Where Light Won’t Touch

Sometime within the last few months, I’d received the title of ‘perpetual optimist’.

This is an identity that I accepted — a role that I was willing to play because of the comfort I knew it provided in others. I was surrounded by people leading lives that were almost tumultuous compared to mine, and so I was proud to be the therapist, shoulder-to-cry-on, great-at-listening friend. In fact, I wanted nothing more than to be there for others in any way that I could be. It didn’t matter if “being there” came in the form of Neosporin and Band-Aids or a hug so tight it could be felt for hours after. I was there, and that was what mattered.

It came easy. Already, I had been trying my best to a live a life rooted in my love for others: I tried to come up with reasonable solutions for the issues of my friends without setting up expectations for failure, but for hope. I ended every night with a list of the people and things I was grateful to have. And most of all, I looked on the bright side of any situation — and if there was no bright side, I’d take light from inside myself and shine it on every facet to make one.

But, what am I supposed to do when that doesn’t work?

What am I supposed to do when there are places that light won’t touch?

Loss.

I wish it on nobody, but to those who have lived life without having experienced mourning, I will provide context: when grief finds its way into your being, it is nothing short of relentless. It swallows everything. It consumes. It takes, and it takes, and it takes and it couldn’t care less about the damage it leaves in its path. It takes anything even remotely incandescent and turns it into empty spaces with dark corners. Light cannot seep through the cracks. Sunshine cannot pour through an open window because there are none. Darkness is an all-consuming thing.

Grief is raw. Grief is the hand that pulls the trigger of a gun with bullets of memory and absence. Grief holds my head underwater when I try to come up for air. Grief chains me up, kicks me in the head, and in the heart, and makes sure to leave scratches that won’t properly mend. And I know grief is chewing up and spitting out my ‘perpetual optimist’ title — laughing at the thought of me trying to patch up the wounds it’s opened.

There is light in me, I know there is, but most of the time, it’s not doing what I tell it to. I need it to fill the gaping hole in my chest, to serve as a permanent fixture, but it won’t. I can’t help but feel like a fool for taking the prettiest memories I have, the happiest moments I’ve experienced, pouring it all into this vacancy, and I can do nothing but watch as it all pours right back out of me. Spills onto the floor, even. And I am helpless.

Although, there are moments where the light stays in. Like a cheap spackling job, but it stays, because I forget. I forget that grief still has me in chains, because I’m on the phone with someone who is making me genuinely laugh. Because an episode of Holiday Baking Championship started to play. Because I see that the clock reads 12:12 and I know it’s the reassurance I need that I am being heard. In these fleeting moments, I am free.

One of the biggest issues with a cheap spackling job is it’s impermanence. And it’s impermanence is rooted in the fact that it doesn’t fill in all of the gaps that it should. Instead, it semi-covers up the huge, unexpected hole in the drywall and dries in a way that is almost half-hearted.

And in unpacking something as uninteresting as drywall and spackle, I’ve answered my own rhetorical.

There will always be places that light won’t touch.

If my life were an apartment, then I’ve mended multiple holes in the wall that have stayed closed for years , that are still closed, now. And I’ve had guests over multiple times — told them to make themselves at home, even, and none of them noticed. Instead, they comment on the colour of the rug I’ve chosen, or the books I keep on the shelf, or the corny photos of a kiss-on-the-cheek or my dogs that I’ve decided to hang up and display rather proudly.

It takes the right person for me to be willing to drag them by the hand, pick it up and place it gently on the dried spackle, and say: “Hey, do you feel that? Damage. I did a horrible job at repairing it myself, but it’s getting the job done, isn’t it?”

And it takes somebody really special for me to be willing to tell them how the damage got there in the first place. That the first hole is for my elementary school best friend. That the second is for a cousin who would have no doubt been famous today. That the third is for my first ever dog who I keep as a Polaroid in the back of my phone case. And that the fourth is so fresh that I don’t want to spill the details — the spackle is still wet, and poorly done, and messy, and far from filling in all the corners.

I can’t expect a perfect, smooth healing process for this. It would be wrong of me to allow me to set myself up for failure by believing that grieving is linear. It isn’t. It never will be. And there will always be places that light won’t touch.

But that’s the beauty of the thing, isn’t it? Finding the balance? Being able to go on knowing that the light is there, and the grief is there, but my God, the light is there?

I won’t use the light to forget anymore. Instead, I’ll use the light to remember. To remember why I’m here, and why my life is so, so beautiful, and why in the midst of my own tumultuous December, I am alive. I am here to live for me and to take damage and to grow from it. I am here to make mistakes and then do better.

Phone calls where I laugh so hard I cough aren’t a suppressant of the grief, but a reminder of why I have to go on. Rewatching Food Network isn’t a distraction, but something to heal my inner child. 12:12 on a clock is genuine, real communication that you’re okay. That the pain is gone. That you’re with me.

I think of you every day. When my hands are clasped in prayer at night, I make sure to save you for last, because its you that I have the most to say to. At times, I’m afraid I don’t have the right words, pero the only thing you need to know is mahal kita. Mahal na mahal kita, kuya. I should have said it more often, and I’m sorry for that. I miss you so much. Please never doubt that.

Life is too short to spend another second questioning things. I promise to live the best life I can for you. To love those I love unabashedly and without question. To dream big, like my life depends on it. To get that dream house with the grassy backyard by the water. To take zero disrespect, because what kind of baby sister would I be if I did?

For you. For me. For you.