The End of the World Often Comes

Where will I go?

The sun was barely peaking over the trees when I pulled away from Snaggy Mountain, an artist retreat in North Carolina that I had been visiting for about a week. Morning dew glazed the windshield. I clicked on the wipers, and they broke into galloping iambs: tha THUD, tha THUD, tha THUD. The sound made me sick.

Breathe.

*   *   *

I fell in love one autumn night on a beach at 2 o’clock in the morning. It’s one of my best memories: me, trying to climb a pier and busting my lip; us, lying on the cold shore; the Gulf of Mexico, an eternal hushhhh; him, asking me to sing; us, slow dancing beneath the moon. In its infancy, our romance was atmospheric—running from thunderstorms, star-gazing from rooftops.

The years that followed were a series of break-ups and reconciliations. Of trying to fit into each other’s worlds and live up to each other’s contradicting expectations. We were always a little out of sync, never quite stepping to the same rhythm. But we clung to those early memories, set against bigger-than-life backdrops, memorialized by grandiose promises.

Eventually, I moved into his house in Gulf Shores. On some days, we would sit in the backyard to read, talk, and enjoy the bonfire. One unusual afternoon, a stream of dragonflies filled the sky. Their parade lasted for hours. What a coincidence, I thought.

dragonflies

Earlier that year, I had bought wind chimes made out of bronze dragonflies. I found them in Asheville, North Carolina, a city that we had fallen for two years prior. Asheville is where we learned how to travel together, wandering around the River Arts District, striking up conversations in breweries, exploring the Blue Ridge Mountains. We talked about buying a house there someday.

*   *   *

Where will I go?

I drove hours in complete silence. The hands on the wheel felt foreign. I was a passenger in the driver’s seat. But a passenger to where?

*   *   *

Two days earlier, our almost-five year relationship had come to its final, unexpected end. My boyfriend and I hadn’t spoken since I made it to the retreat. When we finally connected on Skype, the conversation was a bombshell. We were over. I shut down my laptop and pulled out my phone. I wanted to call a friend or my parents—anyone, really. But there was no reception on the mountain.

Help.

The room spun. I pressed my right hand against my chest and my left against the twin-sized bed—to hold myself up, to dam something in.

Help.

I couldn’t cry. I wanted to, for the relief. But I was too disoriented. Something thick and slow was crawling up from my stomach into my throat. A predatory darkness. The end of trust.

And then, I felt nothing. An awful, expansive nothing.

*   *   *

“You can crash above the ice cream shop until you find somewhere to go.” Once my catatonia had broken, and I had cleared the mountains, I called my friend Matt, owner of Matt’s Homemade Ice Cream in Gulf Shores. “It’s my office space,” he said. “There’s a couch up there and a small room you can use if you clean it out.” The ice cream shop was located about ten minutes from the restaurant where I waited tables. “Thanks, Matt. I’ll let you know something soon.”

I was an hour from the Gulf Coast when feeling returned. I began to realize what I was about to bid farewell: my garden, that enormous Chagall reproduction I bought for him, the bookshelves he built for me, my favorite travel companion, my secret keeper, my best friend.

It came on like a tsunami, all encompassing, no escape. I pulled off the road, got out of the car, and kneeling by the passenger door, I wept.


A Still Small Voice

There was a small, windowless room above Matt’s Ice Cream about the size of a large closet. I cleared it out and filled two-thirds of it with an inflatable mattress. To anyone else, it would have been a meager living arrangement. But it was exactly what I wanted, that black hole, those imposing walls. I needed them to suffocate the grief out of me.

The first two months I lived there, I woke up a few minutes before 5:00 every morning with a knot in my stomach. The knot wouldn’t go away until I started moving, so I’d put on my running shoes and go for a jog on the beach. It became an unpleasant gift, a needling urgency to resist inertia. Sometimes, after a jog, I’d sit on the shore for a while and listen to the waves.

Any time I slowed down, I felt numb. Eventually, the numbness became bitterness. Then, ruthless insecurity: this is the real world, said a voice in my head. I don’t accept you. You are not enough.

I kept waking up early every morning. I kept going to the beach with that knot in my stomach. And even though the same spiteful voice kept returning—I don’t accept you—there was something else inside of me, something firmer and quieter saying simply: “Corey. Get up. Get out of bed. Go.” And it was this voice that led me to the beach. And when I sat and listened to the waves, I think it was this voice with which those waves were speaking.


Grief Doesn’t Change You, It Reveals You

What now? This was the question that kept invading my thoughts. Everything had changed. What used to seem clear about my future was now upended. I needed a new dream. Fortunately, through the dizzying chaos of my mind, I could still hear that simple, steady voice pushing me forward: Keep going, Corey. It wasn’t a blueprint, but it was something.

I had already downsized to a closet space for a bedroom. What else could I downsize? I started with my clothes. I got rid of everything but a few work uniforms, five t-shirts, and two pairs of shorts.

I happened to lose my iPhone. Instead of hurrying off to replace it, I took the misfortune for a sign. Maybe I could downsize my screen time, too? I replaced the smart phone with a flip phone. The guy at the AT&T store seemed a bit confused. “You having a quarter-life crisis or something?” he asked, handing me my brand new, twenty dollar flip phone. I chuckled. “Quarter-life experiment.”

