A bit of a downer : daily reflections 1 March 2019

I had a conversation with some emotional abuse survivors in the dog park today that really made me sad. They were both laughing and joking about loved one’s who were abusive but were now undergoing suffering in old age. My heart just clenched up. I was speaking about compassion and forgiveness, not trying to get them to see that point of view, only to say that my experience is that living with a poisoned heart helps no one. The conversation involved two people and they pretty much talked over me the entire time. I picked up Jasper’s lead and started to leave but somehow one of the women engaged me in sharing about my recent difficulties with the bank and she started asking a lot of intrusive questi0ns trying to imply my relatives had done something at the bank to block my inheritance. At this point I just started to feel icky… she was saying ‘you have to face this…’ I just got up and walked away. It put such a dampner on what could have been a lovely morning. Her comments were way off base and they really bought my morning down.

As I drove home I thought of the words of the Al Anon closing ‘let there be no gossip or criticism (of ill loved ones) but let the understanding, peace and love of the fellowship grow in your heart”. I thought of my angry outbursts about my Mum and sister and of how other people had been shut down at times when trying to say how hard the abuse or invalidation had been in certain Al Anon groups which did not seem appropriate (to be shut down that is because in meetings we are supposed to be able to share anger, hurt and pain which needs to be uncovered in order to be integrated and heal).

My Mum is not alive any more and my compassion for her has grown more deeply over the past 14 months since, but my friend seemed to imply that this kind of empathy only stops me healing and living my life. She was able to cut away from her family early on and just didn’t take any crap whatsoever. (However her Mum sounded a lot more hard line than my own. She said her mother is evil.) The entire thing has left me feeling really really sad.

I question my own compassion at times. Is it naïve? Has it limited my life and my ability to move on? Has it made me at times, excuse the inexcusable? I don’t know the answers really. I certainly know my own empathy for suffering family members and desire not to see them alone has limited my life.. Have I, at these times, in staying close still been bonded to the inner child in me who longed for so much more from family? After going for a coffee to the milk bar I came home to my house that has been my refuge but at times also my nemesis over the past 8 years. I felt a bit hopeless about the past and lines of the poem Irreparable I posted a couple of hours ago came to me.

I was listening to an interview with a gay guy on Radio National in Australia today who said he used poetry to help him with his own identity struggles and mental health issues. I honestly don’t know where I would be without my blog and poetry. Here I find a safe space, people are welcome to disagree with me, like me, dislike me or think my blog has lately got a bit boring (yes I worry about that too, it was a comment left in my spam folder a few days ago.) I welcome all comments, and in the majority they are kind and even if they were not I would let them stand, as the represent the particular person’s personal opinion.

Despite this sadness I guess I feel okay today just a bit down. I am towards the end of a book on a young English man Tim Grayburn who struggled with anxiety and depression at the moment. It is called Boys Don’t Cry. Tim felt great shame about his condition and kept it hidden until a girlfriend encouraged him to open up and together they devised a theatre production where he spoke openly about his anxiety and depression in a show which eventually they both took to Australia.

Tim’s condition and happiness improved the more he expressed his own experiences, feelings and truths, following his heart throwing in a job he wasn’t really enjoying while working to throw off his prohibitions about expressing the truth about his condition. His show got great reviews and people attending cried and laughed and many of them wrote to Tim saying how much Tim had helped them. As he begins the hard work to decrease his medications his feelings of sadness finally begin to break through. In a very moving excerpt below he writes :

When I got home to our cottage…I told Bryony I was feeling very emotional. I felt like I was going to cry every second of the day. She encouraged me to lie down, I sat on the bed and I cried and cried. For the first time in my life I was crying controllably. I knew it was something I needed to do to feel better, and instead of locking it inside to fester, along with my outdated opinion that crying makes me weak, I just let it rip. I knew I was happy – we had finished a tour of our really successful theatre show…I took a picture of myself crying and smiling at the same time to remember that the tears weren’t a reflection of how I was feeling, For me this unlocked an ancient secret deep down inside of myself I finally understood that I could be happy in a general sense and sad at the same time if I needed to be. I didn’t have to be just one or the other. Some days I will feel emotional and some days I won’t. That’s life, that is my life. All I can do is take very good care of myself and enjoy the wonders that creep up on me, good and bad. ..My future is unwritten and I realised that I cant control it. I just have to enjoy it the very best I can. I wiped my tears and went downstairs, I found Bryony in the living room and put my arms around her and our unborn baby and smiled in silence. Since that moment, I’ve never had to write in my D (depression) Diary again.

It spoke to me today this particular passage. Some days I will feel that sadness inside, it will just be there. At others it will recede and good things will take its place, I just have to do my very best to continue to ride the tide while acknowledging honestly what makes me feel both happy and sad.