I am kind of at an odd numbness right now Cedar. I think I am still in shock from events that have transpired.
That is what it feels like for me, too. A shockey place; like I know the routine of how to survive the holidays, but after so many years of it, the raw places, the what happened of all those years when hope got me through it, shock me with how ugly it was, and how lonely; that lonely when you miss someone who should be at your table and they aren't and there is no way to address it.
That's alot of loss that we all are trying to figure out how to incorporate into our holidays, and into our lives. How extraordinary that we have been able to do the holidays, to clean and make cookies and dinner and compare recipes and smile, instead of screaming and running away.
I swear, I could be one of those women who doesn't comb her hair and dresses in sackcloth and ashes, today. Then, no one would expect me to be sane.
Well, not today so much, but yesterday and for the past three or four days, for sure.
***
We are carrying alot of trauma. Somehow, this is breaking through. But I wonder why it is happening now?
We need to come up with a bracelet or an armband, with some way of externalizing these feelings. That might help them not to go global meltdown when all we are trying to do is stuff the freaking turkey.
***
It has that flavor to it. I was unprepared for that excoriated feeling. It had to do with all the holidays that were the best we could make of them around those broken places at the heart of our family. I haven't felt this exact kind of pain before. It's a kind of rageful nostalgia or something equally bitter and crazy-making and it feels like I should be able to do this better. Like broken dreams breathing their last because no amount of hope can change all the holidays that brought us to this one.
Yuck.
And I kept trying to be grateful and I could.not.do.it.
WTF
I was so mad. And so shocked at myself about that.
It has that feeling to it, and I am so used to charging through it and what we need to do, maybe, is find a way to acknowledge whatever this is and hold ourselves with compassion.
But at the same time? I was too mad to do it!
roar
And like, one minute from crying the whole time.
Isis.
That would be the face, on our armband.
***
I am sorry your children are keeping the grands from you, Leafy.
Daughter has always been so generous with her children.
Son uses his to punish and entice and berate us. And you are right, it...I don't have a model for how to do this. I mean, I know to love the kids of course, but I don't know how to be vulnerable to the hurt of the way our relationship to them is skewed, or to the feeling that ~ well, enough about that. It is a powerless feeling, and joyless, around gifts or conversations or birthday cards.
I have been writing this post all day you guys. I am understanding the vulnerability piece, and the numbing piece, and the coming alive piece more clearly. But I will leave this in, even if I feel selfish and foolish and weak, and like I should stop feeling badly for myself already. We have had to be very cruel to ourselves, maybe, to carry on with our lives. Maybe, we have been numb for so long a time that we thought that was normal. And again, if I think back to holidays since everything became so troubled for us, I do see myself, frantic and numb and pretending everything was okay. Work was a good antidote to the pain.
So, these must be years of pain we are processing now.
Maybe this could be true.
So, compassion for ourselves and our kids and all of us is where we need to get. I don't know how to do that, but I do know berating myself for feeling badly isn't it. Maybe, part of what is happening to us is that we no longer need to be so strong because these years when we had hope are passed.
So, we are letting down those walls that enabled us to stand up and bake cookies and say the correct, happy things while our hearts were barely beating and time was at a standstill.
***
Part of why this is happening now is that we (parents) do not think so much about how we feel and this year, for some crazy reason, I got all tangled up in self pity.
Tangled up in blue, like that Bob Dylan song.
It really sucked.
Or the same old wound has been opened up so many times it has become calloused and hard.
It's a strange sensation.
Yes.
I was going to use a bedsore analogy earlier in this post, but I thought I had been ugly enough already today. But it sort of is like that. I thought the pain body was resting peacefully, but there was this huge, festering bedsore the whole time.
So I am alive, after all.
And the answer to bedsores is re-establishing circulation. Caring enough to move or be moved. Caring enough to breathe deeply and well, and to have good nutrition and good personal hygiene.
I actually do have medical training, you guys.
:O)
***
I feel like a baby, and a little foolish. But this is true: I have never mourned what I lost. I have mourned the Hallmark holidays and so on, but in a general, and not a specific way. So, it must be that, as we are more present to ourselves through the work we have done on FOO Chronicles, these troublesome emotions are here in the open. Maybe, it was never a family of origin dinner I was all upset about at all, except as a marker for the pain I could not look at.
Talk about your Inconvenient Truths, and someone should mention
that to Al Gore.
Maybe, these are the feelings that were tinging our holidays and making us frantic, all along.
It could be that, in naming the hurt of it now, our Christmases will be better.
Maybe, we won't be going through the decorating and cooking as automatons this year. We will have explored and named these feelings, and we won't have to protect ourselves from them, in future. Maybe, in future, we will honor these feelings, and admire, or at least, acknowledge, our incredible strength in loving, or in choosing to love whether we managed to do it or not.
Certainly, we have not been loving ourselves. The pain was too immediate and intense. Now it is old, is over and done, and we can examine the parameters.
Probably that plays its part, here. We have been so certain never to say "This is the worst thing that could happen." Every time we did, Something worse did happen.
I feel badly for us! (Okay you guys. I feel mostly bad for me and a little bad for you.)
That plays its part, here. We did not dare look. We functioned from numb and prepared and ever ready ~ and that's what we got, too.
Every time.
And then, there were grandchildren.
And a vulnerability we never even knew existed.
And we got through that, too.
***
That would be good. To honor that excoriated place. It makes sense that anger would be our defense to the hurt of those places where we have been numb, and where we are now coming real. Otherwise, we would be crying through the holidays and everyone would think we were babies and we would think that, too.
So, we have had to be strong for a very long time.
This is what it feels like maybe, to open those gates and let ourselves feel what this feels like.
Rotten.
I swear. I could not let go of that feeling of madness. Not even anger. Really, mad. Madness; anger tinged with insanity, with rage. It was that uncontrollable.
Not that anyone else saw it. (I had makeup on.) But I could not not see it.
It was the strangest thing.
No wonder we have kept ourselves numb to it.
But that means that somewhere, there are parts of us that have been suffering alone, and in the dark. If I think about it, there is a numbness, a feeling of automaton to the holidays for me. A dancing as fast as I can feeling, with smiling and kindness even when such bad things were happening and I did not know where one of my children was.
That is enormous grief for us to be ignoring through the holidays.
So, it could be that these are good feelings to acknowledge, for us.
Cedar
So, here is a secret. Yesterday, I found imagery to reflect my feelings in Maleficent. The wicked Maleficent, from Sleeping Beauty. Did you know she was turned wicked through a hurt done her?
Yes.
I was going to post that but thought it would be rotten to do so on Thanksgiving.
In any event, Maleficent is saved
from herself by relearning vulnerability, by opening to love. Not romantic love, but openness and trust and letting that bitter, excoriated place heal.
One of the pictures had to do with her wings, powerful and strong, that she lost when she was betrayed, and her sadness at what happened to her. One of us had posted about having felt strong and sure in her life before these things happened, and about feeling she had lost that strength, somewhere.
So, I thought alot about that, yesterday. About Maleficent. It seemed to address that excoriated place for me.