I remember my freshman English teacher from high school, how she had appreciated a comment of mine in discussion. We were doing character analysis and I brought up the main character's change in personality, how maybe the shift wasn't so much a change for the opposite, but rather simultaneous traits coexisting and being expressed differently in different situations. I was basically suggesting that all of us contain a myriad of traits within us, and instead of each holding only a certain set, the set that we express at any moment in time is context-dependent. And she liked that view of possibility.
I think of these possibilities for expression in my moments of grief... how I feel the seeds of happiness still there, just sprouting at the edges. Even in the valley of the shadow of sadness, I stumble upon things that elicit a half-chuckle, despite the weeping that may resume anew. I think about how I am simultaneously happier and sadder now in my older age, and I'm glad for the capacity, especially since it has grown. As the poet Warsan Shire wisely stated: "If it will keep my heart soft, break my heart everyday."
And so I give myself permission to feel, because heartbreak has was always been in the realm of possibility. What I've lived has evoked it, and to deny it would be to deny that I have lived. And sometimes I feel that it is too much, that I can hardly contain it, all of the sadness and pain in the vessel that is me - body, mind, and soul - and it's like I overflow. I am not the sadness and the sadness isn't me but I am replete and I let it go, and my cup runneth over. But I am intact. I am still me. I hold a myriad of possibilities and life will bring another sort of repletion, completely.