Better. Things are somewhat better now than they were earlier. This one is 100% “a me thing”. Menopause. Emotions. Age and aging. Frustration. Just the basic slop of being human, female, over 60, and a big ol’ basket of broken shit and fragments and wreckage, emotionally speaking. Having a trauma history has got to be one of the most human of things, and it’s probably a rare individual who manages to make it past 50 without any hint of trauma. If we don’t experience legitimate damaging trauma, chances are we’d make some up. Also? I have a fucking headache. I woke up with it, hours ago… it’s with me still. Very human.
I took my headache to the store and bought goblin snacks for the upcoming holiday. Fun. Still have the headache. Drinking water. Relaxing. Doing my best. All the things.
There’s nothing much more to say about the shitty start to the day. I enjoyed a pleasant walk and then “crashed my hard drive” later – metaphorically. Wasn’t quite a tantrum. Could have been much worse. Wasn’t my best moment. Blech. Adulting is harder than it seems like it could be, sometimes.
I’m sipping cold coffee, thankful that the day proceeds in such a seemingly ordinary way. I am just about finished with the process of swapping my old(er) laptop for this new one in my lap right now. It’s a somewhat stressful, slightly frightening process (for me). My laptop is my “back up brain”, my alternate consciousness, a repository of my hopes and dreams and recollections. My calendar is here. My email accounts. My “preferences” and bookmarks, and even my manuscripts (finished and unfinished), and scraps of ideas for things as-yet-unwritten. It’s a deeply personal peripheral to my very human presence. She has a name (well, shit, don’t I??). I’ve only gone through this process of upgrading her “body” a couple times since the first (Ghost in the Shell is relevant here, to the way I think about my laptop… my non-human “bestie”, or administrative assistant).
…I’m doing Windows updates right now; the final step in “getting her head right”, and it’s time to restart again…
Another restart completed. Every detail is so fraught with concern… what if “she” doesn’t “wake up as herself” again??? OMG! The subtle trauma is hard to describe or even to justify in any normal way. I’m excessively invested. This tool helps me function as very nearly entirely “normal” in so many ways… the repository of a memory I don’t actually functionally have in some (pretty obvious to me) ways. I sigh heavily. Another update… this one I’m not sure of. I get myself together to ask my Traveling Partner for help with it… he’ll know. He’s good like that.
I am sipping my coffee between calls with recruiters interested in me for one role or another. I am feeling relaxed, hopeful, and positive, but with a nagging hint of lingering anger at my former manager (over the lay-off itself and the bullshit she attempted to use to give that any sort of acceptable context that could make her “not the bad guy here”).
I’d like to let go of that anger; it’s not productive or helpful.
Over the past 11 days, I must have composed dozens of emails in my head, seeking to “have my say” or in some way exact a feeling of “closure” about being laid off. Usually this occurs in some quiet moment when I could definitely be spending my time more joyfully, but somehow find myself picking at this minor hurt nonetheless. Honestly, over a lifetime I’vefor sure survived far worse. Being laid off, in general, and this manager specifically don’t deserve another moment of my attention at this point, and certainly don’t rate being irked to the point of unhappiness at all. Yes, it was a good job, with a good company that has a good culture… but… I continue to feel more relieved than dismayed; my manager was a fucking nightmare to work with (in spite of being a generally pleasant person to interact with socially) and in less than six months it was already coloring the experience. “Unfit to lead” puts it mildly. Tales for another time, perhaps.
I sip my coffee and breathe, exhale, and relax. I don’t work for her anymore. 😀
When I find myself struggling to let go of some circumstance, event, or conversation (it’s a very human thing), it’s often the result of feeling as if something “important” has been left unsaid, or some task left uncompleted. I’m looking for “closure”.
It’s pretty human to seek closure when something falls apart. Often that’s our very human ego seeking to make ourselves properly the good guy in our own narrative, other times we’re seeking a missing apology or for someone who hurt us to “make it right” – and if that’s not going to be available, to at least exact some explicit acknowledgement of the harm done. Let’s get super real about that; we don’t always get to have closure, at all, especially if we’re insistent on the person who actually wronged us being an active participant in getting that closure. (People don’t like being accountable for the wrongs they do and the harm they cause.) Sometimes it’s helpful to have the conversation, make the attempt, and see what comes of it… other times not so much. Sometimes seeking closure just tangles us up with whatever caused our trauma in the first place, and does more damage without real benefit. Why do that?
