How I’m surviving.
By: Umzila Kawulandelwa
Tags: Writing For My Life, Survival, Suicide, Cheryl Strayed, Grief And Loss

The one question I’ve been asking people in the wake of my boyfriend’s passing is, “How did YOU survive your loss?”. I didn’t think I would make it past the first week but I’m now in week two. One thing I am learning is that grief is not the same for everyone. I was looking for a formula. A few steps to follow to heal and get over my grief. They don’t exist. Even the five stages of grief are just a guideline and not law.

Grief comes in waves. I haven’t followed the 5 stages of grief as they are set and I don’t think I will. I have no anger towards my angel or God. I don’t think I’ll ever feel any anger. My angel died by suicide. He didn’t want to live anymore. He made a very difficult choice. I respect his choice as painful as it was for both him and us. I survived major depression so I understand the mind of a suicidal person. I wanted to be saved when I was suicidal, he didn’t want to and he made that clear in his note to me. I don’t have any questions. I am making peace with his choice. We always respected each other’s free will and choices and that will not stop in death.

I love words a lot. In our last WhatsApp conversation he made me promise to never stop writing, I never will. I am now writing for my life. Writing to save my life. Writing to survive. “Reading usually precedes writing. And the impulse to write is almost always fired by reading. Reading, the love of reading, is what makes you dream of becoming a writer.”- Susan Sontag. I am also reading ferociously and referring to old books, blogs, articles, poems etc. for comfort. I know not everyone would find that comforting but it is for me and I am grieving how I see fit.

Cheryl Strayed is easily my favorite author. A dear friend offered to get me any of her books cos she knows how her words have healed me in the past. I told her that I already have all her books but she could subscribe me to her newsletter. And she did. I keep referring to an old letter Cheryl Strayed wrote in response to a woman who lost her child. It is this paragraph in particular that has been like a guiding light to me:

“That place of true healing is a fierce place. It’s a giant place. It’s a place of monstrous beauty and endless dark and glimmering light. And you have to work really, really, really fucking hard to get there, but you can do it, honey. You’re a woman who can travel that far. I know it. Your ability to get there is evident to me in every word of your bright shining grief star of a letter.”

I have no doubt that I also am a woman who can travel that far and I believe that’s something my angel man knew about me. I am also going for therapy more frequently. I do not want meaningless scriptures or some Christianese words. Those words mean absolutely nothing to me. It is poetry and writing as raw as Cheryl’s that makes me feel something and most importantly give me hope.

The friends who know how much words mean to me have been sending me words they think I’d like. (Thank you. Please don’t stop.) A friend of mine who’s also a poet sent me a poem from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

I’ve always said my capacity for sorrow is as big as my capacity for joy and my capacity for pain is as big as my capacity for love. My love for my sweet, as I liked calling him, was ocean sized and so is my grief now.

I keep reading the poem The Lost Hotels of Paris by Jack Gilbert.

The Lord gives everything and charges

by taking it back. What a bargain. … But it’s the having

not the keeping that is the treasure. … We look up at the stars and they are

not there. We see the memory

of when they were, once upon a time.

And that too is more than enough.

I wanted to explain my relationship with words and why in the face of the most tragic story they would be my source of comfort but I feel that isn’t something I need to explain to anyone. I am a writer. Words are a whole world for me. A world I am currently finding solace in.

I won’t stop writing because reading Cheryl Strayed’s words on her grief so many years after her mother’s passing has taught me that our stories survive us. My angel man will carry on living in my writings about him. I have shared that I write as a rebellion against time. I write to immortalize my loved ones as a middle finger to the world.

And this is how I am surviving. I’ll be sharing more of my journey going forward so that some day another writer can find comfort in them.