I've tried to write this blog post a few times now and haven't gotten past the first few sentences. I've been thinking about grief a lot lately and really about emotion in general.
I've been told that a man's mind is essentially a big filing cabinet. A man is able to put thoughts and feelings into a file, and stuff it away to be dealt with later. Getting past the whole binary gender debate for a moment, I have certainly found this to be true at least to a degree for myself. Hold on to that thought.
There are certain things that will trigger me into a negative mood fairly immediately: An argument with my wife, feeling like I'm being ignored or misunderstood, work stress, etc. There are other things that take a little longer for me to process. When I got the phone call that my mum had blood clots and was probably not going to make it, it took about 10 minutes to sink in. When I visited my uncle on his deathbed, it took an entire day to process. I didn't even really feel anything until a day or two after another uncle's funeral. When I left Australia to come to America I wasn't thinking about all I was leaving behind, it wasn't until much later on that I started missing those things.
As a kid -- I don't know why, but -- I decided that not feeling anything was a good thing to do, so I got in the habit of not showing outwardly what I was feeling, and a lot of the time simple squashing what I was feeling. I've often felt like I had to force myself to feel a particular way because either people expected it, or because it was the right thing to do. I guess it doesn't help that I have an empathic streak and often pick up on other people's emotions (even if they aren't in the same room). I rarely ever get the luxury of know who's emotion I am currently feeling. Is it mine or someone elses? I could probably write another blog post on that subject, but all that to say that as an adult, now I often have a hard time processing how I'm feeling, what caused it, how to deal with it.
To a certain extent, I am able to push how I feel to the back of my mind and deal with it later... or not... sometimes it's just so overwhelming that it just takes over my entire sphere of thought.
I guess I could really compare what I've been going through to the death of a loved one: Depression, suicidal thoughts, grief, loneliness, feeling like everything is my fault, bouncing between feeling isolated and wanting isolation. I honestly don't know how to deal with it all. I haven't been dealing with it well. I don't really want to talk about the why of what I've been feeling so much as trying to process what I've been feeling.
The tide finally started to ebb around mid December, letting me get back to the semblance of a normal mental state. At least, my humor started to poke it's head back out again.
Just when I thought I was over the hump -- a month in the clear -- it's almost as if a second wave of emotion has come washing over me. I want to say that what set it off was thinking about the past few months, but I don't know for sure. What I can't figure out is, is it still so painful that I just can't handle it? Have I just not been dealing with my pain in a constructive way, that it is just there and will always be there until dealt with properly? Am I just forcing myself to feel a certain way because I feel like that's how I should be? When is enough going to be enough? Why don't I feel like I can move past this?
I may continue this post at a later point... I don't really have much more to write right now, though I feel like there is more left to talk about.
