Hard, Lumpy, Painful Bits

Recently I had a brief conversation with a friend about the nature of this blog. About how much editing I find myself doing now. How thoughts will come to me... and then how I imagine so-and-so reading them and misunderstanding them, and how the very thought of that nearly drives me to drink. (before Fridays...) How I miss the (perceived) freedom of the early days when I would run to the computer for solace- for a quiet place to examine the confusing, the sad, and the unexplained.

I've made myself pretty vulnerable here at times. I've been honest about the history of eating disorders, the less than picturesque relationship that I had with my now deceased brother, the sadness of loss, the death of ideals. I've been forthright about my stubborn, but not dogmatic faith. I've shown you my clutter, my treasures, my victories, my dark sides.

I've made some new friends. Learned to trust people in more authentic ways. Felt good about "putting some stuff out there"; and having found it well received. (except when it wasn't....)

Today I feel like pushing myself back there. To see if it will be helpful because I'm scaring myself a little lately with the dark corners that my brain finds itself retreating to. Today I feel like talking a little bit about sadness.

I've been fortunate in this life so far to have come through relatively untouched by the robbery of death. Sure, I've been to my share of funerals, but no one could ever write much of a tragedy about my life thus far. I expect to have a lot more funeral events if I keep living for the next forty years or so. And so, I think I've got some stuff to figure out in the meanwhile if I don't want to continue to shut down corners of myself in order to cope.

The first blow that death dealt me was when I was in grade 12, I think.
Her name was Faye, and she lived just past her fourth birthday. I was her baby-sitter. Poor little girl was much too young to have any clue what was happening to her- cancerous tumour at the age of three. Now that I've had my own kids, I can't believe what it must have been like for her parents. For her.

But when I look back on what it was like for me, I remember that rock hard wall in my chest. That weird sense of anger when my mother would ask about her. My feeling that it was none of her business and that she was being curious and nosey. I remember my guilt that Faye had annoyed me. I remember mostly that block in my throat and chest and stomach and brain. Those blocks come right back, even fifteen years later, sitting at my computer and trying to write about it.

The thing that I'm tuning into more and more is that I have all these blocks. So, what happens when more loss comes along? When I make myself remember the losses that followed that first big one, I feel them in all the same places, and have the same basic, crazy emotions. Guilt. Inadequacy. Anxiety. And chunks of hard yuck in my throat. Chest. Stomach.

I've had a few losses in the last fifteen years. I'm thinking that each loss makes another piece of hard yuck inside of me? It's kind of like with every really hard loss that I don't know how to reconcile inside my brain, I have more and more hard bits to navigate around and try to avoid because I don't know how to make it go away, or how to normalize it, or WHAT.

And that's all. That's all I can write on the topic because its as far as I can go. There are no conclusions, no wrap-ups, no nothing. Just hard bits. Unfortunately, these hard bits usually exacerbate some of my more diagnosable problems. And that gets pretty tiresome.

So, maybe this year I'll get riskier again with the blog and just try to get intouch with some of these painful parts. I don't know- it might make it worse, and it might not.

I just don't think playing it safe is really the best course of action either. So, I'll just stick my neck out and take some risks again.