Twist the knife

In my life, there are a lot of hard and heavy things happening. I have been working on myself, on my emotions, on my mental and physical health, and I am not seeing the progress I want to see thus far. It just means I have a ways to go. Which is fine.

Acknowledging I’m really not fine is probably the best first step. I’m grieving. Grief takes many forms for many reasons; it is not always a result of death. But it is a very real reaction to circumstances. You can grieve when your children leave for college, or when your pet passes away. You can grieve for a failed relationship, or aging parents, or a lost job opportunity. Even being passed over for a promotion would be a cause of grief. Obviously, losing a loved one would also cause grief.

It seems like when I reach homeostasis from one life event that causes grief, I’m hit with another. I’ve heard the saying that “God gives his toughest battles to the strongest soldiers” or something of that sort, and can I just ask to be a weaker soldier? Is that how this works? Somehow, I don’t think so.

What hurts the most is the idea that some people seem to want to kick you when you’re down. They see that you were assaulted, and stab the knife deeper in your back. Then twist it. It’s like they want to watch you bleed and suffer and beg for mercy. They take everything you have, and leave you emotionally, physically, and financially destitute. When these people are the people you used to think would always have your back, it hurts even worse. When these people also do things to benefit themselves over caring for you, or your family, or people you care about…it is unbearable. The stab wounds don’t heal when you see others you care about suffering too.

Grieving the emotional loss of people in your life is a very different type of grief. You see who they used to be, or who you thought they were, and you see who they either became (or always were, and you weren’t aware), and you have a hard time reconciling the two people. There are so many questions, like ‘did I cause them to turn out this way?’ or ‘why did they all of a sudden turn on me? Is something wrong with me?’ They still exist in the world, but they want an existence without you. It is a level of rejection that is so very hard to rebound from emotionally. Then you find out they are building new lives with new friends and new experiences and new vacations and new jobs…without you…and even though you are building a new life too, from the outside looking in, their side seems easier. More seamless. Less angsty.

So you feel like you were discarded (let’s say, in the metaphorical dumpster). And you add other grief and now this dumpster is on fire.

Welcome to my world.