Part of the experience of grieving, for me, is knowing that there is now more than one person inside of my head. One of these people is my mother, who, to be fair, has always been there. Her voice comes out of my mouth when I talk to babies and animals. I also channel her when I teach, or when I have to be disappointed in someone, or when I am proud of someone, or when I console or congratulate a friend.
I'm also finding that I now have a divided self. There's the Normal Me, who writes every day, exercises like a maniac, laughs a lot, reads a lot, and is rarely home. The state of grief in which I now live overlaps that self with another, less familiar self. I think of this one as Toad Cave Me, because when I am most deeply sad over the loss of my loved ones, I feel like a toad at the bottom of a subterranean space, wedged in the corner of a deep, deep hole. I lie still, I cry a lot, and I sometimes lose momentary sight of the point of the things that Normal Me does. Normal Me moves a lot, and Toad Cave Me is the picture of outward inertia. (The brain can overpower the body, I guess.) Even when Toad Cave is on the move, she's lethargic and scared and often doesn't want to be where she is. You'll see both Normal Me and Toad Cave Me crying in the street, but I bet you could suss out the differences between us by our respective demeanors and the looks in our eyes.
Toad Cave Me has only appeared once or twice since my mother's death, and one of those times was immediately after my friend's death last week. The only other time she's been strongly present was a weekend when my mother was in the emergency room and a sort-of manfriend mostly best friend had just shattered my little heart to pieces. Toad Cave's presence makes sense, people tell me, because I am going through a serious trauma. My only parent is gone. Nobody misses her like I do. It takes more energy than I realize.
In the days after my mother's death, I was so motivated to be the daughter she knew that I wondered if stillness would ever come. It took about a month and a half for Toad Cave to reappear, on hiatus since my breakup and Mom's ER visit.
The ways I'm finding to pull away from Toad Cave's grasp now, or to ameliorate it when the pull is too strong, are varied. One is to imagine motion, and that at least lets me know that I'm valuing it almost as much as I normally do. Another is to stop, take a breath, run off and cry if I need to, and tell myself that feelings shift, and the courage and grit and love that my mother inculcated in me will rise to the surface soon enough, and help me power through. When it's really tough to move, another way is to ride out the stillness, to remind myself that it won't continue forever, that maybe I need the rest, and, above all, that my mother would be the first one to tell me that it's okay to take it easy, even for a mile-a-minute person like me.
Both Normal Me and Toad Cave Me are comforted by the recent words of a friend of mine: "How can you have expectations of yourself right now when you don't even know yet who you are without your mom around? Do the best you can do, for now. That's all you can do, anyway. And besides, it's enough."
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