Love is forever…One woman’s journey with grief

I have to admit, I’ve been one of those people…one of those people who tried to cajole others into seeing the bright side, and not being so negative, and for chrissakes, can’t you just see the good in the moment for once instead of the bad???  In all fairness, I gave myself the same obnoxious peptalk on countless occasions, as if I could talk myself out of my depression du jour. 

Because that’s what we’re supposed to do, right?  Being in a dark emotional place is merely a sign of weakness, a flashing neon "Failure" across our foreheads.  What you need to do is pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and be happy, dammit!  What’s wrong with you? 

During one deep (and unprecedented) depression some years back, I gave myself that talk for 6-9 months; it never quite took, though eventually depression released me.  And that depression taught me that sometimes you can’t help it, and that no matter how much sense you talk to yourself, it makes no difference.  But as soon as my soul moved out of the eclipse, I went right back to expecting that happiness was the norm, and if I wasn’t happy, I was wrong, somehow, and needed to take action to get right as soon as possible. 

Soon after being freed from that depression, I had a long period of unprecedented happiness, self-satisfaction, and contentedness with the world and my place in it that only reinforced that expectation.  Clearly I was living right, for things to be going so unbelievably well.

And then A died, and I got a real emotional education the likes of which I don’t think I ever could’ve conjured up on my own, no matter how many self-help books I read or how many hours of navel-gazing I engaged in.  In these last 19 months, I have learned the power and intelligence of emotions, even when they left me feeling weak and befuddled.  I have learned to feel everything, every little thing, at the moment I’m feeling it, because there was a fair stretch of time where I had little choice.  All those years of training in good, solid Midwestern and Scandinavian suppression of feelings were out the window.  I wasn’t in control of my feelings; my feelings were in control of me.  Sometimes I’d be laughing, and the laughter would turn without warning into tears and deep sobs.  Sometimes I’d be weeping, and something would strike me as funny and I would start laughing hysterically.  Sometimes I felt the pain of my loss with a physical sharpness that ached in a way I’d never hurt before.  Other times, I was numb, and wondering as I lay curled up on a ball on my bed how many steps there were between where I was and catatonia.  I tried to think my way around it; oh, how I tried.  And failed.  And over many, many lessons I learned that I had only one option in the darkness:  I had to feel my way.

Among the voices guiding me in grief, the ones that said "Lean into it" and "There’s no going around–only through" were the ones that spoke above the fray.  And so that’s what I did, and I think it served me well.  And now, when the newly bereaved arrive at my online grief group, the best advice I can offer them is to feel their feelings–all of them.

Of course, that’s easier said than done.  We come from a culture of stiff upper lips and self-control and the elevation of intellect over emotion.   Reason rates higher than passion, and I suspect it may be because we fear passion is stronger.  So we denigrate the expression of emotion beyond the norm. 

They cage tigers, don’t they? 

Add to that the peculiarly American attitude that among our inalienable rights is "happiness," and that there is something very seriously wrong if we’re not consistently happy.  Clearly, we need a new drug, a new boyfriend, a new car, new boobs, and new shoes:  the consumer culture is built upon this premise.  We forget that we are entitled to the pursuit of happiness, along with life and liberty, and that’s it.  There is no fine print.  And I think that attitude does many, if not all, of us a disservice, because when you believe that you are supposed to be happy all the time, and find that you are not, you really have only two possibilities to consider:  either you’re a failure at life, or life has failed you.  The acceptance of either of these is unlikely to improve your happiness quotient.

So you have the expectation of happiness, and few safe outlets with which to express and deal with the emotions that are not happy, which ultimately results in a lot of hurting, lonely, isolated people.  I believe that the explosion of blogging is a response to this–people want a place where they can speak from the deepest places in their souls, even if they must do it anonymously, as I do. Other than that, we treat unhappiness, discontent, anger, sadness, grief, shame, and a whole host of emotions as "negative" at best, and as disease at worst, disease that must be cured at all costs.  Which makes it pretty damn difficult to be sad in this culture.  No one will let you. 

Despite our insistence that the status quo is "happy," surely we’ve all experienced the folks who are also made uncomfortable by the expression of too much joy, and will make you uncomfortable if you persist in telling the world how happy you are.  They will bring you down any way they can.  But it’s the same issue, really.  Make no mistake:  to insist on authentically experiencing of all your emotions is a rebellious act that, were enough folks to do it, would be nothing less than revolution. 

Today, someone at the widow board posted a link to this article.  I read it, and I felt like I’d found a friend.  This doctor has addressed this issue head on.  I’ve felt that I’ve had to fight for my right to feel bad against all the well-meaning people in the world who really, really wanted me to feel better, sometimes for me, sometimes for them.  The author being interviewed speaks in favor of not judging what she calls "dark" emotions as "negative" or "wrong."  She suspects that the inability to express, acknowledge, and productively "metabolize" our dark emotions is the root of the increase of antisocial behavior we see on the news every night; that makes sense to me.  She suggests that the universality of such emotions indicates they serve a purpose, and perhaps we harm ourselves and everyone else when we try to stuff them down.  Granted, there are appropriate and inappropriate ways of dealing with emotions, but to experience your pain, to experience your anger, to experience your sadness in a conscious way is not the same thing as wallowing.  I’ll leave it at that, as the author can explain her points better than I can hope to; I heartily recommend reading it.  When I got to the end of it, I thought, "Amen."

It was Carl Jung who said "I’d rather be whole than good."  I think of that often as I come up against various taboos, spoken and tacit, about what is okay to feel and do and say.  I’ve come to the point where I refuse to believe that the point of human existence is to learn how to adamantly deny half of ourselves, half of the very experience we are here to partake of.  I am going to laugh too loudly in public, and I am going to grieve until I don’t need to anymore.  I am going to feel.  Sometimes I’m going to feel bad.  Really bad.  Worse than I ever imagined anyone could feel, let alone myself.  I know that now; I’ve been there.  But I’ll feel, because when I don’t allow myself to, my chest gets tight, and my body gets antsy and I can’t breathe and my skin breaks out and my guts churn.  Bottling it up is only a short-term and temporary solution, and the side effects are nasty. 

How many of us have been betrayed by the myth that "happy" is the baseline?  How many times have we judged ourselves lacking because we just couldn’t cheer up?  How many of us have been thrilled to be, finally, having an "okay" day, only to have someone else ask us "Just okay?" and make us question ourselves?  How many of us would find living in this world a little easier if we didn’t have to live up to the expectation that life is just one big Crest-smile-inducing bonanza of joy?  Wouldn’t it be a relief to know that sometimes life sucks, and we’re okay, and still sane, if we think so?  How much pressure would we remove along with our masks?  And isn’t it possible that if we could let ourselves off the hook, and stop insisting on happiness, there might be a greater chance of actually getting it?

For the record, I’m doing pretty well right now.  But I reserve the right to feel otherwise at any point in the future.  And it doesn’t make me weak.  It only makes me human.