Interesting comment from golfwidow just a little bit ago:"This really feels like too much to go through all at once. You're a lot stronger than I am."
Does it look like that? Interesting. I don't think it feels that way to me. Got to wonder why. Here goes.
One, and for all I know this is true for everyone else or no one else, but I know it is for me. There's a real physical component to dealing with stress and stressful situations, and for whatever reason, I'm stable at the moment, which I've described before as "even." I'd like to think that it's because I'm back eating fast and other not-good-for-you food, and what do I know, maybe it is. I had a couple of bad months recently -- February and March -- when this was not the case, and I tell you, I felt like I was walking around in a different body. Not that my body is without complaints at the moment, it never is, but I feel like my brain chemicals are all sorted out right now.
Another thing is that this feels like practically nothing at all compared to the way it was from roughly 1996 to 2002, and that was kicked up a lot of notches in the last two years. I lived at maximum speed, maximum stress, juggling the maximum number of balls in the air at any given time, more balls than I would have previously thought even existed. There was work and there was doing the laundry and stuff, but, as I've said before, my mother was dying and my child had a long-term and difficult to explain illness. Now that felt like too much to go through all at once, and it went on for two years. I may have never relaxed for a moment during that time. Most days I would have to choose what I was doing after school, and sometimes, honestly, I picked Shirl because it was easier than being home with K, and sometimes the other way around. I had to do things for my parents -- get their groceries, pick up their prescriptions, take them to the doctor -- but I had to be with K because she was home alone all day and most of her friends had ditched her and she needed company and companionship and lots and lots of psychological support. I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but it was the nature of her illness that she looked relatively fine, and people around us seemed all to think that what she had was a psychological, not physical, condition, and that it was all in her head. Fortunately, the head of pediatric infectious diseases at the local teaching hospital did not think that, and knew what it was, and described future symptoms to us based on his diagnosis and he had it dead on. So we knew what it was and all, but it was a horrible, long time of life for us.
Next. Let me assure you of something: I am not stronger than anyone else. Like most people, I have had to deal with a certain amount of stuff in life, and I've learned that your only choice, in most cases, is to get through it. It's not a matter of strength, it's just dealing with options you have no opportunity to avoid. Am I making any sense? You would all do the same, believe me. Especially if you were doing things that provided for or cared for people that you love or who depended on you, you would do the same. It might give you migraines or, as in my case, stomach pain that didn't go away for years at a time, but if you are upright and alert, you will still drive to the market or fly to Florida or do whatever it is you need to to keep going. You will be sad or you will be mad, but you will do it.
When I felt as if I might possibly not be able to still do it, I went to therapy. When I felt certain that I would crack into a million pieces if I had to keep going on, I got help. I still don't know how it helped, exactly, but I know it did.
I know that there are things that happen in life that are too much to bear, and that some of those may come my way in the future, and I will either get through it or not, because those are the only choices there are. I can't promise that I will always be the way I am now. I can tell you that 22 years ago, I had a baby and my sister got divorced, at roughly the same time, and as a result, my mother slid into a bad depression. Why? I don't know, neither of those things actually happened to her. I hope I save my crack-up for stuff that actually happens to me, not that I'm wanting any of that. Selfishly, I hope I shed this vale of tears before I get to that.
Now I'm not even making sense, but you know, people have told me many times before that I'm so strong, that I was so brave when I had my brain surgery, and so on, so golf, you're far from the first I've heard this from, so I've thought of this before. It's just that I don't think of myself as brave, or strong, or any of that. I'm just trying to get along.
