Anyway, I am not writing to you about any of the particular issues that have arisen for me as a result of my collision with the karmic dump truck. After several months of convulsive grief I, I am starting to pick my way through the rubble. But I am really, really raw. Having always thought of myself as an emotionally intelligent person, I am shocked and disoriented by my sudden inability to predict my own reactions to daily stimuli. The other day I started crying when someone casually wished me good luck getting home in the snow. And while half of me was crying, the other half was all calm and perplexed, like, "Why are you crying?" It's not just crying at little things, it's also not crying at big things, and realizing I am walking along in a bitter fury and not being able to think of a single thing that happened to instigate it.
You are not going to die from this. But you are on the fritz.
When a machine goes on the fritz, someone puts a sign on it.
Someone should put a sign on you.
It would say, "I am on the fritz. Please do not bang on me or unplug me or tip me back and forth."
You will be OK. But you are not OK right now. You have never encountered such a powerful mess before. Everything has not gone haywire like this before.
After a certain age we have it mostly wired. We have a basic understanding; we know mostly what people's motives are and how they can be expected to act. We have a repertoire of getting-over-it behaviors and thinking-it-through behaviors and self-care behaviors and refresh-the-soul-and-body behaviors.
But then comes the tsunami. You don't expect it or know how to deal with it.
I get the feeling that you are not used to being on the fritz. I get the feeling you are very good at maintaining. So I suggest you first let go of the expectation that one particular solution is going to work right away. Try instead accepting the possibility that nothing is going to work right away.
Nothing is going to fix it. You're going to be on the fritz for a while.
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