Anger, Anger, Where Art Thou?

Oh THERE you are! I have been trying to touch you for a LONG time now! I knew you were there, but I just couldn't access you!

I would not have posted yesterday’s post, “Heart. Break.”, a few weeks ago. But I knew my grief was stuck and something that I was doing… or not doing, was blocking it.

 Several people have asked me about my anger in my journey and I haven’t been able to feel it, find it, or express it. Cognitively I know my anger is there, and subconsciously I’m spending enormous amounts of energy containing it, but I haven’t been able to break the surface to let it come forth.

Why?

Because I’m nice.

Because I do the right thing.

Because I choose the higher road.

This past week, as I’ve been practicing trusting in my true self, I’ve realized I need to let go of trying to do ‘the right thing.’ I am who I am. And I am good and perfect the way I am, right now… not even as I grow into some better/wiser self through my journey.

 My son is who my son is. As I trust myself to be myself, I need to trust my son (with his autism) to be himself. He will walk his own path and he has all he needs, in his true self, to do so. I’ve also felt guilt, panic, and exhaustion trying to apply the right choices for him. My course of action in getting therapy for his autism has been timely and appropriate, but now that its in place, I can let my hyper-vigilance relax and allow him just to be his 2 year old self, while I just return to being myself.

As I’ve let go of my expectations and self-imposed parameters (one white knuckle at a time), my anger has finally started to bubble through. What a relief!

Yesterday, as I felt the surge of renewed hurt and betrayal from my ex, I wanted to yell, “GET OUT!!!! JUST GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!!!!” But I didn’t (mostly to protect my son). And then my ex quietly slipped out, and the hurt surged through my veins even harder.

For the first time ever, I knew I needed to act on my hurt. If I didn’t act on it, I’m never going to heal. So I went into the bedroom, closed the door, and punched an overstuffed pillow, over and over again. I imagined it was my ex. I imagined it was other individuals involved. It went on until I didn’t need to do it anymore.

For most people, this is laughable in terms of expressing anger.

For me, it’s huge... or a huge first step.

I don’t express anger.

 I cry.

I run.

I numb.

But I don’t express anger.

And its literally killing me.

Yesterday I expressed my anger for the first time. First, through the pillow-punching. Second, through posting something that was a little dramatic… a little more raw than I prefer to be out in the public.

Miranda Lambert, the country music artist, has a reputation for having no difficulty expressing herself, in music, and allegedly in person as well. Her current hit song, “This Ain’t My Mama’s Broken Heart” takes it to more of an extreme than the reality I live, but I’m grateful that she does… firstly so I don’t have to. Secondly so the origin of the hurt emerges into humour, thereby bringing healing.

(for the record, it ain’t about my mama… more about the expectations that many of us have been brought up in).

Heart. Broken.

I’ve been officially ‘recovering’ for a month now. As wonderful as working 1 day a week sounds, my time off has been no picnic. I’ve been stuck in the oxymoronic process of

Working hard… to rest

Grieving… to heal

Crash & burning… to rise from the ashes.

All of these are not choreographable tasks. They all require surrender that is active in its joy and passive in its action.

I’ve noticed in myself and others, that we humans tend to be reticent to share ourselves in the midst of our grief. We want to wait until we have it all figured out so we can deliver our message in a happily-ever-after package. I think we want to show ourselves and the world, that all of this heartbreak does make sense… somewhere, down the road.

But I am not there.

I am stuck in heartbreak.

I am immersed in grief.

I had a conversation with my ex tonight that re-opened the tender scabs on my pulverized heart. It brought forth another tidal wave of betrayal and hurt. It makes me wonder if this will ever end. I’m already divorced, for crying out loud. Why can’t I get over this? I fully believe that I took the path I needed to take by both marrying AND divorcing my ex. Its been two years since I realized that the dream is dead. And still, the tears pour out. Still, the heart breaks more and more.  It makes me wonder if there’s even any pieces of my heart left to be scabbed over. But there must be, because I still feel pain. If my heart was pulverized to the point of obliteration, I wouldn’t feel pain.

Talking with a few good friends in the last few days, the only new clue I have in how to get through this, is that my heart-of-hearts, my true self, the part of me that is irrevocably and eternally connected to God, knows the way through. And I have to trust that part of me to show the way.

Yesterday a friend, who is also a therapist, was telling me that what she’s discovered lately is that too many people try to rush through the ‘crash and burn’ phases of grief. The crashing and burning is so uncomfortable, mostly for the person who’s going through it, but probably also for people around that person. The thing with the crash and burn phase is that you can’t DO anything in it, except surrender to it. You can’t control it. You can’t hurry it. You can’t dissect it because it doesn’t make any sense.

You CAN observe it. But that’s about all. And there’s no fast forwarding in the observation either.

When I flipped open my laptop to write this entry, I noticed the wallpaper on my screen. It’s the same wallpaper/background photo I have on my Facebook profile.