What do to about wanting closure…?
I sip my coffee (iced this morning, mostly gone at this point and quite watered down by melted ice). I notice the small puddle of condensation that has formed on the desk around the bottom of the cup, and mop it up with a couple tissues. “Cleaning up my mess” feels like a relevant metaphor…
What would “closure” get me, in these circumstances? What am I really looking for that it feels like I’m going without? Am I wanting a “last word”? Am I hoping to change that manager’s thinking in some way? Am I feeling that human urge to “be right” – and be recognized as such? Am I just wanting to say “I saw what you did there, you didn’t get away with anything.” or “That was a dick move.”? What would the point be? What am I hoping to gain? Am I just having a private tantrum or working through the emotions of hurt and grief? I’m not sure, but I definitely won’t be attempting to act on my feelings until I answer these questions for myself in a way that feels clear and settled. (I’m not a fan of hasty decision-making, lashing out, or burning bridges, and avoid doing those things where I can.) So… in my head, I write the email sharing my thoughts – each time recognizing where my words fail me, or identifying some internal need I can entirely meet for myself without ever hitting send on an email I might later regret. The mental exercise has more value than sending the email. What I think I want to say has already changed a number of times, in some cases because my thinking has already “matured”, or new information has come to light. Sometimes I just find “better words” or a clearer way to communicate my point(s), which is a very useful means of understanding myself more deeply.
…Sometimes, I just want to hurt her because she hurt me. That’s also very human, but it’s a lot more “tit-for-tat” and petty than I prefer to be, personally. I choose a different path.
…Perspective is helpful, and I often gain perspective through self-reflection…
Other circumstances, other needs for closure; for many years my yearning for “closure” (and some kind of apology) kept me distant from my father. Many years. Decades. I can’t say I regret the distance, I got quite a lot of healing from that… but I was definitely taken by surprise when closure developed on its own, through circumstances I didn’t anticipate. I wasn’t just surprised to get closure – I was surprised that I still felt a need for it after so many years. Stranger still, now and then I find myself still yearning for closure as if I’d never had any… trauma leaves lasting damage and closure doesn’t work the way we’d like it to; it’s not magic, it doesn’t “fix everything”, and it doesn’t erase past events. It’s worth understanding (and accepting) that.
…But what to do about wanting closure…?
It’s actually possible (not easy, just possible) to give ourselves closure, absent any involvement by the person(s) who hurt us. No kidding. It’s even quite effective. (Closure – and its partner “forgiveness” – isn’t about that other person at all; it’s about us, ourselves, and how we feel.) There are verbs involved, and yeah, your results may vary, but… it’s do-able. It’s also a practice; it’s not a one-off task that one can check off a to-do list once completed. (Note: this is my practice for achieving some closure when none is offered or readily available, and should not be considered the opinion of an expert, or any sort of guarantee of success – no science behind it, no peer-review, just one woman’s approach to getting closure. It’s worked pretty well for me.)
There are some steps. (These tend to “make it look easy” due to over-simplification, but should give you an idea of how I approach it.)
Understand the actual hurt I’m feeling (try to get the heart of it, in the simplest possible terms)
Sort out what I want that I think will ease that hurt in some way (if anything; keep it real)
Practice non-attachment, compassion, and self-compassion
Look for perspective and alternate understandings of the circumstances that may provide more context (without gaslighting myself, but mindful that I can be mistaken, or lacking “all the information”)
Role play the conversation as realistically as feasible (or write the letter or email – do not send!) – do it more than once, as often as needed, until it feels “said”. (Don’t get mired in this step!)
Reflect on how the event that hurt me has affected me (and why), and what I can learn from it
Have I grown from this hurt? How? Can I grow further? How?
Give myself credit for enduring/surviving/getting over it – and for any subsequent growth or success that may have come from it.
Let it go. Let them go. Walk on.
See number 3, and keep practicing.
