Guilt Trippers and Fixers

In my not-so-humble, completely non-medical opinion there is no virtue to suffering in silence. Repressing your emotional pain is convenient for some people around you (the ones who do not want to notice you are in pain), but it is bad for your mental and physical health. Words have power. Speaking the truth "might" set you free."

There are obvious caveats to consider. I trust you to know what they are. Still, emotional pain will not go away by ignoring it. It wants to be felt, processed, and released. Unacknowledged emotional pain festers and screams like an angry crowd; it demands to be heard. If you want pain to dissipate then you will have to chew it up and spit it out, not suck it up. Geez-o-Pete, do you want to end up with the psychological equivalent of a sinus infection? Emotional pain is powerful stuff. Left unattended it will find insidious ways to get your attention despite all your good intentions for "soldiering on." 

If you are lucky, you might have a friend who is a good listener. Sadly, I am not talking about a "fixer" friend. Fixers are good hearted people who care about you and want very much to help. However, they have their own pain to contend with. Their pain makes it hard for them to just listen to you speak the unspeakable, even though they really, really want to. I know because I am a fixer... I am freakin' useless sometimes, jumping in ready to fight other people's fights, warding off evil, controlling the hell out of every thing, frantically filled with "good ideas" and best intentions. Sometimes I exhaust myself (and others). Maybe most of the time.

When I am in pain but I don't have a friend who is a good listener, I pay someone to listen to me. Why not? In fact, seeing a gifted therapist is often the best way for me. However, if I cannot afford (or find) a gifted therapist, then I keep a private journal. I write whatever comes to mind. I like to imagine converting emotional pain into words is a magical release spell. Humor me if you can. I'm trying to fix things here. Relaxare!

I try not to pay attention to guilt trippers. You know, the people who infer that your pain is self-indulgent and unimportant in the grand scheme of things. If I feel it, it is real. I cannot help fight the world's pain if I haven't first resolved my own. Guilt trippers want to shut us up and shut us down. That doesn't seem helpful or kind, does it? To be honest (and compassionate) guilt trippers probably do this because they have their own unresolved pain. I get it. I know they mean well. Still, they can get in the way of personal growth just as effectively as us fixers.

I want to be helpful, kind, and compassionate. I also want to be thankful, grateful, and look on that damn bright side. Truly. But I also want to be honest, courageous, and strong. Sometimes that involves facing your own pain first. THEN you can safely help the passenger in the seat next to you put on their oxygen mask.

I might have stolen that last sentence from some other blogger's recent blog. It sounds disturbingly familiar. If I have stolen your thought and you read this, please comment so you can take credit for it. I will apologize. It will assuage my guilt.

Sometimes I think Jiminy Cricket was just a nagging, chirping grasshopper

Mourning

We have acclimated to the climate and, except for the steamiest of hot summer days, we do not turn on our air conditioning until mid-morning.  That means we still keep the sliding glass door to the lanai open in the early morning hours.  Our cat, Buddy, appreciates this.  He hunts lizards in the pool area and likes coming and going as he pleases.   

I am not a big fan of air-conditioning, but it is essential here.  I cannot imagine what life in Florida (or anywhere in the Deep South) was like before air-conditioning.  Still, we both like to put off turning it on until the sweat is dripping down the back of our necks.  Like everyone else in Florida I bitch about the heat; however, I would rather live through a Central Florida summer than an Upstate New York winter.  No contest.  I like the heat, and the humidity makes my hair curly. If only I had lived here in the late 1960's during my Janis Joplin hair phase.

I am slowly coming out of a deep funk that started when my mother died earlier this year.  I am surprised at how hard this has hit me because I thought I was ready for her death.  It is so confusing, this grief thing.  I have lived through the deaths of my father and two brothers.  As Amy Shumer's boss says in Trainwreck, this is not my first rodeo.  I wonder if it is hitting me harder this time because I am retired and I actually have time to grieve this loss? 

The past few weeks I have noticed a change for the better.  About damn time, too!  I am becoming more aware of myself and the world around me each morning.  I take this as a good sign.  I do not know about you, but I can usually predict my mood for any given day by how I experience morning. 

Early mornings in Central Florida are almost always stunning.  The sky is blue, the sun is shining, and there is lush green foliage everywhere.  The first 8 months we lived in this house I woke up every single morning thinking, "Another day in paradise!"  Then Mom died and I did not notice much of anything.  

The worst part is I have not been aware of what was happening to me.  Grief sneaks up on a person like the proverbial thief in the night.  I am reminded of a big cat when she is on the hunt.  She approaches soundlessly, quietly; the prey rarely knows she is coming.  In an instant she pounces and tears into the neck with her killing teeth. Clamping on with that unforgiving death grip, she shakes that poor critter till it dies from a broken neck. The only difference is that Grief goes for the heart.  Grief has taken me like that.  She shook me like an alcoholic housewife shakes her first martini of the day. If you have experienced grief OR if you are (or know) an alcoholic you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Not surprisingly I have spent this fallow period longing for the past, yearning for a whole shitload of things I have lost along the way.  You know - my amazing flower gardens up North, living in a progressive and liberal college town, my black-handled scissors, and a time when I still had a mother.  This really has to change.  I want to move on.  One can effectively deal with the present and make necessary changes that will affect the future; but the past is just that. Those things are GONE.  Except for the black-handled scissors, I think they are someplace in this house.  But anyway, here's the deal: Living in the past involves very little actual living.

All I have done for 5 long months is complain.  I cry, I lose my temper, I behave badly.  I am not trying to be this awful person - at some point I simply lost control.  Please do not misunderstand my complaints about grief; I think grief work is important.  It has meaning.  A person needs to go through it, needs to feel their emotions, blobbity, blah, blah, blah.  I am just so *^!%# tired of it.  Enough!  I am ready to be done with mourning.  I wonder if I can pull that off, change myself just by wanting it?  What are the practical limits of desire?

This morning I stayed in bed long after waking up, a guilty retiree pleasure.  I eventually got up and walked into the living room.  The sliding glass door was open to the world.  As luck would have it, I noticed the blue sky, the pool, and the palm trees out back.  I can assure you I was not looking for them, I just turned my head and there they were.  I immediately thought "Wow, another day in paradise!"  I felt good and I wanted more.

My handsome husband is an early riser and he always makes the coffee before I get up.  This is yet another reason why I love that man.  I poured myself a cuppa joe and thought how great it was to have the morning to myself.  I went into my home office (aka N's playroom) and turned on the computer where I sat down to check email and, perhaps, to write.

The view from my office window caught my eye.  I used to look out and observe my neighbors' comings and goings.  THAT was a waste of time! Consequently, I moved my computer screen and now it blocks the lower part of the window.  I no longer see my neighbor's houses.  Now I pretend I live in the woods.  I see blue sky, two large sycamores, a part of the neighbor's live oak, and the top of our screamin' pink crepe myrtle.  It looks like this:

Grief is a common ailment.  I have friends who are also mourning the loss of a loved one right now. For some the worst will last a few months, for others it might last a year or even more. Grief is not a one-size-fits-all emotion.  I do not believe the feeling of loss ever completely goes away, but at some point we find a way to rebuild our lives without the people we loved and lost.  This is what we do.  There is no shame in being human.  There is no shame in feeling pain or in feeling loss.  It is perfectly okay to ask for help.  These are the lessons Grief is teaching me.  If I learn my lessons well maybe She will leave me alone.