It wasn’t a seamless transition, but with time, I began to feel more clearheaded and even a bit liberated. By eliminating the excess in my life, I made way for more meaningful desires. Like gardening.

Since I didn’t have a yard to till, I hung tomato plants behind the ice cream shop. I asked my dad to help me build a 3x6ft box so that I could plant a lettuce garden. I started the seeds in windowsills and transplanted them as soon as the temperature was right.

seedlings

lettuce

I wrote new poetry and music. I had always wondered if I could make a living off of gigs but never had the confidence to try until then.

gigging

And then I thought about my wanderlust, how I had always wanted to travel. It was a desire that had lain fallow in my heart since my first year of college. After a few weeks of planning, I sketched out a first draft for a two-week road trip up the east coast.

beastintheeast

A year has passed since then. I live in Mobile, Alabama (a little closer to family). I’m making a living playing music now. I’m still growing vegetables. I took that road trip up the east coast, and it gave me the courage to book a ticket to Thailand where I spent the last month of my life.

The moral of the story: if you’re grieving, move into a closet.

Okay, that’s not it.

It’s more like this: Grief is a powerful force. You can bury your grief beneath Netflix and retail therapy, and it’ll still be there. You can bury it beneath sweat and alcohol, and it’ll still be there. Some people are so good at burying their grief that they have whole gardens of it growing inside them. It yields fruits like distrust, anger, possessiveness, and addiction. It’ll keep you entangled in the thick of thin things.

Or you can face it. You can find your own windowless closet (whatever that is for you) and sit down with it. Acknowledge it. Cry, curse, rend your clothes—give that grief a voice. Take it with you on your morning jog, let it join you in the car. Use it to muster the strength you don’t normally have to do the things you never thought you could do. And when you make amends with it, when its haze begins to clear and its sting abates, it might just show you, for the first time in your life, who you really are.

In Retrospect

Dear reader,

It’s been over four years since I wrote this blogpost. What’s clear to me further out is that this telling of my story—although honest and well-intended—was itself, at the time I wrote it, a response to my grief. I shared all of this hoping it might help others who are suffering. I may have also written it as a way of proving to myself that I was on a better trajectory. Now that I can see this, I hope you’ll indulge me with your attention for a bit longer, especially if you are someone in the throes of heartache. Two things:

1) At the time, the way I approached grief and suffering was influenced by Brené Brown, whose work was challenging me to understand vulnerability as the best path to healing. In that closet space, I strove to be as vulnerable with myself (and with others) as I was capable of being. Since then, friends and co-workers have taught me that some suffering—especially trauma-induced suffering—can’t be solved by simply “sitting with it,” “facing into it,” or “making friends with it.” In some cases, that might be bad or even dangerous. If you’re racked with grief and the above posture feels unproductive or harmful, please let yourself off the hook. I encourage you to find a counsellor who can help you process your pain in a way that is productive and helpful. The reality is, grief is messy, and it looks and acts differently on all of us. And on that note,

2) productivity and achievement aren’t preconditions for healing or even necessarily products of it. In fact, the tireless pursuit of accomplishment as a response to suffering can (paradoxically) make us more insecure. Four years ago, I did what many people do on the other side of heartbreak: I “became my best self.” Which, in the moment, looked like a strict diet, a rigorous workout routine, ambitious goals, big risks, and, consequently, a bunch of shareable content. Life was a marathon dopamine rush. I guess it’s not the worst way to handle a breakup. But today I wonder—what was I really doing back there? What animating beliefs materialized from the wound of that experience? I have a lot to show for the months (even years) that followed, but there was also an engine of insecurity underneath those accomplishments, and when I wasn’t feeding it with goals and achievements, I was miserable. Ultimately, I think it was when the need for accomplishment was gone that the real healing happened. When I didn’t feel like I needed to prove I was enough anymore. When I didn’t need to travel or write stories about it.

So if you’re grieving and all the particulars of your life are staying the same, that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. You don’t need to jump on a plane to southeast Asia to find peace. You don’t have to “find your passion.” That was privilege speaking, not wisdom. I think true peace comes from finding self-love and self-worth where you are, regardless of the particulars of your life. That process is probably always a slow one and may look remarkably unspectacular. It may not give you a flashy instagram feed. But I think it’s the more honest way to wholeness.

I wonder what you think?

Thanks for reading. In case you need reminding: you are already enough.

Love,
Corey

This is part one of a series on grief and healing. The adventure continues as I set off on a road trip in part two: Couch-surfing with Elizabeth Gilbert.

A poem I wrote about grief: War of Attrition

Art: Moonlight Dragonflies by Rebecca M Ronesi-Gutierrez

Section titles were taken directly from the following books: Everything is Illuminated (Jonathan Safran Foer), 1 Kings (Bible),  and The Fault in Our Stars (John Green).

“the thick of thin things” belongs to Steven Covey.

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3 Comments

  • Well said Cory! Richard Rohr says the only way We move from the first half of life to the second half of life either by great love Great suffering. I bet that sounds familiar to you.

  • Through this, I can see the beautiful person you have become. Your story is incredibly encouraging, thank you for sharing it with us.

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