Last night, I heard some awful stories. Today, more.
Last night someone was telling me about losing his son to suicide. The whole thing was a mess. He was a combat veteran himself. He had–and I will differentiate these–at least Traumatic Grief, Traumatic Guilt, and probably PTSD. He felt keenly the loss of friends, and felt keenly the murders he had committed in war.
His marriage fell apart. He lost the ability to protect his son. Bad things were done which, some 15-20 years later, caused his son to kill himself. He was wondering if he should have footed the bill for intensive long term therapy after those things were discovered and he got sole custody, something he could ill afford, and at a time when he himself–for eminently justified reasons, in my view–thought little of therapy and its value. He chose not to pay for the therapy.
I wish I had been more emphatic that he made the right decision, that it would almost certainly have made no difference. That is actually my view, but in any event the past is past. What is done is done. What is present still is his self doubt, his worry, his grief, and his pain. That is all anyone like me need worry about or attempt to assuage.
Tonight, someone was telling me about losing two babies, both roughly the same way: his wife dilated and started “leaking” about five months in. The second baby he was thinking maybe he could have kept. Even at five months, he thought, maybe a child could have emerged, even if one requiring lifelong daily care. I told him I did not think that child would have lived, in any iteration of the story, which matched what his older brother had told him. He has obviously long wondered if he should have trusted his older brother. My honest opinion is his older brother steered him straight.
Now, he considers adopting. But my God, the things most kids being put up for adoption must have been through, now. You can’t heal Developmental Trauma without Neurofeedback, and that continues to be a backwater, forgotten relic of something non-professionals tried and which sometimes worked, but which lacked enough of BEING GOD to be of long term interest to “trained professional”. (I have beer and gin in me, by the way, but all booze ever does is amplify me. I go to 11, when I might have stopped at eight and a half.)
Those stories last night messed me up. I bought a bottle of gin to drink, and chose not to. I had something at work to finish today, and I finished it. Good on me. Tonight, I am giving myself this small blessing.
I will share some dreams. Several nights ago, I was dreaming of living in the sea, and coaxing shy, very sensitive sea creatures to come out. A crab came out from under a sofa. Some sea eel or something similarly soft came out of a box.
And I remembered I was intensively soft at one time. I was a very sensitive child. I literally would not harm a fly. When we moved where there were a lot of mosquitoes, it literally took me several years to get over my guilt for killing them, even when they were biting me. I didn’t kill bugs or anything else for any reason.
There remains, apparently, still within me a nearly infinite tenderness, a reactive capacity, a seeing capacity, a feeling and empathetic capacity.
And I do not know how to reconcile this with the part of me that can FEEL a well made knife in my hand. I think I posted this same line recently, but I’m not sure.
How do sane people reconcile, on the one end of the continuum, infinite sensitivity and reactivity and compassion and love, and on the other the sometimes need for physical, emotional, intellectual and social violence? How do both live in one mind?
Magic. That is my answer. This is my mystical power. Maybe. Although I remain uncertain if it is an actual power, since it is unmanifest.
Last night I was dreaming about being homeless. I felt how people, when they first lose their homes, are brave. They put a brave face on. They say “it won’t be so bad”. But with time, they lose that bravado, and with enough time they lose the ability to care outright. I felt all this.
Then I felt being sufficiently emotionally organized to actually deal with the Powers that Be, and the assholes behind them, to actually do useful work to ameliorate their condition. Me, without losing my patience. Me, without quitting when the going gets shitty. That’s new.
My God what a fascinating thing this life is. I feel it. Life is in the feeling. When you are doing, there is a shield in front of you. Life is happening to the shield. You can, of course, do with feeling, too, and that is the task most of us need to learn.
What really makes sense to me is that trying our best–which of course is almost never our best, but always feels like more than we thought we were capable of–is really what is asked of us.
I used to tell my kids–and I’ve likely shared this thought here–that God is not a fucking idiot. God feels us, sees us, knows us. There is no need for or point of pretense. Be how you are. Speak your truth. Know that you have most likely fucked up seriously and often in ways you were too fucking stupid to see. And know that what is infinite will be infinite with you, too.
There is a thousandfold the compassion any of us need in any inch of this universe. If we can’t find it, it will eventually come to us.