You might always be little sad, but remember: sad and mad are two separate things. The good news is you’ve learned to view the sad in your heart as a permanent piece of the living organism that pumps your blood to make you alive.
I’m never happy to hear that someone is suffering. I became a therapist in midlife after a career in journalism because I feel driven to be an easer of pain, in a small way to make a permanent, positive stamp on the life of another.
What I do know is that had my friends been there for me I think I may have been a little further forward in the grieving process than I now am. I am truly disillusioned with the people around around me that I considered to be my friends and neighbors and completely disillusioned with my family members.
My life is made up of the things I can cope with after everything else has fallen away. I live alone in a small house in a small town and spend my time working, reading or writing. I stick to a simple routine, focus on my health, work and craft, minimize appointments, discourage visitors and avoid disruptions of any kind. Surprise demands, as simple as a trip to the shop for bread, can send my adrenalin into a tailspin. Sometimes months pass and my only face-to-face exchanges are with the cashier in the supermarket or a fellow gym-goer.
I won't say I didn't have a choice, because I did, but ultimately every option I was presented with still ended in your death. So I picked the option that sucked the least, the one that I thought I could best live with.
At seventeen, I dated a man my mother’d forbidden me to see on the grounds that he was not a Christian. I thought I was getting away with secretly seeing him until one day she reached over and silently pressed her index finger to a fading hickey on my neck. She conceded that since I was turning eighteen and heading off to college, there was little she could do.
The first boy I fell in love with in college hung himself from a tree north of San Francisco, a short distance off the Pacific Coast Highway U.S. 101. I don’t know exactly how far up the highway from the Golden Gate Bridge or exactly what kind of tree. I do know at least one of the secrets that led him to take his life and how damaging long-lasting guilt can be.
Wondering if you’re over your ex? Feeling crazy and listening to sad songs is as natural as a West Elm jute rug, but sometimes the line between heartbreak and sinkhole gets blurry.
If we moved to Bali, I reasoned without any real reason, I would finally find true self-love and inner peace. Isn’t that what happens to people who hang out doing yoga all day with other groovy ex-patriots on some heavenly palm-jammed island?
My lover meets me after work with a kind of vibrating tension I recognize as two parts anxiety one part defensiveness. She isn’t late, but I am trying not to be angry that I haven’t heard from her until several minutes before her arrival.
