... a one-word prompt every week, and you have the opportunity to free write for five minutes flat on that one word, then join the link-up...
The Frozen Sadness of Ambiguous Loss is a blog post that conveniently ties together two of the main things I'm reading and writing about these days, so I was excited to read it yesterday.
Marilyn Gardner writes about her Adult Third Culture Kid life and as I've mentioned before (Between Seasons) I started reading her books and blogs to learn about Third Culture Kids (TCKs) but also found I related a lot as a third culture adult. Expat life in a cross cultural family is one of the things I read and write about most at the moment, and TCKs are part of that. The losses of the TCK is what she was writing about here, but buried at the bottom of a paragraph I found this bit which I bolded:
"I move on and find out there are two types of ambiguous loss: One is that the person/place/family is physically absent, but psychologically present, in that they may reappear. This can be loss from divorce, moving, boarding school, migration. The other is that the person is physically present, but the core of who they are is absent. Examples of this are people with dementia or alzheimers."
It reminded me of a post I wrote back in 2012 when my husband was sick. It was like when he was physically present he was actually absent (being absent feels like he is more present). At the time I couldn't really explain to anyone how painful that was, and it felt like there was no reason why it would be painful. This unexplainable struggle is the other main thing I've been writing, the impact of chronic illness in the family, and here it is, mentioned in a post about TCKs.
"This is it!"I felt like yelling.
And I read on, the author had the same moment ..."At this point, it comes to me: this is it! "
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An example of my recent TCK thoughts:
An example of my recent thoughts about emotions related to chronic illness:
6 comments:
I'm glad you found an author who was able to express what you were feeling and let you know that someone understands! I appreciate your insights here and the quote about ambiguous loss. It is so hard when someone is physically present but psychologically absent or vice versa and I think it's more complicated than we sometimes realise. I'm your neighbour at FMF today!
I have caught a glimpse of loss I hadn't considered. Thank you.
Since I'm dying of a couple of nasty cancers, my wife is dealing with the loss of who I was...what she has instead is a cheerful, insouciant hooligan who makes jokes about pain, and who cares not a fig about death.
She wants the old me back; that was someone she could understand.
#1 at FMF this week.
https://blessed-are-the-pure-of-heart.blogspot.com/2019/01/your-dying-spouse-572-lump-fmf.html
Thanks Lesley
Sorry to hear that Annette but thanks for sharing.
Andrew I can't imagine how things are for your wife!
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