After a week of being less social that usual, last Friday night
sucked. Really, really sucked. I have no idea what triggered the mess. I
wasn’t wallowing around in old wedding pictures. I hadn't gone back in
time to read our Great Cancer Adventure blog (reading about our last
days together still transforms me into a wailing mess.) But for some
reason, Friday evening was the night an ugly freight train of emotion
hit me like never before. Maybe the train’s always been there but I have
always had some judo to derail it before it picked up speed. Friday, it
was just me, dark thoughts and a fast moving train.
I’ve
been fairly good at staying positive or at least letting the negative
waves of emotion and fear wash over me without pulling me via a riptide
into unsafe depths. I’ve learned to control my thoughts and, when
powerful negatives start echoing around in the emotion-amplifier called
my brain, I just change the subject, quite literally. I don’t try to
resolve the un-resolvable (“Why me? Why now? How can this happen?”) I
just hear the questions form in my brain-chatter and let them run right
out, giving them no energy or focus. Then I immediately change the
subject to ANY other subject. I don’t avoid them but I don’t let them
control me either. I just acknowledge them and move on. I’ve always been
careful not to give them any energy because without energy, those
thoughts starve and die.
At least until last
Friday night. That night, for some reason, I was weak. My idle mind
filled quickly with widow-style un-resolvable questions (“How do I
rebuild? Will I always be alone? Are my best years lost?”). Every
question led to worse follow-up questions. Down and down I went.
Eventually I was building doomsday scenarios, each more terrible than
the previous. (Oh, I’m very resourceful and creative with my doomsday
scenarios!) Each one played out like slowly falling dominoes clicking
together to create my destiny. Eventually, I had built up multiple
scenarios that painted my life so bleak that within just a few falling
dominoes, I’m homeless, friendless, starving and living under a bridge.
I’m never seen from again and no one bothers to look. Good riddance,
they all say (in my head, of course.) My existence fades into a timid
whisper between old friends at parties, much like Brian’s has become, it
seems. My life is over.
On and on I piled the
punishment. For hours I whipped up a furious storm of morose self-abuse.
Then came the Big Question: Why don’t I just call it quits right now?
That
last question scared me. It wasn’t really the question. It was the
feeling that drove the question. It felt like the only option. And
that’s the key part – it seemed like the ONLY option. In a matter of
hours, I had built an impenetrable wall that forced me down one path in
my future that led to one inescapable conclusion. There was only one way
out: call it quits.
Now this had gone too far.
Something inside me sat straight up, wide awake and screamed “ENOUGH OF
THIS!” But I wasn’t quite sure how to rescue myself. I felt like a
panicking drowning victim, quite aware of the danger but not clear on
how to escape. I was stuck under negative emotional debris while the
riptide of a dismal future was carrying me quickly out to sea. It
sucked. I was scared.
Then something simple and
unexpected happened. I got a message from my friend Peter. Simple, yes,
but it was just the rope I needed. That imagined impenetrable wall
forcing me down the inevitable path of doom cracked. This unexpected
invitation wasn’t on that predetermined path. Instead, it was a
trailhead of many paths, many I hadn’t considered. And if there were
many paths, especially ones that I hadn’t seen yet, then there couldn’t
possibly be only one option. And if there are lots of options, then
there’s certainly no need to call it quits now, with so many options
still to explore. With that one simple message, the whole
carefully-crafted notion of a single path of doom-and-gloom unraveled.
As yet unseen options and opportunities were out there! Yay, hope! That
was just the rope I needed to pull myself out.
The
lesson: Even when it’s darkest, I believe with all my heart a trailhead
is just around the corner. No matter what, I just have to keep trudging
forward. (And keep more rope handy for use around pesky sinkholes.)
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