and the tide rushes in

and it flooded over me and made me want to sprawl out on the floor of my therapist's office and cry like a baby..
Healing is not what happens after you grieve. It happens while you grieve.
It continues on after you think the grieving is over, then grieving happens again... and you feel like you're starting over, with the healing, and the grieving....

And she only sleeps when it's raining.
And she screams and her voice is straining. (3am, Matchbox Twenty)

We talked about grief, we talked about loss. We sit at the table and share, and grieve, and some of us heal.
The man across from me talked about the loss of time with his wife. He talked about the loss of happiness he [thought] he had with this wife. He talked about the loss of love.
She talked about the loss of the life she had dreamed of with her husband [who walked out on her.] She talked about the loss of pride when she sees her daughter run to the arms of her ex-husband [who cheated on her... but they can't tell a five-year-old]
He talked about the loss of plans had made with his wife. He wants her back. He would take her back in a second; he waits for her. He will not move-on.
I don't grieve the loss of the marriage I had. I am glad to no longer be in that marriage. But I do grieve.

I began grieving the loss of the marriage I dreamed of as a young girl as I stood in the back of the church on my wedding day. By the third day of the honeymoon, I was grieving  the loss of the marriage I still hoped for when I left the church. Then I put the grieving aside and I moved through day to day to make a life for my children. I dug a hole in the sand, and I buried the pain in that deep dark hole, and I created a life around the joy of my babies, and the pleasures that came [and went] during those twenty-five years. Now I mourn the loss of love, and the time I wasted-- and every moment I waste making mistakes in new relationships because there are pieces of me missing, buried in the sand.

I built up a hold on the sand, protecting the pain I had buried. I needed that fortress to be a strong mother and to be a good wife.  After the separation, I added to my fortress  in the guise of sharing my story, talking about what I had done, what he had done, what was said, who was hurt, how it affected me and made me who I am. This was all part of moving forward, I thought, building up the sand, making the walls thicker.

Then the waves of healing and grief came in and washed away the fortress.  My story of what I had endured wasn't protecting me anymore. And then I hear something; I have a bad dream, or a memory. Or maybe another relationship ends and it hurts....
Another wave comes and washes away a layer of sand. It washes the sand back out to sea, and the water calms, leaving the sand looking cleaner and smoother and I think I can rebuild. And so I attempt to start over, building my castle- my new life.

As the first two years of separation went by I felt weight lift off my shoulders. I actually grew a half an inch since my divorce, and my shoulders have become physically stronger.  My friends tell me I am emotionally strong, and they tell me I am beautiful, and they give me confidence. They want to see me build the most beautiful sand castle for myself and my family. And so I begin. I start over in a new house, begin a new job and read the right books, and I work-out, I dance, I exercise and I pray, I do all the right things... and I build a new relationship. I start building my new castle on the clean, smooth sand that has been washed and healed... with that pain buried deep below the surface..... If I just keep working and bringing in new sand, and I put in all of my energy and all of my love and everything that I have learned from my experience, I can build the most beautiful castle anyone has ever seen!

Another wave comes in, but it's bigger this time-- and it takes my half-built castle with it as it retreats back to the sea. And before I can catch my breath, another wave comes in and it's stronger, MUCH stronger, and it hits that same place on the sand that had been smoothed over, but it hits harder, and it cuts into the sand like a knife, taking out with it the sand, the shells...and it rushes down in to the hole and it digs out a bit of the pain I had buried.. and I feel the cold, salty, cutting water go deep, and I wish it would stop while at the same time I scream, "please, just get it all! Clean it all out this time!" but it doesn't, and it washes back out to sea.

I am taking a short break from building right now. I am leaving the sand bare, open to the waves that come, washing away the pain, digging deep into the sand built up over more than twenty-eight years. But as I take a closer look at what those terrible, beautiful waves are doing, I see that with each surge, they not only take with them what I built and what I buried, but they leave new shells, and little bits of treasure on the shore- all the stuffs that, if I give it enough time, I can mix with the sand making it a stronger and more beautiful material for building than I have had before.