Losing My Voice

I've lost my voice.

There was a time when words seemed to pour out of me in torrents. The tighter grief held me in its grip, the more fluently I could talk about. Howl about it, really - hurling my rage and my despair at the page and not really ever thinking about whether or not anyone would ever read it.

But since coming back from Africa in August, I haven't found much to say. The really terrible and terrifying grief has subsided, as everyone told me it would, and in its place seems to be a kind of weary apathy, and a deep, deep loneliness. I said to my mother recently that it's like I've gone from Oz back into Kansas - everything has gone from color back to black and white, and sometimes I don't think I'll ever see in color again.

When I write this, it sounds more dramatic and awful than it is. It just is. The landscape in black and white is lovely in its own way, but there's no mistaking it for a landscape in color. And color was where I lived for a long time; it's what I got used to, so now I have to explore the Kansas landscape and accustom myself to what it looks like.

Part of the weariness and the apathy comes from realizing that there isn't anything very special about me and what I've experienced. Grief and loss are the hallmarks of being human; we are stamped with those twin signs of our mortality. I find that I devour first person accounts of grief - stories far more harrowing than my own - people widowed young, parents burying their children, all those narratives putting my own ordinary story into some kind of perspective.

I keep trying to connect myself to the world - tiny link by tiny link - having to get up and reforge those links every morning. Yoga has helped a lot - so has saying morning prayer every day (something that now, if I miss it, feels like I haven't brushed my teeth) - working with a new therapist who is part spiritual director, part leadership coach and part grief counselor (a 70 year old Jewish agnostic - who seems to be able to embrace those contradictory roles quite comfortably). Taking silly old George for long walks. Doing physiology homework. Work. There's an awful lot of just putting one foot in front of the other; getting through each day trying to enjoy the good and shake off the bad. I've lost my ability to look too far into the future. I've lost that pleasurable anticipation that so often pulled me forward. I think that's part of being in Kansas.

I'm not shaking my fist at God anymore. Now it's sort of "whatever." But sometimes - when I'm feeling particularly low, maybe I sense someone sitting next to me - not doing or saying anything, just sitting there the way an old friend can just sit there being comfortable and present. Author Sara Miles ("Take This Bread" and "Jesus Freak" calls that presence "the Boyfriend." That's too active a word for what I experience. But I think - I think - it's Jesus sitting there, just sitting with me when I feel sad and lonely and discouraged, and that sitting with me seems to be enough.