The Cycle of Pain and Gratitude – Lessons from the Tough Weeks

I had a rough couple of weeks and I really am not sure why.  I just knew I felt different and Kevin recognized I was not acting like myself.  I became very negative. Whipping mean comments to him like a chuckwagon driver to his horse. I absolutely felt that everything was wrong. I was wrong. Every decision I had made wrong. Everything I said wrong. Everything I did was wrong.  I knew it wasn’t me.  I didn’t feel me at all, it was if I had left for a while and I was in this big black hole.  Her strength, perseverance, resilience, optimism, humor, light heartedness was all gone.  I don’t think I am two people but I say this to try to help myself and others see what it feels like when you go into the darkness for a while. It’s not as if I don’t recognize it feels different.  Oh boy, I totally can recognize it.  I’m always faced with the problem though of how do I get that girl I am to come back to me.  How do I change the chemicals in my brain? How do I unblock the pathway where she is blocked behind?

It’s time like these that I know how easy it would be an addict.  I WANT anything that would make me feel better.  Shopping, Alcohol, Painkillers, really anything I can think of to change me back.  Luckily for me my pathways which I know are blocked in other people, recognize that these behaviors won’t bring her back.  So I try the ones that everyone says to try.  Walk. Nope. Listen to Music. Nope. Watch a favorite TV show. Nope. Write. Nope. So then Kevin thinks I have too much time on my hands that I need more work to do and that will help.  Cut bale strings at night with my headlamp on. Nope.  Surprisingly made me even angrier. (Sarcasm). Get out with friends. Nope I just rant on negative things that make me feel no better. 

I’ve been having nightmares all week.  They are repetitive from other times when I get low like this.  My teeth start to fall out as I’m talking, first it’s one, then two, then 3, then one by one the rest of my teeth all fall out.  I am in vehicle crashes. Terrible things happen to my children while I watch and experience grief and horror.  The ongoing dream of being on a trip and my hotel room is full of stuff and I don’t know how to get rid of it all so I can go on the plane.  I also never know when the plane is leaving and frantically try to get to the airport to find out if I have missed it.  In my nightmares, I am running, screaming, yelling, experiencing pain and horror, that I always wake up feeling like I am so tired.  This of course does not help me get through the days when my mind frame is already negative and then I have lack of real deep sleep on top of it.

It’s times like this where I wonder if my recovery is completely failing. I wonder what I did wrong to get here. I berate myself even further by blaming myself for what I have done that has caused me to be like this. It’s a cycle and it sucks.  My harm OCD then gets worse, my existential OCD gets worse wondering why we are alive and why we die, my social OCD gets worse wondering who I upset today or who I said something wrong to or what I should and should not have done for basically absolutely everything.  

I want to run and hide from myself. I want to get drunk and get relief from it.  I want to go back to bed until it feels better.  I want sometimes and I don’t want to go really dark here but I want to just not be here or anywhere. I want silence, I want peace, I want to figure out how to do better and how to be better. 

Then from nowhere, even with horrid nightmares, I wake up and I catch a glimpse of myself.  I laugh at a tik tok of Trump being Trump, and it feels good to laugh.  The coffee tastes really good, like it comes from a tropical country that has grown the richest coffee from volcanic ash.  The clouds look beautiful all white and fluffy in different shapes. I smile at the cats cuddling, one of their heads on top of the other as they slumber so peacefully. The sunlight feels warm on my face like a heating pad on your back.  I am grateful. I’m grateful for my husband, my children, my family, my friends, my work, my writing, maybe even the cows…lol. I feel terrible for all the negativity and mean things I lashed out about. It’s another chance. Another chance to do it again.  Another chance to feel the exquisite feels of life.

Here is the thing, I sort of know the combination of things that made me go down. Some I could have made different choices and some are just human emotions of going through the empathy that I feel for others who are in tragic, tragic, circumstances.  I am told repeatedly that other people’s suffering should not change mine.  But dammit it does.  This is me. I feel so much that sometimes it’s like an octopus touching everyone of it’s arms to an electric shock at the same time.  It can’t help but feel all the pain at once.  Maybe if the Octopus didn’t have so many arms then he wouldn’t get shocked so many dam times.  If you took away all his arms though, he would no longer be an octopus. He would be a blob head. He would never feel pain because his arms couldn’t touch anything but he would never feel the closeness of holding his babies or be able to fight off predators for his babies.  No I don’t know why the Octopus is a he and I have absolutely no idea what Octopus has for babies but that’s not the point.  The point is that what makes an Octopus an Octopus, what makes bird a bird, what makes horse a horse, is all what makes Michelle, Michelle. 

Maybe I need to just take these tough weeks, feel the pain for myself and others and then just like the darkness came on, the light will appear again.  It always does.

Chat again soon, 

Michelle