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An Abstract Loss
Copyright 2014 Christina M. Guerrero
DEDICATION
This is for Los Angeles, and it is for those I might have known, and probably did know in other lives.
STORY BEHIND THE STORY
Hoping that others will be inspired to seek safe places to share their sorrows.
NOTES ABOUT DRAFT TWO
This ends rather abruptly.
I was a precocious child. Gifted, in fact. Need to get that in there, somewhere.
I learned, after being informed of my supposedly genius-level IQ, that the gifted feel the weight of the world's problems.
Thus the sorrow over the abstract.
The loss was profound.
The loss was unsettling.
The loss was abstract.
Much later in life, I was not surprised to learn that abstract losses are just as deeply felt as tangible losses.
I already knew this because my first abstract loss happened at a young age.
Not too long after the loss, I began to encounter many people who had the same broken record playing, as if they were part of a negative global conspiracy: why do you look so sad? why don’t you smile more? why don’t you talk much?
Because I was grieving. I was grieving the losses of community, legacy and productivity.
For some children, those would sound like nonsense words and concepts. For me, I suddenly and abruptly understood close to everything around me from a young age: everything, including the abstract.
Healthy adults are often knocked down by grief. I am amazed that I was able to exist, while grieving at such a tender age.
Despite the abstract loss, and my grief, I did my best to socialize in a healthy way.
But it was difficult to do so.
No one ever identified my silence as grief. Or my sadness or weariness. No one thought a weary child was anything unusual. They almost always wrote it off as being introverted. And when they weren’t commenting on that, they were happy to have a silent child around. Silent children don’t cause too many problems.
Meanwhile. I instinctively discovered ways to grieve as productively as possible. Children are resilient, as are lots of human beings; and the human mind and body have remarkable ways of handling things independently.
I could tell that not everyone around me would understand exactly what my loss was, and how deeply I grieved. So I had to watch my words. I noted who liked to taunt, and who might listen but not too closely, and who exactly would listen without conditions (very few, unfortunately).
I could tell that not everyone around me understood grief per se. I heard several people claiming that they did not believe in psychiatry. Explaining my loss would be pointless.
I could tell that my sophisticated way of viewing my life and my experiences would not be handled seriously, so I just smiled and nodded and did my best to be a responsible, reliable, productive individual. At age five, I was planning my retirement. I highly doubted, even at that age, if anyone would have cared or assisted me. How could I expect them to understand my abstract losses?
What I needed was a venue in which I could vent without filters, toward confidantes who could listen without conditions.
Meanwhile, I kept my eyes and ears open to any information about how to grieve in a healthy way.
I read a lot. Listened. Watched some good TV shows. Assimilated information.
There was also the fact that I had to live. It was a busy life, and there was not always time to grieve.
Add in the other, usual losses that occur during an average lifetime, and it started adding up.
Recently I decided ... enough.
And that ... I have to grieve now.
I have to grieve the old, original abstract loss. I never did finish.
And I have to grieve other losses as well.
The serious nature of this stops me now and then. And at those stopping points, I feel comfortable and productive. I’m doing what should have been done a long time ago.
These are great and important responsibilities, and I am finally and completely treating my life with the seriousness and dignity that it deserves.
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