The Penultimate Ultimate: Making Space for Endings and Loss

Every sunset is a small ending.

I was once in the last few days of a relationship with a therapist and was feeling very sad. Despite the positive results of the therapy, its end was a loss, as I was saying good bye to a person who had been pivotal in my life.  My therapist said, “There’s no time left for anything new. We have only time to say goodbye.” We shared in the sadness before experiencing energy and pleasure in the success of our work together.

As I sit down to write on the penultimate day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge, I am aware of the sadness of this ending. I am quiet, wistful. I look at my list of possible topics, and they seem too meaty, too “new,” too forward looking for this day before the end.

How can this seem like such an ending? My blog is not ending—quite the contrary! I feel energized, excited, more eager than ever to continue writing. My on-line relationships are not ending—quite the opposite: I have been making new connections and, even more important, finding new ways to do so. My opportunities are not ending—without question, I feel more opportunities than ever before.

So where is the ending? What loss is evoked? Why the sadness?

The ending lies in the conclusion of a challenge that has been a gift I did not know was coming my way, a gift I did not understand even as I agreed to open it. No matter what may come next, something precious is ending now. With every ending comes loss. With loss comes sadness.

I have struggled mightily with loss in my life. I have many clever denial systems that cover it up, hide it from me so completely I do not know anything is missing. I learned to minimize, rationalize; to defend against the sadness. This strategy may work in the short term to cope with an immediate trauma, but over time it strips me of many layers of feeling and a host of stories I need if I am to understand myself. It leaves me safe but cold.

Safe and cold are death to a writer. Safe and cold leave you empty, without a connection to the very spaces you must tap into to find an authentic voice (even if that voice is for you alone, in private writing). Safe and cold mock your writer’s heart, your artist’s spirit.

So I have learned to invite loss in, to keep an eye out for it as if expecting a difficult but important visitor. I have learned to make room for loss in my life, whether that loss is large or small, whether the loss will be long lasting or short lived.

I will never again have my first Ultimate Blog Challenge—not the new experiences, not the freedom of being a neophyte, not the stress-free devotion or the novelty of a never-before event. It matters not what will come next: today I create a space to honor this loss, to pay attention to the ending.

Questions for Reflection: How do you notice loss in your life? All human beings have defense mechanisms for dealing with painful feelings—what are some you have observed in yourself or others? How do you react to this post? (Does it make sense to you? Does it seem silly or unnecessary?)

Writing Prompts: “The losses that I am most aware of today are ______” (then keep writing); “In the past, I have responded to loss by ______” (then keep writing); “My reaction to endings tends to be ______” (then keep writing); “For me, the hardest thing about endings is ______” (then keep writing).

Tagged as: awareness, daily writing, emotions, endings, loss, penultimate day, personal narrative, reflective writing, Ultimate Blog Challenge, Writing