Seeking Relief

Chaos is not the best look on many people. We wear it in panicked expressions, rapid or even ragged breathing, even tears. To feel the solid ground we expected under our feet shudder, shake, disappear... it goes deeper than nervousness. This is a primary, visceral fear.

To abate our terror, we seek relief.

We learn from the world where we can find sanctuary. For some, immediate family is a welcoming haven. For others, it is art, or work, or the family they have created in friends.

We make choices when faced with panic. Not all those choices are great. Sometimes, we eat poorly. We push away people whose intentions are good. We push reckless behavior to the limit, daring some force to interfere or at least determine whether you keep the wheel straight to go over the island cliff or whip it back onto the road at the last possible second.

Obviously, my body is a betrayal I never anticipated. Damaged before I could speak, I knew the physical was no reflection of my internal world. My mind became my refuge, my solace.

Sometimes the pain that rocks my world is terrifying. There are people in this world who feel slicing agony in their left side and think, "Is it cancer? Is it bleeding?" There are people who dread simple tasks because at any moment, that chaos can engulf them.

So we seek relief. We abate the pain in the unknown as best we can.

We all do. We all seek relief.

Love can be a relief. Opening a message that was waiting just for you, filled with images of your favorite things? Hearing a voicemail filled with laughter and inside jokes, reminding you that you matter to someone who thought of you just because they love you?

Food can be a relief. Not just eating it. At times, being able to complete a dish that is technically challenging is actually a relief. It may take me forever, but it's still something I can do.

Playing games, in all their forms, can be so restful. Some games are meditative. I can make no claim to have found Zen Koi on my own, but many of my Warrior Women with chronic pain/ailment issues find satisfaction and distraction in its soothing music and simple gameplay. And Yet It Moves, on Wii, is beautiful and engaging with simple colors and soothing music.

People can be both relief and weight. These are the razor edges of human experience. Someone intending to be so helpful, slicing wounds beyond repair - and the weight of your own wellbeing. Do you forgive an honest mistake? Is the jagged edge stitchless and unhealing? When all you can do is put on clothes in the morning, and barely function, is it fair to expect that you repair the breech?

Razors aren't just hidden in the faces of the world. Movies, books, comics: the bastion of refuge for so many can hide remembrances that rob you of breath, and chase away the relief you sought. We look to touchstones, we search out the ways that other people we know and trust have found their way through the pain and chaos we all carry, and we hope to make it through the pitfalls more intact than not.

Rosemary Kennedy's quote about time healing wounds is one of my favorites of all time. She shares the heartbreak that a well of painful loss washes some of us in. That the wound never heals, and we only learn to carry the pain is the truest of all lessons I have ever learned.

We are surrounded by varying degrees of people in chaos. We exist in a world where we never know what winds blow across our lives, nor what they carry. Even as I read "I'll Be Gone In The Dark" by the late Michelle McNamara, I find myself sobbing at a life lived in service to others, gone as she struggled to find a way to bring a glimpse of peace into the lives of those who will find no relief without answers.

Michelle McNamara told her husband, Patton Oswalt, frequently, that it's chaos and we should simply be kind to one another. That stays with me.

I carry the pain of a body that is dying faster than it should at my age, and all the surgeries and toxic chemicals that are weirdly keeping me alive while making my hair/eye lashes/memory disappear in clumps. I carry the loss of my parents, my brother, the niece who will never recover from a car accident, the extended family I missed out on for one reason or another. My friends who are gone, Melissa Moses chief among them, are prominent scars across my heart.

I also carry the hope of relief.

I am frequently given relief. Texts from my Sister in the Seattle area, texts from my Sister Melissa, my husband finds ways throughout the day to give me laughter and sweetness. I have an extended family of in-laws without whom I would be lost. I cook the meals my mother taught me. I can pack a car with Tetris-style precision because my Dad insisted on help. I sometimes put lotion on the backs of my hands and rub them together, hearing Melissa Moses shyly whisper, "I don't like it on my palms." I love hot chocolate, and can still remember the hot chocolates my niece and I would drive out to get before her car accident left her in a coma. Even the razors that once sliced into my heart and left me a wounded mess now help me clear the cobwebs, and remember the sweetness of the loves I've carried.

So onward we strive. We step with as much confidence as we can, on this walk through life. We carry scars and secrets, we find family in the friends who stay with us. We feel pain and we seek relief.

Be gentle with the people around you. Most of us are doing our best, and the ones who aren't are hunting for relief for a wound they may not even know they have.