“People
are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of
all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love
hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and
dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain
is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re
wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio.
You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you
carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a
part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide
them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up
for your right to feel your pain.”
My response to this post from my husband: "It's there, whether you want
it to be or not. And if you try to ignore it, you can't ever get
through it. That's why I let myself cry when I need to, if I can. You
can't "break on through to the other side." You have to get there one
tear at a time; one heartbreak at a time."
In forty years, I've managed to survive and overcome a lot of very painful things. People who know me well and all of the things I've gotten through in life think I'm strong. I suppose I should still think of that as a compliment, but any more, I just find it annoying. The thing about having a reputation for being strong is that when something hits me like a sledgehammer, I feel guilty if I can't keep my shit together. I feel compelled to keep putting one foot in front of the other, even when I want to fall to the floor and crumple into a limp, damp ball.
Another master of words has come to my mind often this week: Bono. Every time I hit a wall in life, there is a string of lyrics that never fails to flash through my mind. "Sometimes I feel like...I don't know. Sometimes I feel like checking out. I wanna get it wrong. Can't always be strong." I think these words mean so much to me, because of my annoyance with my reputation for being able to keep things together. Isn't even the strongest person entitled to a major emotional breakdown, and the occasional unbridled fuck up in response?
I haven't done so well this week.
After my last blog, a dear young friend reached out to me, and spoke of how strong my relationship with Jeph is, and how much she hopes to build something as strong as we have in her own life.
Jeph and I have been through things we never imagined possibly being so hard. The loss of two of our dogs brought us to our knees. The destruction of a giant chunk of his home town brought Jeph to places so dark and disturbing that I can't imagine. Job losses. Dreams crumbling. We've seen a lot. He's the strong one this week, and I envy him, though I know he's being so for me.
As I have slogged through the quicksand of learning what the fate of our lentil bean would be, I have gone from the moment I knew a heartbeat existed, to the moment I knew there was nothing. I've gone from cautiously optimistic to hysterical, and every place in between.
I don't want to feel the pain; not because I can't bear it, but because I can't bear for anyone to see me bearing it. I want to skip the period of time in which I will be fine one moment, and a puddle of tears the next. I want to skip the hours of sleep I can't seem to get right now, because my brain and heart won't shut down. I want to get to the other side of this agonizing time.
I know Jim Morrison was driven and inspired by a fast life of substance abuse, and overindulgence on many levels. If you believe the version of his life presented by Oliver Stone in the movie "The Doors," he was more than a little crazy. But the quote my husband posted shatters my already broken heart with its clarity and truth.
Whether it's pain, fear or desolation, you can't get through these feelings without feeling them. You can't be real with yourself or anyone else unless you let what your really feeling pass through you so you can get to the other side of it.
Some people will argue that you must remain positive. You must keep a stiff upper lip. You must carry on. I found myself dealing with medical professionals who were less than sensitive. I found myself hearing life altering news from people who didn't know me. In the midst of this, I came to an understanding about how I deal with people who are in pain, or even just in a state of worry. In my business, people often make demands on my time and the time of my colleagues that feel unreasonable. Until this week, I had never been a person seeking help, seeking information and seeking comfort. I had never been the patient or client going off on the person on the other end of the line. I had never been made to feel so trivial and so helpless. And over the course of the week, I realized that I could think of times I hadn't been any better to those so-called crazy and nuisance people.
Not only was I uncomfortable dealing with my own pain and fear, but I didn't want to deal with anyone else's either. It's easier to avoid pain than to feel it or face it. It's the reason why so many of us never take risks or leaps in our lives. It's the reason why so many of us stay put in situations we don't like, rather than chancing a loss of stability. If we never try to do something amazing, we will never fail at it, and we will never have to recover from anything. We will never lose.
The thing we often overlook in living our lives that way is that we also will never win. Every great thing we dream of, or aspire to will never happen.
We spent a lot of time hemming and hawing over whether we would try to have a child or not. I think we mostly waited because we didn't want to risk that it would change us and our lives in ways we would regret. But when I think of Jeph explaining to people that it came to him that we should, because he wanted to finally do something meaningful with life, it occurs to me that maybe he's right, and maybe our fear of failing to remain who we are has kept us from living as meaningful a life as we might have for longer than we should have.
We were afraid to feel the pain of mistakes. We were afraid to feel the discomfort of change. In the moment of hysteria I experienced last Saturday night, that fear and pain of loss made me understand how much I really wanted our lentil bean--how much I really wanted our child. While the agony of the loss seems to be hitting me in waves, without this pain, I wouldn't know that I must try again, and I must try better. Without feeling this pain, I couldn't get to the other side. I'm not going to break through, because pain doesn't work that way. The giant gaping wound heals slowly, and side to side. The pulling back together of my spirit won't happen overnight, and as another friend shared with me, I may still feel the scar so many years from now. I may still be feeling the pain as a reminder of how I made it to that other side.
So, wallow, when you have to. Choke back tears when it feels right and you can. Eat a whole pie. Let the tears fall in the car while you sing along to songs on the "New Moon" soundtrack. Feel what you need to feel to get where you need to go. Because you're never going to get through it by trying to get around it.
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