Tag: grief

Holding Back/No Fear

A while ago, I heard a news story about a woman who does not feel fear.  Scientists want to study her brain; I wonder how she’s still alive.  I’m sure I would do physically reckless things without the inhibiting factor of fear, but my life would more likely be imperiled by the list of people who would want to kill me if my tongue were not inhibited by fear.  Or, if no one smote me, I would be fairly lonely after I alienated most of the people around me.  Well, I might not be too lonely, now that I actually think about it: the people I feel like I have to tiptoe around are not people I love to spend time with, so I might not miss them.

I also recently read an article with tips on blogging.  The sage advice was to write about yourself, avoid ranting, and to consider what you’re holding back if you think you’ve run out of things to write about.  I thought that last tidbit was most interesting since I have been avoiding writing for a few weeks.  I feel like I have been writing the same things over and over, and I felt guilty about posting a Christmas version of grief, especially since I didn’t really feel like writing anything uplifting to go along with it.  I posted the Christmas blog today after I realized that I can’t be the only person who feels sad during the Christmas season.

As I considered what else I hold back, I realized that I don’t write about a lot of things out of fear – fear that they won’t be accepted, fear that I will be misunderstood, fear that I will embarrass my family or friends, fear that I will anger my family.  I certainly do not need or want to rant like a banshee in such a public forum; I have great listeners for that. 🙂  But I do hold back quite often in an attempt to control my emotions and/or to avoid dealing with them, and, given the way that I have felt for the last month, I need to do quite a bit of processing.  I tend to bottle up and avoid by any means possible what I am really feeling, so I walk around feeling like I might explode at any moment.  I don’t explode, but I do get terrible migraines.  So, this year I am making a few resolutions, the first being to blog more often (let’s say at least twice a week) in order to address the things I would otherwise hold back, even from myself.

I haven’t made real resolutions in about a decade because I never follow through with them.  I don’t know if this year will be different in that respect, but something’s got to give one way or another.  Perhaps the real root of my resolution avoidance is fear.  If I publicly proclaim a goal and then fail to achieve it, I have both failed to reach my goal and looked like an idiot – better I keep it to myself so that no one else will be disappointed in me.  That fear has to go, so my second resolution is to accomplish the following goals this year: I will complete at least one rough draft novel (I have three stories that have been languishing on my laptop for several years); I will run at least one mile without stopping (three would be fabulous, but I won’t get too far ahead of myself); I will get caught up and cleaned out at work; and I will be honest about my progress (even though I will probably hate that last one).

I have a million other things I would like to get done this year, but the other root of my failure to keep resolutions is that I make too many or make them too difficult to achieve.  I look at the things that I know I could accomplish, and I expect myself to do all of them.  In reality, I probably could do everything I want to do (if I were Superwoman and had an extra 12 hours each day), but I set myself up to fail by expecting way too much too quickly.  Instead of being happy that my house is moderately clean (more than half the rooms are presentable) and none of the living creatures under my care died or were seriously wounded, I am usually frustrated by what I didn’t accomplish in a given day.  So my final resolution is to forgive myself for not being able to do everything and to only be tough on myself where more rigorous discipline is required (pretty much just where other people count on me) – like work.

You are welcome to hold me accountable in any way you wish, just so long as you know that I already feel lighter by writing this and sharing it with you.  I am now off to the treadmill (while I’m still motivated)!

