Feelings

Feelings.  I have a pre-schooler, so there are lots of "feelings" about a lot of things every day.  I am so consumed with my child and his feelings, that I become angered when it's time for me to deal with mine.  I try to make sure he feels loved, appreciated, encouraged, happy, and the list goes on.  At his age, everything he encounters produces a feeling of some description.  And I spend every day muddling through the mess of pre-schooler imagination and silly words to arrive at what I believe my child is really feeling.  Because it is important, and because I truly care.  My worst nightmare is that I will not meet my son's emotional and mental needs, and that he will grow up to be a damaged person.  I don't want to create a damaged human.  I never want him to know what it feels like to think just for simplicity's sake it would have all been "easier" had he never been born.  I've thought those very things myself of my own life.  If he thinks that ever, I hope and pray it does not come from me or my husband or anything we've ever done. 
I feel like part of my problem sometimes is having so many feelings.  Feelings I don't always understand, and feelings I sure as Hell did not ask for.  Some days I'm angry for the mistakes I know I've made and the ones I know I've yet to discover.  My idea of a good time is not just sitting around talking about my feelings.  Sorry, that's just not me in this season of my life.  My feelings are always in the way: they come out at inconvenient times, rearing their ugly heads and they make life in general so complicated.  Nothing is black and white with feelings: I am in a constant state of grey.  I feel happy, grateful, blessed to be alive and healthy, especially being so ill last year.  I've seen days when I didn't have my health, and I've seen days when I knew my next breath was a blessing.  I've had immeasurable, incredible happiness as well.  But I find myself tired with feeling depressed, angry, confused, or hopeless.  And yet, these are the emotions I feel I do not have control over; they're so deeply rooted, I cannot remove them.  I just don't know how to get rid of them forever.  And so I get tired of them.  I have anger rooted in me, but I'm also angry about feeling angry.  Such a vicious cycle it is!  As good as it can be for your mental wellness, though, I simply don't want to delve into my feelings.  It's like I'm ready to be done feeling all these things, why can't I just evolve and move on?
Last week I almost forgot to attend one of my group therapy sessions.   Not only does the group meet at an "odd time" (at least for my schedule it is odd), but the meetings are not short.  You can count on sinking a good two hours into the sessions.  The meeting fell on one of my "better" emotional days, and I found myself dreading the meeting.  It's like: "I'm having an okay day here, can we not open up the proverbial can of worms tonight?!"  But I went anyway.  The group is for Survivors of Suicide.  Not exactly a bunch of cheery souls and rainbows and glitter and shit if you know what I mean.  The topics are always heavy, I ALWAYS cry, despite my not wanting to, despite my exhaustion with all of these feelings.  But all I can do is cry.  I can't get through my own introduction without crying.  My therapist tells me my experience and brush with suicide is just not as simple as some people.  Most of the time, the survivors hear the news second hand, often coming from a loved one or a Police Officer or Grief Counselor.   So, essentially most people have a buffer between them and the death.  I'm not jealous of those people, but it is fascinating how much farther in their grief they seem than me.  I didn't have a buffer.  It was just me trying to make sense and process what I saw and what had conspired while I had tried to get through to my brother.  I don't remember every minute detail of the events that took place the night my life changed forever.  I don't remember who called my parents to tell them he was dead, I don't know who called my sister.  2002 seems like eons ago.  Suicide was a crime, and treated as such.  There were no warm, fuzzy condolences from the deputies or officers on the scene.  The community and town latched on like a leech as gossip, whispers, stares, and rumors were what filled my world.  Other than the legal procedure of investigating a crime, there was no procedure in dealing with the victims, not in 2002 in my town.  My parents were foundering in confusion, mourning a loss they didn't quite understand.  But they were there for me as much as they could be.  They made sure I saw a Therapist.  They made sure I had an outlet for all my feelings, and so I put the work into it.  I went to Therapy, for maybe a year and I worked through things.  And I thought I had worked through all of it.  And the years went by, my grief dulled, and I entered new phases of life.  Each new phase of life brought different struggles.  Long gone were the days of what I considered "grieving," so I thought I was done grieving, done being angry, hurt, confused, hopeless and pitiful.  And then I got really sick out of the blue.  A strange disease I'd never heard of, and in all the midst of tests they find pre-cancerous cells that have to go pronto.  So, I'm just like ok, not a pleasant procedure, but a "routine" thing, and I choose life.  So, I go in on procedure day.  It's the day after my son's Birthday, and he's with my husband's step-mother for the afternoon, while "the doctor fixes me."  I think I'll be out in one hour, ready to be done with strange illnesses and budding cancer, and have myself some really awful, but delicious fast food burger or wings or something.  I haven't eaten in 2 days, I'm finally starting to get back an appetite after being so sick.  FOOOD!
Except that there was a complication during the procedure.  A "malfunction of the Cautery Equipment."  In essence I was bleeding out right there from the worst case scenario of this routine thing. 
Doctor: "We've got a bleeder here.  Oh my.  Get me a..uh we need a stapler here!  She's bleeding!!..."