“The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.”

And that’s about as close as I can come to making sense out of anything in the midst of heartbreak. That’s about as close as I come, to having hope that I will recover. That is the essence of HOPE itself.

Zits Happen

Its been a while since I've blogged.

Why?

Because I'm on a partial stress break. Or maybe I should call it a stress brake. I went down to 1 day a week at work just to get a handle on life. I feel like my major, seemingly insurmountable, overwhelming battles are done now. And now I have to figure out how to recover from my war, and find my new 'normal' in life. I'm sure there will be future blogs about the interesting things I'm discovering about rest and exhaustion, etc, but todays' blog is about zits.

Around second trimester of my pregnancy in 2010, I got a zit that creates the third corner of a triangle between my inner eye and the bridge of my nose. To my dismay, the zit never disappeared, and in fact turned into a mole. So not only did I grow a baby from my body in 2010, but I also grew a mole that is almost all I see when I look in the mirror now.

This morning that mole pore became clogged again, and I noticed I had a whitehead on top of the mole, now creating a 3-D model of Mt Baker on my face. Of course today is also the day that I have to go to work. So I knew I couldn't leave Mt. Baker to loom at people, particularly because I had a presentation with 50 grade 7's.

So you know what I did...

....and you know what I looked like then... Mt Baker with a cherry on top!

I knew I couldn't go talk to the grade 7's like this because instead of the usual first question:
"Why is marijuana illegal?"
I'd get asked,
"What's that thing on your face?"

And I just knew I didn't have the strength to face that. My only option was to call in sick... from a zit... Now I appreciate all of you out there who have lovingly made comments about my strength to get through everything... but this particular moment in time is a more accurate reflection of my strength... being scared to talk to grade 7's because I have a zit. And, much to my chagrin, I realized that I couldn't call in sick... not only because its the only day in the week that I work, but also because I had another class that I absolutely had to be there for later in the afternoon, so I couldn't really call in sick for one class, then show up for another later on in the day.

So I went to work. And I emailed, texted, and called everyone I needed to talk to instead of venturing outside my office door. I don't even think I went to the bathroom. One of the Vice Principals stopped by my office at one point and I was honestly expecting him to jump back, aghast at my zit. I'm not sure he even saw it. Could be because my office has low lighting. Or it could be because he's a man.

My grade 7 presentation arrived quickly at 11am. Up until then I had come up with a lot of excuses why I could still cancel it, such as that my laptop powerpack had been lost for the last few weeks and my laptop had run out of power. But not only does everyone know that I know my presentations well enough to not require a laptop, but the librarian also found and returned my missing power pack at 10:40... so I had to go.

As you might guess, the first question with the grade 7 class was "Why is marijuana illegal?" NOT "What's that on your face?" (maybe if it was grade 2's it would have been 'What's wrong with your face?') In the end, it was one of the most interactive, dynamic presentations I've had with a grade 7 class this year.

An hour later I shared my vulnerable experience with a co-worker who is familiar with my recent journey. She said, "What a wonderful opportunity for you to model that its perfectly okay to have a zit; life goes on and you can still be a confident, beautiful woman even if you have acne... because those are exactly the kinds of issues they are dealing with in grade 7." Ya, she's probably right, but to be honest, I don't care about modeling to the grade 7's right now. I just want things to go smoothly... to have no bumps, or zits or uneven pavement in my life for a while.

And then that video that changed my life, Brene Brown's TED Talk, "The Power of Vulnerabilty" came back and hit me in the face.
Click here to watch The Power of Vulnerability

 I remembered that life is made up of vulnerability. Without vulnerability we can't know joy, gratitude, creativity, belonging, etc. Vulnerability... zits!... are what life is made up of.

Vulnerability... zits... both literal and proverbial...
- put us in a posture where we are a receptical to receive grace.
- having received grace, we are then in a better posture to practice grace

Vulnerability facilitates an opportunity to put our pride/ego/sin aside in order to make room for others in our lives; its fairly well known that I'm not good at asking for help. Since my ego seems to be too big to do so, God/Life has brought me other opporunities that have forced me to do so... probably so I could experience the fullness of life that comes from relationships.

Vulnerability... zits... help me keep it real. In Brene's TED Talk she talks about how hard we work to perfect life. But life isn't supposed to be perfect. When we are trying to perfect our lives, we're essentially trying to play God, which makes us sick on a whole lotta levels. Therefore zits keep me engaged with my Creator, and help me remember that I am not God. They put me in my place, in a good way. I can't even handle being director of the program I run at work, or being a Mom to my son, never mind God.

I could probably keep going, but I'm not going to wait until this blog is perfect. Maybe you can perfect this entry by telling me about the gifts that your vulnerability/zits bring in your life. Cuz, you know, zits happen to everyone! Zits are the fabric of our lives... not cotton.