There’s Just a Lot Going On, So OK May Be Enough – PART TWO

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I am amazed at the changes the last month has brought.

I had just returned from trekking in the Grand Canyon a month ago. Things were stable with family, and I had just booked a flight up north for Thanksgiving. Work was good, and I was getting to use the wood stove some mornings to take the chill out of the living room.

And then stuff hit the proverbial fan.

All of a sudden, my 91-year-old father-in-law is in failing health. Without going into the details, he is fast approaching the conclusion. My wife and her two sisters are going through, on a condensed timetable, what my siblings and I went through in March of this year. Our conclusion was the loss of my mother at the end of March.

Knowing all the work my wife has done to support her father, I am saddened for her.

Additionally, the holidays are coming. There are only 35 more shopping days until Christmas. Thanksgiving is next week. If flying north for Thanksgiving isn’t in the cards, I have already alerted my son. While I would be sad not to be with them at Thanksgiving (this will be at least our third Thanksgiving with them), pressing issues may keep us home.

At this point, all I can do is keep going.

I am thinking of the oft-used quote, “When you are going through hell, always keep going,” While it may be a cliché, it pretty much sums up where I am. Finally, I have told my therapist, my peer advocate, and now my psychiatrist that for months now, I have only felt OK.

I feel not great, happy, or sad, but just OK.

It may be that I am taking the death of my mother differently than the loss of my father some 39 years ago. Not living in the area and having a very young family, I was too busy to feel sad for long. There were arrangements to complete and my own family to look after.

Even now, I feel I suppressed my emotions by jumping into the tasks at hand.

My therapist has returned me to this idea many times. I get the facts right but very seldom let slip how those facts make me feel. Over the years, I have sometimes taken pride in knowing exactly what happened. I can recount the events and never let you know how I feel towards or about them.

My 11:00 AM meeting has gone from in-person to video chat.

Things change, but life still goes on. There will be other chances to meet in person. Changing my plans is no big deal. The important thing right now is to be supportive and available. What is needed changes from hour to hour.

So, on to the next thing.

PART TWO

My father-in-law passed last Friday, and we drove to upstate New York the following Friday.

The original plan was to drive most of the way Thursday and make the remainder of the trip early Friday afternoon. This also changed, and we drove the entire 7 ½ hours on Friday, arriving sometime after 8 PM. This was 4 hours later than our original target arrival time.

Remember, be supportive and available.

The rest of the weekend moved along as predicted. I had never expected to be a big part of the activities. Once again, my role was to be supportive and available, and I believe that was what I did. Getting the service over with, including the visitation and the graveside last thoughts, helped bring closure to the afternoon.

Once again, I am reporting what has happened, thus avoiding having to discuss how I feel about the situation.

I am realizing that I am cheating not only myself when I avoid my feelings. The reality is I am cheating everyone. I may actually have some insight that could help someone else. And yet I am too chicken sh&% to face my feelings.

Read More: why can’t I stop facing my depression?

The only good thing is that I recognize my avoidance of feelings pretty much as they happen.

In the past, I would ignore and often praise my ability to avoid expressing my feelings. How I felt about an event was not important. Getting the facts straight, and correctly written down was what I was able to do. And in the past 50 + years, I have done, in my opinion, a marvelous job of reporting the facts.

It began as I wrote my ship’s log as I traveled solo, at age 18, on my sailboat.

And I am still reporting the facts, as I see them, today. Feelings are not as important. Sharing how a situation makes me feel is not what comes to mind. Knowing that I can clearly tell you what happened, is and always has been what I thought my job was.

Complicating the facts with my feelings about those facts just makes a mess of everything.

At work, people I have known for 20 or 30 years are facing their own mortality. And they are much stronger and braver than I am. I can’t even face how their reality makes me feel. And yet there they are living it, proudly, and with courage and honor. All I am doing is recording the facts about their situation. So, getting in touch with my feelings about a situation I am presented with is not a thing that automatically jumps into my head.

This leaves me, as Joe Friday would say on the TV series Dragnet, with “just the facts, Mame.”

I must have latched onto this phrase as a child. My depression has latched on to this as a way to get control over me. Just give him the facts. Then, make him try to articulate how he feels about those facts. This is enough to push him over the edge. Heck, I can’t even write about this without employing the third person so I can deny that it was me talking about my feelings.

And once again, I have written another page without revealing my true feelings.

Heck, I am not revealing any feelings at all. Unless you count the fact that I am not talking about the feelings that I am avoiding, maybe I can face the fact that all I am giving myself are the facts. I can make a compelling case for just giving out the facts. It is clean, crisp, and not messy in the way feelings and emotions can be.

So, I have managed to write an entire page without disclosing how I feel.

And I am certain that tomorrow, I will be able to mask how I feel with “just the facts.” Yet, with only 20 to 30 years left on this earth, why should I even care what others think about my feelings? And that is the rub. I see a stigma that surrounds feelings. A stigma that is, for me, as ingrained as the stigma associated with any mental illness. My innermost thoughts about whatever situation or event is happening are locked away.

And I’ll be damned if I am going to share those thoughts with you.

First and foremost, I am not sharing them with you because I am not sharing those thoughts with myself. Remember, “just the facts.” Until I can face those facts and let myself feel what I really feel, my life is only a shadow of what it could be. And while seeing it is the first step towards correcting it, I am afraid to move forward.

Once I am not afraid of my feelings, I am certain that I can face them and write them down.

I just hope this happens in my lifetime.