F.I.N.E.
It was another rough week, and it took me awhile to figure out why. Why was I feeling so down? I’d been doing so well! Sure, I missed him, but I always miss him. This was more than that. Why was the heavy heart back with such intensity?
Awhile back I promised A I would not end every night’s journal letter with “I miss you,” because I didn’t want him to worry about me, and I knew that I was going to be okay eventually. I told him that we could stipulate once and for all that I always miss him, he knew it, and I didn’t have to hammer him with it every time. I don’t really believe I’m holding him back from whatever he’s doing now, but at the same time, if you got plaintive calls from home every day, how much would you be able to enjoy yourself? I want him to enjoy himself; I always did. I realize that there’s a whole lot of hope, worry, spirituality, superstition, and bad-grief-book crud mixed up in that issue; I admit that without reservation. However, since I do not know what comes next, and how this all works, that’s all I’ve got, and there’s no unraveling it.
In any case, I wanted to be okay, for him, for those who love me, and for my own sake, because feeling miserable is…well…miserable. And when I was having a good stretch of days, that was easy enough. All it required of me was to be self-aware, and appreciate that I was feeling good today, that the skies were blue, and that there was good stuff in this life of mine.
But nothing is permanent, least of all feelings, and I found myself working harder and harder to be fine. I wasn’t quite so fine, and on one level I knew that because I could feel it, but on another, I just couldn’t admit it to myself, and I couldn’t admit it to him, in my own private journal. So fine morphed into F.I.N.E. “F.I.N.E.” was an acronym I learned once upon a time from ladies in my women’s circle, and it what you said you were when someone asked, and you said “I’m fine!”—you know the tone—but you really weren’t fine. And that “fine” was really F.I.N.E.: Fucked up. Insecure. Neurotic. Emotional.
And that was the kind of “fine” I’ve been the last few days. I think it’s easier to fool yourself about how you’re doing when, on the whole, you actually are fine. It’s easier to talk yourself into believing that you’re a couple levels finer than you actually are, in the absence of meltdowns. But in the end, the feelings I wasn’t allowing myself to acknowledge to anyone, including me, made themselves known. You cannot outrun yourself indefinitely. I keep trying, and the soul-bungee keeps snapping me back to where I really am to deal.
I knew something was wrong when I was avoiding journaling until late in the night, when I was half asleep already. Why would I want to avoid journaling? That’s when I “talk” to him. And I realized that I was afraid to talk to him, because I didn’t want to tell him I wasn’t doing quite as well as I had been. I didn’t want to disappoint him.
It is funny, worrying about disappointing him. If it’s any kind of afterlife worth having, I would have to believe he understands far more than I do now, and would understand my ups and downs even more now than he did (and he did) when he was here, and would not be disappointed in me. He was always a compassionate and loving soul, so I can’t imagine he’d be less so now. And besides, if anyone’s going to be disappointed, it is I; he’s still on the hook for shuffling off this mortal coil and leaving this mess behind, so he can just deal! If he didn’t want me upset, he should’ve damn well stayed here. Intellectually, I know these are ridiculous mental half-arguments I’m having, but the insanities of the bereaved are legendary and I am not going to be talked out of them any more than anyone else is; as I’ve said before, logic is not the language of the heart and soul. (And don’t ask me why there are 2-year-old jars mayo and horseradish in my fridge, either.)
Anyway, like anyone with bad news they don’t want to deliver, I was practicing avoidance and avoiding my journal. My own journal! But the more I stuffed it down, the worse I felt, which is a lesson I’ve learned over and over again in this dark journey: Pay now or pay later. I know this, but again, logic is not the language of the heart and soul. But eventually my brain figured out what the rest of me was trying to say. So I got out my journal and told him what I’d been doing (avoiding) and why (because I was sad and missed him) and what I was going to do about it (give myself permission—again—to be sad, to feel what I feel, and tell him about it, despite my earlier vow to not “bother” him with it). And I felt better. Not great. But better.
The lessons of grief, just like all the other important life lessons we learn, are learned, repeated, and remediated until they really sink in. And then just when you think you must have it down, your behavior makes you realize that you don’t. The one thing I keep coming back to is that I have to feel what I feel. If I feel good, I have to feel good, without guilt. If I feel bad, I have to feel bad, without guilt. Maybe I need to write it on a post-it…maybe a dozen post-its, so I see it and remember it.