CoDA Weekly Reading

Grief Frozen. My inability to grieve. Personally that is the key or the first tiny pre-step to grieving: That I cannot grieve!

Because I’d rather quickly forgive and forget and lock up and survive.

To me grieving knocks on my dark dungeon-mind late in the nights when I wake up in anger or anxiety or incomprehension of why I can’t sleep, why am I not normal, why am I so sad and frightened and anxious and angry as well. And then I realise, maybe first intellectually and later emotionally, that it was because of my broken childhood. And sometimes I stay with that sadness and grief and cry out why did it happen to me , WHY, WHY, WHY...

And then instead of remaining with this bewilderment and brokenness I feel in the middle of the night (which has a strong shaming in it, this question, “what is wrong with me, why am I like this, why am I not normal?”) I tell myself, console myself, that it is not my fault. IT IS NOT MY FAULT. These shaming defects and shortcomings, THESE ARE NOT MY FAULT.

I still do not know what hurt me back then as a child, but I know I got hurt, badly hurt, tearfully sadly hurt, and I FROZE UP and LOCKED IT UP and FORCEFULLY FORGOT IT UP.

And in this dark night present moment I grieve about the fact that I’m not able to grieve, not able to even remember or want to remember that hurt.

And then I pray to my Higher Power to give me the Strength and the Courage and that Magic I don’t have. That magic torchlight to unlock that darkness and locate that Hurt and stay with that hurt long enough so that I can wash it with my tears (some tears are dry, it’s just a heaving of the heart and soul). Yes, I pray that I stay with that hurt and wash that wound, that frozen pus, with my sadness and tears. I’m told that my survival defense mechanism will quickly yank me away from that wound and that I can’t force myself to grieve. This is happening on its own, and like riding a bicycle I slowly learn how to stay there. Initially God and CoDA and my therapist help me in this exercise. They actually run behind me, holding that bicycle before I finally start cycling myself.

Guneet L – 9/5/18