101. Who I Am

"I sometimes wish I'd never gone through this...and then I realize that if that happened, I wouldn't be who I am." 

~ Esther Grace Earl, age 16, on fighting thyroid cancer (from a YouTube video blog posted on August 8th, 2010, just a few short weeks before she lost her battle with cancer on August 25th, 2010)

As I enter the final week of my life as a law student, I find myself unusually emotional.  And no, I'm not going to be "that girl" who cries at graduation or screams "OMG I LOVE YOU!!!" to my friends at inappropriate moments, but the journey to obtain this degree began for me almost eight years ago, and so much has happened in the interim that those eight years often feel like eight lifetimes.  I'm beyond happy at having reached this point, but now, having reached it, I also find myself a little like a nervous teenager on a first date who can't quite figure out how to sit still or what to do with my hands.  I guess that's the grown-up way of saying that these next few months of momentous change prompt me to take pause and reflect on where I've been and where I'm going.

I think I should start off by stating the obvious:  when someone you love dies and your whole life implodes, it really sucks.  You lose your sense of self, of equilibrium.  Wrapping your mind around the concept of tomorrow (not to mention the dreaded future) seems blasphemous.  Nothing feels right, and although things stop moving (well, for you, at least), regaining your sense of balance seems far-fetched - impossible, even.  Funnily enough, one of the hardest parts is the fact that you have no point of comparison because there is literally no one in the exact same situation to tell you what to do next.  Yes, there are other widows, friends, and family members who understand your general emotional plight - too many, really - but there is no one else with the same history, the same relationship, and the same plans for the future.  And unlike law school (or any other linear event), there's no numerical scale on which you can somehow quantify your "progress," despite everyone else's ideas about how they think you should be doing.  There's also no magic book that will give you all the answers (especially when people say stupid things), and there's no checklist you can slog through before being done with the five interminable stages of grief.  If anything, it becomes easy to feel stunted or even handicapped when you look around and see that other women have already gone on to get remarried or have children, and here you are, stuck at stage three (bargaining) because you'd rather just skip the inherent unpleasantness of stage four (depression).

Maybe that's why you feel so out of place and so abnormal.  For some people, normal is being "healthy" because they've sick for as long as they can remember.  For other people, it's being able to pay the bills or afford a new car or find friends with the same interests.  For me, it's been the ability to fit in with the other twenty-and-thirty-something-year-olds that make up my peer group.  I've often felt so different, so old and emotionally exhausted compared to most others my age, and that's not a roundabout way of trying to claim I'm somehow wiser or more mature.  I mean that I've felt different in an outcast, pariah-like kind of way.  I just don't quite fit because I make people uncomfortable, and I make them have to contemplate the kind of worst-case scenario no one really wants to acknowledge.  I've noticed I go out of my way in certain situations to hide the things that, on the outside, will give away the parts of my story that I don't want to have to reveal to strangers because I just don't have the energy to deal with the long awkward silence that always seems to follow the revelation of my reality.

I think this is something I'll just have to keep working on because what it really means is that, despite my best efforts, I'm still a bit too much of a people-pleaser.  Leaving out the difficult parts of my story to spare others the discomfort of having to articulate a response really isn't fair - to anyone.  I understand that not everyone feels ready or equipped to handle this kind of stuff (I certainly didn't!), but maybe it's my job to help them do that.  Over the past seven years, I've noticed that we as a society are generally pretty bad at handling death and all other scary, traumatic events, so maybe it wouldn't be so bad to force people to confront their fears.  On the other hand, I also don't want to fuel any unspoken perception that I'm somehow capitalizing on what happened to me, and I don't want to be the recipient of the sympathetic "I-feel-bad-for-you-favors" often associated with being in this position (kids with various forms of childhood cancer call these "cancer perks," as I recently learned from reading John Green's "The Fault in Our Stars").  Achieving things based on my own merit and personality matters to me immensely, and I often wonder if people only see me in the context of this one very sad thing that happened to me when I was twenty-two years old - a girl whose past has the potential to become the sole defining feature of her future.

I'd like to think that who I really am (and who I continue to strive to be) is the sum of countless grueling challenges, some of which I've tackled head on, others of which I had to patiently endure until finally achieving a sense of inner peace.  Establishing the Grassbaugh Veterans Project has helped immensely to this end; in addition to providing assistance to those in need, it's taken some of the pressure of single-handedly maintaining Jon's legacy off my shoulders.  I've also lessened my grip on certain absolute ways of thinking, particularly when it comes to my happiness and my attitude towards savoring (versus just "living") one day at a time.  I accept that achieving perfect balance in my life is something I may never fully master, but I'm trying, I really am.  And when I compare where I am at this point to where I was at this same time a couple of years ago, I feel like I've been given a second chance at, well, pretty much everything.  The richness and beauty of my life as it stands today I attribute fully to my love, Pete, to whom I am eternally grateful for his acceptance of me as this person with this history.  Although I can't change it, it's what makes me "me."  I've often insisted that one person has the ability to make a world of difference, and you, Pete, are that one person in my little world.  Thank you, baby.  I know you'll read this at some point, and when you do, I want you know how much I love you with all my heart for not trying to make me anything other than the sum of my many imperfect parts.

I don't know if I'll ever truly "fit in," but the good news is that, as I prepare to embark on this new chapter of my life, I feel much less like a pariah and more like a girl to whom bad things happened but who ultimately chose life and all the good things that are still possible over a pitiful existence devoid of joy.  I think, despite searching aimlessly for what felt like forever, I've finally regained that equilibrium I lost many years ago.  It feels slightly different this time - a more informed, more appreciative, and less naive sense of self.  Or at least, that's what I'd like to think.  I'd also like to think I understand that we are all fragile:  the time we have to bask in that worldly fragility is finite and not to be wasted.  Who I am...well, that's a book with what I hope will be many more chapters.  But I'm excited to write them.  And it's been a long time since I've been able to say that.