The Black Hole
Where did it come from? What’s inside it? Was it there all my life and I somehow overlooked it? Did the black hole have a different name when I was in my forties? Am I just noticing it for the first time? I think it’s shrouded in mystery, which makes it even more frightening. I’m pretty sure it’s a place of fear and hopelessness. It must be from Satan.
The black hole is the terrible car accident you want to see but are afraid to look at it, fearing dead bodies on the ground. And if you see a body on the ground, you want to look more (but you don’t want to look). Your curiosity bubbles up, “What happened? Did anyone get hurt? How bad did they get hurt?” I think Hollywood plays on this godless fascination with its horror movies; making us want to see our worst fears on screen. This is not a healthy fascination.
To be clear, I’m not psychotic. I can’t see the black hole; I can only feel it’s presence. I can sense it. And what’s more important, I’m terrified of it. I fear if I fall into it, I will never come back. I wonder if my fear of it increases its power over me.
The hole is a place of dark hopeless, filled with worst case scenarios spinning unresolved day after day.
I have weaknesses. I think everyone has them. But right now, I feel I’m a composite of all my weaknesses, like one of those collages I made in fourth grade, lots of pictures pasted on one another on a piece of poster board.
I feel like there is an alien inside me, like the black hole (which is inside me and only me) is a terrible entity that will swallow me up if I don’t do things correctly. And I don’t know how to do this correctly. Still, the fear of falling in it lingers in the back of my mind, like a shameful memory that keeps popping up to make me feel bad about myself.
“O Lord, I’m so weak right now. Help me make sense of this. Help me feel whole again.”
One of my failings is that I’m afraid to cry. It’s something I’ve struggled with all my life. Crying feels like losing control. As morbid as it may seem, crying is like vomiting to me. And I hate to vomit. I don’t want to lose what little control I have over my life. Retching and I have a long history of not speaking to one another. I hate anything coming out of my mouth. Going in my mouth is good, coming out is bad. I go through mind tricks to keep from, as some college buddies have called it, “driving the porcelain bus.”
I don’t see myself as a controlling person, but then again, most controlling people don’t see themselves as controlling. I always thought controlling people like to tell others what to do. I don’t want to tell anyone what to do because I’m so often wrong. My philosophy is: “You take care of yourself, I have enough on my plate.” I make some exceptions for my children who may be walking in the wrong direction, but I feel this falls under the “fatherdom” category. I don’t want to micro-managing anyone.
But there is no control in that black hole. None. And that adds to my fear. I’m powerless in it. I don’t know how deep it is. I’m afraid if I “lose it” I’ll never recover.
I’m on the English side of life. When Princess Diana died, English journalists said that the Queen “did a good job” of mourning her daughter-in-law. What does they mean? She didn’t cry. She didn’t lose control. Being emotionally detached from emotions is considered “good” in the English culture. I fear I fall under this “crying is a bad” umbrella, and experience, “emotionphobia.”
When I hear other widowers tell their stories, they cry and I just sit there like a lump on a log. Their wives died four years ago, mine died three weeks ago, and I’m not emotional at all. Why aren’t I crying? What’s wrong with me? Sometimes, I feel like I’m talking about a friend whose wife died, not mine. Why am I so detached? Have I become a monster? What’s wrong with me? Is this a sin I need to confess? Will this change in time?
I ask myself terrible questions like; “Am I dishonoring Deb by not crying more? Isn’t my job to cry every time I talk about her? Maybe I didn’t love her enough. Maybe my heart turned to stone when she died. Why are these guys crying and I’m not?”
Wow, am I a mess. I’m a mess wrapped in a towel of misery. If there is any time in my life I need Jesus, it’s now. “Lord, help me, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how I should be.”
I don’t know
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said “I don’t know” over the past three weeks. It’s like everything I once knew is now in question. I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. After spinning through the air, I’m disoriented, not sure what is going on. “Why are the horses green and purple when they were black and white a few minutes ago?”
Maybe there is no right or wrong in grieving.
But that can’t be, because there is right and wrong in life.
I want a short cut. I want God to tell me which way is the most direct route out of grief? Is there a fast lane? If there is no short cut, I want to be the first one to find it. By the way, where’s the off button?
I realize I am regressing under the weight of sorrow. Is that OK? Can I regress a little? I just want out. I want it to be over ASAP. I’m like a cell phone in the Huron National Forest, constantly looking for a signal while wearing my batteries down. How can I opt out of this Lord? I want to give up but don’t know how.
Is that pathetic or what?
I assume the only way I could give up is suicide. But I can’t do that. It would hurt my children. I can’t do that to God. I can’t do that to my wife, my family, my friends, or even to myself. That’s rabbit hole I don’t think I can pull myself out of once I go there. But there is another part of me that knows things are as good as they can be. At least, for now.
