Grief.
I found many ways to mask mine once before. I wore my many masks with pride. Some even envied what I wore. I spun pain into gold like rumpelstiltskin. A shining beauty in an ugly world. Like a fairy tale hero, you would think I had stood at the gates of hell, dressed wildly in armor & mask, yelling loudly, "I dare you." You would think I won my battle with only a single scar to show. Grief is so simple to those who do not know.
I looked like I was healing. But these were just my masks. That I put on each morning. Dragging myself out of bed to face another day. Choosing carefully which to wear. A new and ever changing mask, for my ever changing grief. A mask for being strong. A mask for happiness. A mask for comfort. A mask for hope.
Now I feel that the 8 months of pregnancy was just another mask. This time fooling me. I believed it, as others had believed mine. I didn't see it coming when life slipped off the mask. Hell was still waiting for me. My battle had been won, but the war was just beginning.
I do not wear my masks anymore. I refuse to hide this time. I thought others would be afraid of this deep and dark emotion that has taken over my life. But more & more I'm finding that other people have masks too. And if you take yours off first, and are brave enough to show yourself in every ugly way, they return the same in grace.
The only thing I wear now is honesty. It's not always easy or pretty. Sometimes I make people uncomfortable, that poor starbucks employee who asked how my weekend was going, and didn't get the masked response. But for each of those moments, there is an opposite reaction. When I don't hold back the tears on the phone, and a stranger sends a comforting hug over air waves in the form of, "O honey, I lost a child too." The world is a more beautiful place when we all share our damaged souls.
*sidenote. Isn't it the most marvelous but mysterious thing, when you write from your heart, then look for a quote to add imagery to a blog post. And find something that is unbelievably what you were trying to say. I wrote this whole thing and then found the quote, I've never seen it, and it took awhile to find it, {shockingly not a lot of masked quotes on pinterest.} And there it was summed up in one sentence. Hello universe, you DO see me. Life is so wonderfully weird sometimes.
with love, lissa