it "your mind"? You are not the mind, the mind belongs to you. You are everything about anything, the experience of All you've ever known. You are the core of this experience of existence. You are the central piece to this enigma known as life, and that is something you have known all along, but many have been taught not to think.

Those you love will never leave you. They live on, through you. It is difficult to draw a smile at times, knowing there will never be another moment like there was, but that is also true of this very moment, and the next one. In truth, there is only One moment. Now. Now is all that is, was, and all that will ever be.. As sure as they were with you then, they are with you now and always. They are here, in these words. They are there, in your chest. They are in the ether, they are in every breath. They anchor you in what matters most, and overwhelm you in the seeds they leave behind... But, above all else, they are within you. They are You. They are the deepest parts of you. While they once belonged to the world, you now carry them as your heart.

Everything has changed because in everything I see you...

Much Love; may you know, even in solitude, that All of this world exists within you...

Who we are is not important. What is important is how we are within. Without "me," there is only the world. This is the Truth we will leave behind...