Where there is grief there is no space for new love. For in fact grief is in itself a love that is dark, transformed in shape but not in its structure. I have known grief intimately and for a while I never thought I’ll know anything but its taste. With each moon I emptied myself out – a metamorphosis of love into grief, then grief into longing, then longing into a numb emptiness. It is a steep transition from loving something, someone so deeply, to feeling the space that remains like the land burnt to its foundation by a ghastly war.
When the heart grieves, it cannot phantom a love for anything other than its loss. Your heart’s edges are stretched with mourning, begging you to not forget yet, not yet. Who will you be without this loving that you stored up for them like an inheritance? How will you walk when you’ve finally emptied yourself out. Lighter? Or perhaps your steps will still be marked heavy with sadness and longing?
I have known this emptiness intimately, this reaching the end point of grief where you come back home to find your home no longer there, your family no longer knowing your name, the ground you’ve sowed no longer recognising the palm of your hand.
I will wait if you wish to meet me there. I have arrived at this ending of my own grieving and I am utterly numb. Where I loved there’s now a wound throbbing. Where I desired there’s now a paralysis. Where I dreamt there’s now a lacking of sleep.
I bear witness to a part in me that longs to be that which is grieved, for I have always been the mourner. I yearn to be held within someone like a precious jewel lodged within their solar plexus. I yearn to be craved like the nights crave the moon in her wholeness.
I do not make a home of this yearning for I remember that my way necessitates the holy solitude of heart. I find myself unable to belong in the unthreading of my daily life: not belonging to a job that requires me to be tame, domesticated into something impeccable but dry – perishable goods. Not belonging into a world devoid of truth. Not belonging into the heart of someone that fiercely longs for another.
There is purpose to my unbelonging, there is a blessing so large that will unfold. It takes this listening; this witnessing; this restlessness that comes with the desire to offer myself as a gift to the Mystery, to make love to a world beyond the discernible and to let the mystery make love to my breath, body, Being in return like a sacred offering.
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