There's a voice in my head lately. It goes like this:
"Release it. Release it. Go ahead, release it. ReLEASE it. It's okay. Release....it.
Release it. releaseit releaseit releaseit. Oh c'mon, release it! releaseitreleaseit
releaseitreleaseitreleaseitreleaseitreleaseitreleaseitreleaseitreleaseitreleaseit
releaseitreleaseitreleaseitreleaseitreleaseitreleaseitreleaseitreleaseitreleaseit!"
Those gentle readers who know why I would write the above can understand that I'm working so hard to do exactly that.
"Release it."
The voice is trying to help. Still, I'm experiencing full-fledged anxiety.
You see, I am dealing with a full-fledged heartbreak, and doing so for the first time without the shroud of low-grade depression to deaden the feelings of uncertainty and fear. Low-grade depression may have led to much of my personal inward struggle as a young man, but it was also my protector, my armor. It deadened the joy, but it also killed the pain.
Odd as it may seem, I wish to celebrate this as good news, worthy of the family blog.
I suspect that I am feeling difficult times through all of my emotional faculties. I am feeling fear, anxiety and uncertainty in full flower. It's like being partially deaf, getting a hearing aid and going to a symphony. The change from the deadened familar to the exhuberant whole is unsettling. All that information available requiring mental processing is overwhelming.
It's okay. Let it go."
I had a pretty good handle on my depression during C's Cancer. C's cancer was indeed a fearful time. But it was different. It was an external effect upon the family. It was not heartbreak; it was crisis mitigation. We avoided heartbreak thanks to a victorious outcome. This current situation is directly tied to choices I made, as family leader, which put us inadvertantly in an unstable (notice I didn't say 'dangerous', or 'crisis') position. I tried to help my family recover from the aftermath of cancer. I wanted to make it all better by changing our world. Ultimately, I succeeded in not making it better. I just made it a whole lot of work.
I am in new emotional territory. I am grieving something to the point of violence. For the first time in my life, I can truly relate to the crying, screaming, tear-your-hair-out grief.
"Release it. You need to exercise Detachment."
I am glad, I think, to be having this lesson in heartbreak with an inanimate object - a house - instead of learning this with a loved one (Aki, our aging and geriatric dog, comes immediately to mind). I put so much into that house. I demanded so much sacrafice and effort from my family to achieve the goal that we all bought into. And we achieved it. That's the heartbreak. We DID it....and yet it's entirely possible that we should not even try to hold on to it...that letting go so soon is the best thing for my family.
Though it could easily have turned out so much worse, I still feel real physical pain from this situation.
"Release it. Let it go."
Learn to manage it NOW, N, before you have to manage the heartbreak of something really important.
"Um... you're not letting go yet, you know that? Detachment. Detach!"
Yeah. I know. I'm working on it. Speaking of which, mister voice-in-my-head, wouldn't this be a good chance for you to practice your ... patience?
1 comment:
Watch out, you might end up doing personal blogging at this rate!
You do know, don't you, that your willingness to struggle through this one, your consciousness and awareness, unarmored, senses undeadened, painful and difficult as it might at moments be, is more impressive than the most detailed restoration of any mere mansion? And could benefit your family beyond any material condition? And that you don't have to do it alone?
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