Running Out of Dread

When you’ve rehearsed the pain so many times, there’s none left to feel.

It’s been almost three years since losing my daughter, Chloe, at the tender age of nineteen. Some days it feels like yesterday. Other days I catch myself wondering if she ever really existed at all. I’m not sure which is worse. Either way, it’s a question with no answer, and I’m learning to stop asking it.

Our family is entering a season of milestones. Chloe would have turned twenty-two years old this coming December 16. Nine days later is Christmas. And six weeks after that, on February 1st, is the anniversary of her death.

Loss doesn’t just take the person. It changes everything, even your relationship with the calendar. What was once a place to capture appointments, plans and milestones becomes a mocking reminder of the birthdays, Christmases and anniversaries that’ll never be the same.

You circle those days in your mind months in advance. You paint a vivid picture of the hell you’re about to experience. You imagine the crash before it happens, wondering how you’re going to get through it all.

But sometimes, when the day finally comes… nothing happens. You wake up expecting grief to crush you, and instead, the opposite happens. It hasn’t been any better.

“Chloe would have been twenty-one today and I feel almost nothing. What the hell is the matter with me? Am I suppressing the pain instead of facing it? Have I ‘moved on’ without realizing it, or being ready? What the hell is wrong with me?”

It confused me the first two years. Actually, it did more than confuse me. It pissed me off. How could such an important day feel so goddamn ordinary? I’d spent weeks dreading it, only to feel nothing. It felt like grief owed me the pain I’d been preparing for.

But as usual, grief reminded me that I’m not the one in charge of how this all unfolds.

After the second year, I began to understand that what I was feeling wasn’t absence. It was exhaustion. I’d spent so much time anticipating the pain that by the time the day arrived, I’d already lived it ten times over.

I had, quite literally, run out of dread.

For the first two years, I didn’t even know that’s what was happening. I thought I was doing grief wrong. Now I see it differently.

Dread isn’t the opposite of love. It’s what love turns into when you’re afraid to feel it. It’s the mind’s way of trying to protect us from being blindsided by emotions that feel too intense to handle.

And for a lot of men, that makes perfect sense. We’ve been taught to stay in control no matter what. Someone has to. Anticipating pain feels safer than letting it sucker punch us in front of our families.

It gives us something to do. It also keeps us stuck in hell. We think we’re protecting ourselves, but really we’re trying to see the world through bulletproof glass. We can still make out the shapes of what’s good like laughter, love, connection, but nothing quite reaches us. The glass keeps the danger out, but it keeps life out too. Before long, you forget what it felt like to stand in the open air, unguarded, where beauty and heartbreak live side by side.

This year, I’ll be stepping out from behind the glass. When the dread shows up, and it will, I’m not going to fight it or feed it. I’m going to notice it and do my best to let it move through me. It’ll be tempting to hide or retreat and I can’t say I won’t succumb to the need to protect myself. But when I notice myself doing it, I’ll come back out from behind the glass again. And again. And as many times as necessary.

I’m going to talk about it with the people who love me because resilience is relational. I’ve tried being an army of one countless times. It doesn’t work. My ability to heal is built on the quality of the relationships in my life.

If the past few years have taught me anything, it’s that grief often in hides in plain sight. It hides in the ways you protect yourself. It hides in the ways you distract yourself. And it hides in the stories you tell yourself about the important moments with the person you who died.

Healing means learning to see, feel and move through the grief however it shows up. That’s what I want this season to be about. Not about dreading, then surviving the milestones that will be waiting every year for the rest of my life. I want this season to be about find joy in my days and honouring whatever shows up on the most important days.

I’ve spent over fifteenyears bracing for impact. This time, I just want to live the days as they come. Open, honest and with my shield finally laid down.

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I recently uploaded a podcast with Professor Jo Clarke on resilience. It was a wonderful conversation and she gave some immediately actionable advice any man can incorporate into his life.

Please consider giving it a listen.