Today I was retrieving something from my trunk, and hit the Bop-It someone got my daughter for Christmas (or birthday, I don’t remember). My daughter, my dad, and I would play with it and compete against each other. Dad ended up with the highest score, and no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t best it. So the high score remains. The Bop-It lived at Dave’s house, and every so often it would get bumped, prompting it to say “Bop It to Start! High Score, 76!” which would prompt us all to yell at it. Like you do. While I was retrieving something from the trunk, I bumped it on accident and it started.
It made me sad. Which seems like such a silly thing to get sad about because it’s just a stupid Bop It. I pushed it from my mind because I had to get to work. Needless to say, I’ve had plenty of time to sit and think, and reminded myself of it again. I started to cry. Allowed myself the moment of sadness, no matter how silly it might have seemed. Which sparked its own moment of self reflection, I think.
I used to think crying, or acknowledging that I was hurting, was really stupid. I used to hate myself for feeling pain. I don’t really know why, I don’t know where I picked it up from, but I did. Hiding your pain, hiding your hurt, doesn’t make it go away. It just makes it fester. Like slapping a bandaid on a wound, it doesn’t stop the infection growing. Pretending not to hurt only prolongs the grieving process, or turns it into anger. Perhaps that is why I was always such an angry person. Anger made sense. Anger I could control. But pain? No. Pain was a foreign object in the eye of my existence.
Grief is not a one size fits all kind of deal. Grief hits different for everyone. Today has been a sad day, but it has caused a bit of self reflection. It reminds me how strange the grieving process really is. It isn’t the day to day loss that hits the hardest. I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t worked through the shock to mourn properly, or if I’m still actively grieving. It’s the little things that catch me up, and generally take me by surprise.
Everyone talks about the five stages of grief, but so many fail to realize how misleading those five stages really are to people. Grief cannot be defined, and you cannot plan for it. It does not come wrapped with a pretty bow, and as long as you complete the steps you’ll be back to normal. With loss, you have to define a new normal, and depending on the severity of loss, you have a lot of rebuilding to do.
The point I’m making in all of my word soup is we need to stop looking at pain, especially grieving, as something we can just get over. We need to stop burying it deep and hoping it’ll sort itself out. This isn’t something that can be tossed in the “For Later” pile and forgotten. Life has a funny way of throwing reminders at you as though to say “Hey, you forgot to grieve”. I will confess, right after his passing, I did still feel anger. I did try to bury it, to deal with it later, when it was more convenient. But let’s be honest, there is never a convenient time to grieve.
So even though I’m at work, I allowed myself the little cry, and decided to move forward by writing about it. Yes, this moment will hurt. Many more moments will hurt. The pain is still fresh, the wounds are still raw. But every single one of those moments is a reminder that we loved. It is a reminder that we felt deeply enough to feel. Pain, and love, are the strongest reminders that we are alive, still human.
I am glad that I have found the strength to realize pain does not make me weaker. To realize tears do not mean I am not strong. I am glad I can freely say “I feel sad”. I am VERY glad that I don’t let my emotions fester like an oozing wound.
Web Weavings 