Don't Matter How You Feel, It Only Matters How You Look

 Lot of intrusive thoughts rolling around my head lately. One would only expect. My most recent was thinking to put an extra beer in the fridge before I leave for my support group. At the same time, I feel like sorting through the debris is good. Especially in rounds. Not all at once. But the talk about God with a capital "G" doesn't do much for me. The final answer seems to always be God. And me and God aren't the best of friends. It's just always been easier to think he doesn't exist at all than to think he hates me so much. I'm not angry at God. That's what most people expect out of people like me. I'm happy for people with faith. I'm just not one of them. And I know all the folks who have not walked in my shoes, to the good side or the bad, won't like that. I'm tired of not saying what I think because someone won't like it.

I've kind of done what I always do at times like this. I just internalize it all and sift through as I can. I wish I had a better way. I just don't. It's probably the Southern Lady that is deeply ingrained in my amygdala at this point. Shit, I correctly spelled "amygdala." I for weeks have been trying to remember exactly what it is my grandmother always said about going along to get along or some such. Just stuff it down. And down. And down. And do that with your husband until he dies from eating too much butter. Then cry for thirty years and talk about what an asshole he actually was to you.

I guess that tack isn't going to work for me. The trick is going to be to let it go. My Daddy said "Don't grab 'hold of something you can't let go of." That keeps coming back around now. I can't let go of anything I ever grab 'hold of. Sunk cost fallacy? Stubbornness? An extraordinary amount of pride? I don't fucking know. I just know that anything I ever let go of has claw marks all over it. You know, it may just be that I hang on entirely too tightly. To everything. And maybe that's my lesson in all of this. Learn to let go. Even just a little bit. I'm too tired and sad and lonely to do much else these days.

I find myself shocked that no one seems angry at me. I mean, I haven't told the one sister who said to me "One day he'll find out who you really are and divorce you." I think I could die and never say another personal thing to her again. Because she'll just use it as a shiv later. So far, everyone has been kind and supportive. Extra-gentle even. Which is probably good because, damn, I may shatter if someone is mean to me right now. Just worn down from being tough, so I can't anymore. I don't even know if I'd cry. That seems to be problematic lately. Not that I don't feel like crying, just that I can't. I'm all tore up on the inside, but the tears stay in there with all the ugly.

And on that subject, tangentially. Part of this whole thing for me has that damn church support group. I'm trying to give myself any leg up I can toward better. I'm not in a hurry, I don't think, I've been going through this for two years. And so many of these classes are things I've already sorted out. And that's good for me. I wish I hadn't done that awful thing of trying to do it alone. That wasn't fair to myself and it took a lot longer than needed and it hurt so much more. That's just who we are.

So today's lesson was about anger. Y'all, I don't really feel too angry. And I think a lot of is that I've spent my life around people who are angry and bitter and trying to defuse the bomb. So I see what anger does for you. And it's not much. It's so much less painful for yourself to find the source of the anger. Are you angry because you're hurt or scared or sad or confused? Find that real feeling under the anger and try to heal it. Anger is exhausting. 

And I also realized that because I have been going through this for two years, that I've done the things. The feelings. The anger and the depression and the bargaining and all the fucking stages. And I am good as fuck at grief. It's the one feeling I know will always be with me. And that's macabre. But it's true. I'm much better at falling apart than coming together. I gotta work on that. Whew, I have so much to work on.

Even my father-in-law, whom I adore simply on the principle that he is so much like my husband, whom I love, and will always love, said to me this morning, on his birthday "thank you for not being  vindictive and bitchy." I just said "Pop, I'm not really the vindictive bitch type." And I'm not. People think that I will be in the falling apart. But I don't hold ill will, especially toward people I love. I want the best for them. I want them to find happiness beyond their wildest dreams. I just want them to find it somewhere else, or at least to stop blaming me when they can't quite get there.

And in all of this, I know the tide must be turned because I'm writing like this. I'm like a spigot turned on, gushing like I don't remember. And there are certainly those to thank for the wet. Hard to name that gratitude just yet, but perhaps down the road.

I am grateful through all of this that I've learned something important. How to be sorry. Not just how to say it, but how to live it. I have learned to say the words without it making me feel weak. Say the words, but also do the things that show you are sorry and you are trying to do better than the thing you had to apologize for. I have spent my whole life thinking I was doing a little better every day. And that's not true. But my intent is to spend the rest of my life actually doing it. Getting better.