I am blessed. I am a rich man. I have friends I can call who will allow me to blather nonsense about my conflicted feelings for an hour and offer me no shame. I even have friends who call me to check in, and offer prayer. I’ve never had such a wide base of deep friendships. This is a good thing.
The periods in which I want to “give up,” are getting shorter. The desperation tends to drift away like the seeds of a dandelion if I hold onto the truth long enough. It’s just those intense times of grief are overwhelming. Often, I just need to sleep and recalibrate my grief button. In the morning, I wake up blank most of the time.
Sometimes that works.
I think the secret is to be connected to others. I am reinventing myself. I purposely allow space to say yes to all dinner invites, which has turned out to be a big blessing. And what’s better, it happens often. I’ve had meals at more houses in the last month than I have in the last 10 years. And I have a few planned next week. I know when I enter their house, they honor me and I honor them. Both sides win. I think I win the most because dinner with friends chases the darkness away. And for a while, I don’t feel that black hole at my feet. I forget about it.
Perhaps I could have been more social in the past. I should have been more involved in connecting with others. Deb and I didn’t always see eye to eye on this issue, so few families ever came over to our house. Now, I wish I would have pushed the issue a little more.
The Fear
I have tripped and fallen into that terrible black hole. The experience is not quick, but slow like the slow burn of thirst. It’s almost subtle. It’s not splashing into water, but more like hiking at a high altitude where you realize it’s hard to get air in your lungs. The emotions float to the surface before I realize what they are. Then, they make me think terrible thoughts.
The hole is isolation. At church, I’m connect. In the hole, I’m alone and lost. It’s being in a vast dessert with no end in sight. It’s shame. It’s desperate shame that feels like nausea. I’ve had shame before, but nothing so vivid, so real, so guttural. It’s like life is being pulled from me. And I’m left feeling hallow, like I don’t care about anything anymore.
The hole seems too powerful for me to get out of. I’m stuck. Like the slow burn of quicksand. No, it’s more like a pit of tar. I have thick, oppressive blackness that I can’t get off my body no matter how hard I try. It pulls me down into the darkness and where there is no mercy. It’s hard to breath down there, like you can’t get enough air in your lungs, even after you try. And it pulls the will to live from my body and hides it.
There is something in the hole. I think its despair. A separation from all that is good and holy. A form of death. It fills me with a dark hopelessness that hold tightly to sin. Instead of condemning the sin, I justify it, and volunteer to become a prisoner.
That’s why I’m so afraid of it. It’s all my vices piled into one centrally located hell. I guess the thing that terrifies me the most is my own fear. I felt this when I was a child, afraid of nightmares and scary creatures. As a child, my nightmares had its own category in my head, near the top of the list of things I didn’t want to experience, above bee stings. I fear being swallowed up by the blackness. It’s my fear that I am so afraid of. Why is its grip so hard?
I tend to self-depreciate and assume the worst of me. Even good things I do, I assume they were selfishly motivated and were feeble attempts to get the praise from others. “What a guy, that Andy. He’s such a good feller.”
I doubt myself. And sometimes, I doubt my doubting, and end up chasing my tail in a people-pleasing frenzy.
This loud inner judge begins to raise his accusing voice at me:
“You don’t have what it takes to be a man.”
“You’re a fraud. You’re just trying to impress others.”
“What were you thinking? How can you keep making the same stupid mistakes?”
“Quick, hide, before anyone sees how stupid you are.”
“Hide and never come back.”
God intervenes by answering prayers prayed by friends. I’m too disoriented to get the help I need. I lose my center and lose sight of Jesus.
“Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.”
When I finally stand on my own, with my own two legs, I still hear these lies coming out of that terrible hole. They come from the ground. They are faint, but because they are my worst fears, I hear them clearly. Each phrase stings. They are too familiar to forget. They’ve left marks on my soul. They try to name me. And sometimes, honestly, I’ve let them.
I’ve been here before. I’ve seen this terrible place. I just never realized it looks like Deb’s grave.
So, I busy myself. If I keep moving, I can’t hear the whispers. At least, not as much. They seem quieter when I have lots to do.
“Jesus, help me. Jesus, be with me.”
So, I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. Neuroscientists tell me I’m exercising the “parasympathetic nervous system,” or PNS when I exhale. I literally push out the stress out of my body. Not all of it, just some of it. Emma McAdams says, “The PNS acts like a parachute, it stops the stress as you slowly exhale.”
“Please Jesus, be my Savior. Save me from this hole. I can’t do this anymore.”