It’s not a perfect process, but it’s a useful starting point. See, the thing about closure is that it isn’t really something someone else gives us – it’s something we create, or accept, for ourselves. We have the control. We have the power. We have the words.
I drove down the coastal highway, thinking thoughts, and sometimes singing bits of songs I remember well enough to sing them as the sights go by. I stopped often, for various “view points” from which I had hoped to snap a few pictures. Most of those looked like this…
One of many “sights” along my route.
The entire northern section of my drive was enveloped in fog, or mist, or wrapped in low-hanging clouds. Not much to see. LOL
A couple cups of coffee later, the mists persisted late into the morning, well-past the point at which I had expected the clouds to have “burned off” with the rising sun. It was clear I wasn’t going to be pleasantly distracted from my thoughts by the tremendous views; those were utterly withheld from me. lol
For most of the drive, the world appeared to be mostly undeveloped, as if created instant-by-instant from my own thoughts…
It was still a lovely day for a drive.
It was early on a Thursday morning, though, and there was very little traffic. I made good time down the highway, as if toward a clear destination. Truth was, though, the journey really was my destination. I set out to spend the drive with my thoughts, and there wasn’t anything to distract me. It was hard to see it as a problem.
At several stops, and all weekend long, I made a point to take notes about the journey. Thoughts that seemed worth preserving beyond the moment. For convenience, I’d started a draft blog post, and just saved my notes there. When I look them over this morning, I’m amused that they seem almost poetic…
I sit quietly with my morning coffee, trying to assemble some group of words to share the experience of these recent days, mostly without success. I can’t do better than the fragmented notes I took along the way, and a handful of pictures. There’s something to learn from that, I’m sure. More to consider. Another opportunity for self-reflection beckoning me from a distant future moment.
I did eventually drive far enough down the highway to escape the cloud cover…
Looking back, between the clear blue sky overhead, and the deep blue ocean below, in the distance the clouds linger.
The camping wasn’t fancy, it was just a place to rest for a night. I stayed in managed state park camp grounds. It was fine. It was also quite crowded. The camps were clean, and well-maintained, but also rather noisy. In spite of the crowds, both were really pleasant places to camp, and I may go back, some other time, for some other purpose.
There was no real solitude to be found in these places, and each morning I packed up and drove on, content to make my departure with haste. I drove with purpose.
There were reliably flowers everywhere.
In the middle of all this driving, there was an important (and delightful) stop midway to visit an old friend. My longest female friendship of many decades. We haven’t sat down together in shared space in so many years – it was long overdue, and very grounding. It felt like a homecoming of a different sort.
…There are few things as precious as time spent in the company of good friends. I don’t do enough of it.
There is more to share, and a lot to continue to reflect on. There were lessons learned, and lessons observed – with much to learn still developing slowly from those observations. In general, the whole thing was time well-spent. A good time.
Memorial Day is sometimes a hard one (for me). The days leading up to it this year were particularly difficult, though I don’t really have a reason why. I’ve lost a few folks over the years. That will never not be true in my life; once we lose the first one, it’s all “more” from there. Spent some time over the weekend reflecting on those losses, and those people. I spent the time with my Traveling Partner, and it was a very healing time we managed to share. I’m grateful.
Losses are hard. We feel our own pain most (and worst, generally). Running from it doesn’t change it – the way out is through. The challenge is not getting stalled in the momentary misery of grief.
The weekend was summery, and fairly mild. We got out among the trees. I got out into the garden. We drove beautiful miles and shared deep conversations. I needed that. We both did, I guess, and we’re better for it.
I’m sipping my morning coffee a bit surprised at how poorly I slept last night after a couple days of extraordinarily good sleep, deep and restful… last night my anxiety flared up with the recollection that today is a work day. Silly, but real. I woke numerous times to double-check that my “sunrise alarm” was actually set. It was. Every time I checked. lol It remains true that a few days of healing and emotionally gentle and nourishing time don’t “fix” anxiety. It comes and goes. My results vary. This morning I got up and managed to start the day without taking it personally or escalating it beyond the obvious; it’s disordered, and there is no reason to feed it and give it more energy.
I smile when I think about the weekend, and my Traveling Partner. Good times.