All I Want for Christmas…

Christmas has always been my favorite holiday – not for any one reason in particular, but Christmas on the whole is pretty great.  There are special decorations, special songs, special events that all center on God’s greatest gift to earth that wouldn’t be realized as such until Christ’s death and resurrection.  Christmas is a promise that the gift of a miraculous birth would end up bringing rebirth for all humanity.  I’m sure as a kid that Christmas was all about getting gifts, but at some point the gift emphasis shifted to finding good gifts to give others.  I love finding or making something that suits the recipient and shows them in some small way that I love them enough to find something they will like or will use.  One of my favorite Christmas mornings was the year that my siblings and I decided to be Santa for our parents.  We gathered a few special big gifts, we painted (probably horribly tacky since flourescent puff paint was involved, but proudly well-worn anyway) sweatshirts for them and conned at least one grandmother into helping us purchase some extra little things.  Since my room was the only one downstairs and thus closest to the tree, I squirreled away the extra loot and woke up super early to put our Santa gifts out before the grand entrance to the living room.  I couldn’t wait to see my parents see their Santa loot; it was probably all I thought about for weeks.

Christmas has always been a sparkly, magical time.  I really want to feel that way again about my favorite holiday, but over the last several years, it has been difficult to rally any luster at all.  Until this year, I hadn’t even gotten the pre-lit tree out for two years in a row, and we only had stockings out for Christmas day.  Three years ago, I wouldn’t have had a tree up at all except my brother and sister put it up the weekend before Christmas; I wouldn’t let them decorate it so that I wouldn’t have to pack up ornaments.  This year, I actually decorated, and we have wreaths in the window and lights and garland on the porch and ornaments on the tree.  I think subconsciously I wanted the decorations to ignite the Christmas spirit I lost (okay, maybe it was more like a deliberate effort rather than a subconscious desire), but it hasn’t really worked the way I had hoped.  Nor have the copious Christmas songs on the radio or the peppermint coffee or the eggnog or the crazy neighborhood assortment of lights and inflatable figures (including a nativity scene with wise men) elicited the same kind of zeal I used to have for all things Christmas.

The only thing that’s close is the joy of matching the right gift with the right person, and even that has taken a few years to get back.  The worst Christmas ever was the one right after the third miscarriage.  It happened right before Christmas, and each family gathering was just an exercise in emotional control.  I wanted nothing more than to disappear or hibernate; I think I actually prayed for a hole in the earth to open and swallow me up during one of the family gift exchanges.  For the first time in my life, I just bought stuff to wrap so that everyone who was supposed to have a gift would get something from us.  While there is something to be said for getting through a tough time even if it’s by rote, there was no joy at all in that Christmas.  It was hard enough dealing with the first post-miscarriage Christmas knowing what could have been, but Christmas hasn’t been the same since that one horrible year.  You’d think (or I used to, anyway) that if you love something as much as I loved the Christmas season, that it would be a simple thing to just enjoy it no matter what.  Perhaps that is the most insidious thing about grief and depression: it robs you of the simplest joys or changes them just enough to be both recognizable and simultaneously unattainable – the oasis you can see with water you can never drink.

I’m sure a Dickensian catharsis awaits (cue the orchestrated carol of your choice and ringing bells here) if I could only embrace the true meaning of Christmas.  But the reality is that special holidays that focus on family time are just hard to deal with.  It is nearly impossible to mark the holiday season without also marking the milestones we’re missing.  For the day that I got to be pregnant not quite two months ago (think pregnant without feeling like everything is going wrong), I ticked off the markers in my head: by Christmas, we would have seen the heartbeat on ultrasound; by Valentine’s, we would have been entering the second trimester; by my birthday, we would know if it was a boy or a girl…  The main marker being the heartbeat and the only thing I told God I wanted for Christmas – the same way a child puts only one thing on their list when they know it’s a huge gift.  I think everyone did that as a child with some outrageous desire, even if you were too afraid to say it out loud: “If I got a pony for Christmas, I wouldn’t want anything else,” even if you were happy with every other present you got, and even if you knew you were never going to get a pony.  That heartbeat was my outrageous wish list for Christmas, and that’s another reason Christmas spirit is hard to come by.

Even though I didn’t get my heartbeat, and if I never got anything else, all I really want for Christmas is to love Christmas again.  I miss whole-heartedly singing carols without crying when I really think about the words; I miss driving around at night looking at lights; I miss the innocence of Christmas without loss.