I fell apart, right there in her arms.
There was no more holding back, trying to keep composure. I wept with a force so visceral it was only to be matched by episodes on bathroom floors. No, these moments never take getting used to. The sheer physicality of it all frightens me, acting as thunderous warning signs I am heading to the point of no return, alone and lost in my mind. Breakdowns take so long to recover from that I do everything in my power to prevent them from happening in the first place. But I couldn’t fight it off. This was different.
On that day I waited in line with hundreds and hundreds of others, locked in a maze of memories. It all came flashing back: Latin class, softball practice, morning prayers, the closing bell. All of the everyday, day-in-day-out ways of an old soul trapped in a teenage body reappeared, aimlessly shuffling through the hallways.
As difficult a time that was (how could I ever understand I was developing a mental illness) my high school years were also filled with bright spots…moments marked by special teachers we called our own. Fifteen years later, it all came flooding back as I stood in line to mourn the loss of a beloved man, struck in his prime: a teacher, a friend, a coach… and what became of the couple whose connection to my teenage years are forever linked.
The couple were two teachers who first met in my sophomore year of high school. Falling in love, they then became husband and wife my senior year. Soon afterward, two beautiful daughters. Time passed. I graduated from college, went to work and started a life of my own. We lost touch. And then, out of the blue, I hear the news. Here we were, back in the same building where it all started, only to end with one saying their final good-bye to the other.
Cruel, cruel world. How could this be? What could I possibly say? What could anyone possibly say? Would she remember me? Would it even matter? What was I doing here?
A sea of unworthiness consumed me. As I approached the casket my emotions followed suit. Desperately trying to hold it together I bit my tongue and searched for something neutral to hang on to: the light, the flowers, the floor. Nothing. My eyes began to well up. My lips started to quiver and I began to hyperventilate — all signs pointing towards the inevitable. Hold it together. Please. Just. Hold. It. Together.
And there she was, holding it together. The first teacher that became a good friend: the first teacher who invited us over for dinners, to their wedding, to their house, even to a beach excursion. All those memories — now tainted with sadness, anger and regret. There she was calling out to me… and here I was, in a sea of hundreds of people, holding on to the one person everyone was looking at. She, perhaps carrying the heaviest burden I’ve ever known anyone to carry and me, falling apart, breaking down — right there in her arms.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Gosh, I’m so sorry,” I kept on uttering between tears, in what seemed to last an eternity. I was sorry her husband was taken away from her so soon. I was sorry her daughters would never hug their father again. I was sorry she had a duty before her, accepting condolences upon condolences — hundreds, maybe thousands of them, just standing there for hours on end, shaking hands, thanking, hugging, and now me, crying pathetically into her shoulder. I was sorry I wasn’t a better friend to her over the years. That our friendship slipped. That I thought I had to let go of my high school past in order to grow up. I was sorry I was so incompetent, falling apart when I should have been a stronger person.
I left there shaken and rocked to the core, eventually making my way to the familiar surroundings of a bathroom stall, hysterically crying. I couldn’t fight it off. Was I a fool to lose it up there? Did my BPD do me wrong? I felt guilty for the feelings that came up. The feelings that in the end, made me feel more alive. How could I feel more alive when someone else is going through so much pain?
Shame on me.
My heart had a hole in it, and I couldn’t get beyond the second guessing, the shame, the I’m-not-worthy-of-sharing-in-another-person’s-grief. I knew these were all cognitive distortions, as much as they felt incredibly real. I began to write and write, searching for a different truth. How could I fault myself on my feelings? How could things like long embraces, shared grief and tears not move the heart?
The more I wrote, the more I began to realize how much I never felt and shared in a collective pain before. It has always been my pain, my immense suffering, my terrible breakdowns. I isolated my pain from everyone else, hiding it from others, claiming normalcy and competence, admitting breakdowns only to my therapist. But in that moment, there in front of hundreds of other grievers, there with our hearts on our sleeves, I began to realize that the pain we have always experienced is not a burden we alone have to carry.
Somehow, my terribly familiar moments with immense emotional, internal, contorted pain allowed me to truly feel pain of another. In a span of a few moments, my crazy emotions had a purpose. Somehow, it made sense that the painful act of breaking down, a behavior that seemed so out of place in my life and society, found a home here, in grief. And with an embrace, I told her, even despite the years apart, how much I loved her and her husband. After all the lessons I’ve learned within those school halls, love, in the end, was the answer.
And maybe that was enough. For a moment, I can only hope I was able to experience and share in an inconsolable grief that perhaps created a little space beyond suffering.
To view or post a comment and don’t see it, please click here and scroll down.
