Bay of Angels

August 2021: Nice, France

As soon as you are born, death is present. All around us - it’s what makes actual life so special. But death can be a heavy burden to carry if it’s always in your head. 

For some reason, today, the trauma of carrying the weight of mortality with me since I was a teenager hit me hard. Grief, anger, loss of innocence, the early realization of your own mortality before you even had a clue who you were - it’s just smashing me in the face, like an unexpected wave break. 

We all carry some level of trauma. For me, I have been a master at suppression: distracting myself in any way possible. It felt weak to give it any level of attention. Because my trauma is nothing compared to so many around me; heroic friends and family who have risked themselves and lost loved ones for our country, for humanity; for dear friends who lost parents so long before was fair.  I have never felt as if I had a right to give myself any space to recognize my own. 

Today, alone in a foreign country, it all came crashing down. And finally? I just let it. This is why I came here. This is why I keep taking these sabbaticals. Because I am in search of something… healing.

Mortality’s weight became real for me at the age of 15 when I was informed that my heart wasn’t working the way it was supposed to. I was lucky they said. If they had not found it, I would have been dead by 21. So why didn’t I feel lucky? I was angry. I wanted to just be 15. With the anger, came guilt. Guilt for not feeling the way everyone was telling me to feel. I didn’t want to feel lucky and grateful. I just wanted to be angry and for that to be okay.

Death began to preoccupy my thinking well before I had any clue what life was, who I was. Decisions about surgeries, types of valves, blood thinners, what I should get done if ever wanted to have children came to the forefront of my focus. So I rebelled. I turned to trouble. Standard teenager kinds of trouble though mine had alot less to do with having fun then it did with giving the bird to the universe. 

At 18 I had my first open heart surgery; my sternum sawed open, ribs pulled apart, with my heart, lungs and blood kept running by the miracle of modern medicine. I handled it poorly. I was already deep in the throws of an alcohol dependency that had already put my life at risk numerous and burned some of my most cherished relationships to the ground. The aftermath wasn’t much better - college a blur of substance fueled benders I will never remember with weak attempts at sobriety when the humiliation lows forced me to pretend I wanted to change.

In retrospect, it felt like I was trying to destroy myself…because at least if I did, it was me driving the car off the cliff, not someone else.

I struck bottom more than once and while I thought I had opened my eyes: the trauma wasn’t recognized. I didn’t feel I ever deserved to make excuses for my behavior. On paper everything in my life was perfect. It was me that was the problem. I got sober and quickly replaced substances with work. Thus followed a decade plus of overworking myself, distracting, yet again, albeit less self-destructive and way more fulfilling than the former approach. 

Two years ago, before Covid sucker-punched us all I had my second open heart surgery. This time I didn’t have the neural grenades of booze and pills to distract. But I still didn’t handle it well, because I never once allowed myself a moment to feel upset about it. The pandemic hit very soon after my physical recovery and fuck me if I was going to give myself that indulgence. The world was literally falling apart around me. We watched the brutal murder of George Floyd and there was no place for self-pity. Nothing I was dealing with came close to most others’ experiences. I was a white, healthy, employed, well-off American woman who had her family, a home, and a loving husband.

I had no right to feel anything other than blessed & privileged. The world was screaming that shit in my face.

Truth is, I didn’t even know what was wrong with me. 2 years later and 15 years after my first I finally recognize that the blessing of looking your own mortality in the face beforeyou know anything about life comes with weight. 

I do carry some anger. Resentment that I look ay life with a desperate urgency that makes every decision, every moment, a little heavier. That is a blessing and has driven so many of my choices - choices I do not regret. But I also don’t know what it’s like to go a single day without thinking about death. Maybe I never will. And that’s been a blessing and one of the perspectives I am most grateful for in my life. But it’s also heavy and traumatizing. 

And it’s okay to be two things at once.