  

A Friday Afternoon in January

It was just a bad day.  My kid was having poop problems again.  I was playing phone tag with his doctor's office, all because why? For some unknown reason my "smart" phone did not even ring.  It only alerted me to a new voicemail.  Great!  Let's navigate through the doctor's office automated phone bullshit just to try to convince whomever answered that I was returning a call, and please do not put me back on call-back.  I need someone now!  My kid is wailing, tears streaming down his face in pain.  Put a triage nurse on the phone stat!  Is this an impaction?  Or the old with-holding drill, psychological evils.  Questions, answers, pauses, and then we have another appointment to round out our already-full day.  Therapy (as in Occupational Therapist) for my kid for an hour, meet husband to exchange child while I have my Therapy (shrink) appointment, then straight to retrieve child and go to Pediatrician, and don't forget it's Grocery day and we're out of everything.  That left no time for lunch, so what?  I was so stressed I snapped.  The ever-mounting pressure and anxiety of the non-stop day I had planned caused my blood to boil over.  My inner-crazy could no-longer be contained.  RELEASE...  And in the madness I threw an object and broke a window.  There, I said it.  I confessed.  I lost my cool and broke a window.  The kid didn't see it; I made sure of that.  I cleaned up my mess, took it to the repair shop, (paid from my earnings,) and put it back in the frame. It took a few days to accomplish the repair, but I did it!
Three hours later:  There is a large SUV in the desert.  The only other soul around is a giant frog.  The sand opens up and starts to swallow the vehicle.  Suddenly a voice, "We've got about 10 minutes left in our session.  I'm just checking in to see how you're feeling?"
I am the vehicle.  I'm in Therapy playing with, of all things: Hydrophobic Magic Sand.  The desert is just my physical manifestation of my state.  GRIEF.    No giant frog.  No "real" quick sand.  I'm just playing while I spill all my vile Freudian innards to a woman I might otherwise be friends with, except that she is my Therapist and I am anti-social, (yet another vile detail I haven't revealed to her.)  She will find out soon.  I'm in my second session this time around.  I've done Therapy before, for essentially the same issues, just over ten years ago.  I like to think of it as cleaning out the cobwebs of my brain.  I've been sweeping emotional garbage under the carpet for too long.  This is the first time in years I have felt like I truly need it.  So, back to the Therapy session.  Why am I there?  Grief.  My brother died 13 years ago, why in God's name am I still grieving?!  Most recently, they refer to my mental health history as "traumatic."  My brother died from suicide March 5, 2002.  I remember the day like it was yesterday.  And that is really the problem there, because I was the one who found him.  How could I forget?  I was "that girl."  I saw what was meant for someone else to find.  But not me, damnit!  Why me?!  I am 4700 days away from the day my life changed forever and (will I ever get over or past it?!)  Part of me died that day.  I mourn not only the loss of my brother, but also the loss of a girl who thought her life would be so different from this.  This, you know that of which we do not speak: Suicide. 
And I hadn't hit rock bottom yet.  That is something else altogether for another day.
I don't hear people often admit this, but the things in life that always trip me up are the things I don't see coming.   We are proud, us humans!  We don't like to admit our weaknesses.  Just like I didn't see my brother taking his own life coming, I didn't foresee the cruelty and shame that followed his death.  I didn't know I (or my family) would become ousted from our community, shamed, and harassed (yes, even harassed) by former friends and acquaintances.  I cannot escape the trimmers and reverberations of March 5, 2002.  Breathe.