Radio Tower for the Universe

At the moment, I am feeling kind of like a radio antenna for the Universe. It’s hard to explain everything that is happening at the moment. Someone I know describes it as a sort of birth, and also confronting the ghost of grief.

The decision to leave my boyfriend and return to Boston was surprisingly painful. I sobbed for three days straight, could eat nothing, and was continuously gripped with panic. I had no idea where I was going to live, and I was supposed to be moving out of my apartment in less than a week. All I wanted to do was lie in my bed in my safe little house, hug my cat, and cry, but I had to be apartment hunting. I don’t know how many places I visited, my eyes red and almost swollen shut from weeping, looking like I had some kind of highly-contagious pinkeye. While making phone appointments to view apartments, I broke down in tears on several occasions, apologizing to my bewildered potential landlords. I even cried while dealing with Verizon customer service, canceling the change in service I had ordered.

At first, my angst had centered around this conflict: I didn’t know what to do. But then, the difficulty lay in the fact that I did know what to do, but didn’t know how, emotionally or physically, I would be able to do it. I was now in this almost impossible Boston situation: I needed a nice, affordable place to live in a safe neighborhood, with a fenced yard for my large, boisterous dog. And I was looking for September 1. Did I mention that I also wanted to live alone? Impossible. Dispiriting. Exhausting. Cue the panic.

Usually, when I have cried in the past, the emotion was more anger or frustration, but for the first time since my grandmothers died, I was crying from a place of deep, aching sadness and loss. I have written before about the bottomless well of sadness that I think sits in me, but that I rarely tap into. Now I was drawing from it by the bucketful. I was drowning in it. It was a relentless mix of intense grief, fear, and guilt. A friend told me that grief is a ghost that follows you around, tapping you on the shoulder until you finally turn around and say, “OK, what do you want?” This was me, turning around, and grief had decided that I had a lot to answer for. I knew that I wasn’t just grieving for the breakup; I was also grieving for the divorce, for the lost child, for the family I had never been able to create.

All of my life, I have always continued to push myself forward, feeling like this was what I had to do in order to survive. So many times I had told myself, “Don’t think about it. Just do it and don’t think about it. You can’t think about it.” Now it was time for me to think about it, to let all of this loss sink in. I had to own the terrible feelings of guilt and fear and loss and sadness. Otherwise I wasn’t going to be able to move forward.

In one therapy session, I sat there sobbing, and asked my therapist, “Is there going to be one day where I wake up, and just big sigh of relief, and don’t need to cry anymore? Is there a day when I will wake up and feel that the burden has been lifted?” Of course there would be. But I couldn’t imagine it. I had walked away from all of this love in my life, people who deeply loved me. I left them. I hurt them. I broke their hearts. What kind of person did this make me? What would my life be like without this love? Horrible, horrible. A horrible, selfish person living an empty, loveless life. Not really, she reminded me. Even though these two men had loved me, I hadn’t been happy with them. And if they can love me, so can other people. And I there are lots of other people in my life who love me, and I can love myself, too. She reminded me that I am a good person, and that it’s not wrong to want to live a life that makes me feel safe, happy, and fulfilled.

She feels like I am on the verge of something. Something huge is happening to me that she can feel. I feel it, too. I am finally on the path of the life I am meant to lead, and poised to take the first step off of a very large cliff. It's like a leap across the Grand Canyon, and ending this relationship and moving to Boston is only the tiniest little hop compared with what I am ultimately going to do. She describes this process as a kind of birth, and birth is very, very painful. But I am getting lots of little nudges and help along the way, if I only pay attention to it.

So here is the part where I feel like this spiritual radio tower. I am getting constant little signals here and there, supporting me, reminding me, nudging me one way or another. Some of them are small. For example, mentioning to some people that I am interested in finding work in LA. Two different people said they could get me work, as soon as I arrive, in the fields in which I expressed interest. Or I meet someone in some random, silly way, and he ends up offering me any kind of help I need, saying to me, “Listen, I know we are basically strangers. I don’t know you at all. But I can see that you are a kind, strong, intelligent woman who is in trouble right now, and I know that you will become a very good friend to me. So, whatever you need, let me know.” And some are much, much bigger. And it's addictive, in a way, this feeling of connection. It is the happiest, most fulfilling feeling in the world. And it's hard to remember to temper that feeling, or to allow it to fade and dissipate, as it will, naturally.