Because It Mattered: A Celebration of Loss and Grief.
“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” ~ Kahlil Gibran
Perched at the shoreline. Preparing my body for an end that was about to come too soon. As if I got to decide when our time ran out. With all the factors that need to line up to hold humans together, there must be something deeper that lasts beyond this physical plane of connection. Since that is what brought us together in the first place. Something beyond us.
Understanding that love and loss are married from the start and the only certainty is our impermanence. Together and individually. The end is written into every beginning. We must live today, while we blow kisses to each painful departure of expired selves, others, and dreams. We must love what is necessary, even when it rubs our hopes the wrong way.
Rocking myself into acceptance as I am flooded with all that is slipping through my grasp. No promise of solid ground. No sight of resolution. Knowing simply in this fragile moment, I am.
Sitting in this suffocating feeling of heartache. Sobbing. Collecting sand. Waiting for sunrise. My ribcage has a vice grip on my breath. Salty lips. Stinging eyes. Watching the waves kiss my legs.
Allowing myself to sink into the spots in my chest that feel like they are going to swallow me whole. Fighting my instincts to retreat and protect. Reminding myself that I am strong enough to remain present and that the openness I’m capable of is what provides me with the greatest treasures.
Even when I don’t believe these words as I tell them to myself. Even when I want to collapse into the comfort of numbness. I continue to move through this. Through you.
We all leave, what matters is how deeply we invite love to stay. How deeply we invite love to open us along the way. Love’s lasting impact lies in our ability to stay receptive to the gift of transformation, even when the exits feel annihilating. Even when the exits are inevitable. Even when our grace is challenged, and we stumble through the darkness of heartbreak.
For loss and death are not what makes life pointless, they are what accentuates its meaning. Knowing this all ends should be the urgency behind living each moment as engaged as possible. As activated as possible. Within ourselves, with others, and with the world around us. We should find it an honor to have the capacity to hold all potentials in our bones simultaneously.
The only metric of any meaning is how truly we have loved.
This is what matters most to me. To be transformed by love. To stretch my heart beyond its original dimensions. Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. Even when the human, the catalyst, is impermanent. In this way, the pain shows me the vast potential of you inside of me.
I just hope that you handle me gently, so that I don’t see these illuminated parts of me leave too quickly. So that I don’t lose all that is left to discover in you too quickly.
I started grieving you before we began. I remember when the realization came into my awareness that losing you would flatten me. That first moment of flirting with goodbye. How the image of you suddenly disappearing from my life came over me like a satirical avalanche of fear. Mocking my vulnerability. I had a choice to stop while I was ahead or open further. I chose to open. I walked into you with my eyes wide.
Promising myself that I would not take the easy way out by living small. Knowing that I exist for this. To love and be loved in return as deeply and as fully as my clumsy heart can muster. To receive and be received as untethered as possible.
Departing, when I can see more than what has been able to work itself into existence just on the horizon, is excruciating. When I can see the beaming light of possibility right in front of me being denied entrance into reality. To unwind connection in the presence of the beloved. Grieving the loss of potential. Grieving the loss of expression. Unnaturally unwinding affection.
We both must be in this place to move beyond it together, yet right now, I’ve arrived alone.
I resent these deaths. These turbulent goodbyes. I just want a safe place to land. To undress from my defenses long enough to retrieve the lost city of my heart. Yet, this is how I chose to love you. Baring my soul before my skin.
The ocean speaks my language. As do you.
These layers of intersecting swells crash into me. Within and without. My mirrors. My touchstones. The calm bred of chaos. Forcing a timid resolve out of me. I may have lost my anchor, but I can still swim.
This passing year was an extended season of goodbyes. Heavy in grieving the loss of life, the loss of connection through death and separation, the loss of old paradigms, and the loss of comforts and grounding points. Learning how to let go and let be. Nothing was left unquestioned. Unshaken. Unexamined. A forced period of personal and collective reckoning.
We have been faced with the undeniable crossroads of aligning to a deeper sense of truth or dying while alive. Extreme. Brutal. Beautiful. A bitch-slap of extra-strength Real.
Instead of fighting back the debilitating sense of loss, celebrate your grief, because it shows you that you experienced something meaningful enough to feel the tremendous weight of its exit. Remember, sweet one, that love doesn’t leave, even when the human does. Love’s function lives well beyond its form.
{Photo credit: Tiffany Bisconer}
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Tiffany Bisconer is a bursting-hearted lover of all things passionate and is quite intent on squeezing the most out of her life’s potential. She is a bona fide beauty connoisseur with an exceptionally hungry brain, and has become quite accustomed to fighting for some sense of equilibrium between a complete surrender to dreamscaped idealism and the stubborn tempering of pragmatism. In her attempt to quiet and express the oft urgent and clawing desires of her being, she dances, sings, photographs, writes, paints, loves or otherwise finds some manner in which to siphon the voice of her heart. You could connect with her via her website, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or Tumblr.
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