I was talking with my ex-fiancée the day after my mom died, and she says I seem to get over things quickly. (I can’t help but think that she might have been thinking about our recent non-engagement.)
I had two months to prepare for mom’s death after she was diagnosed with cancer. When it finally happened, I was ready. It hurt, but it hurt in private.
When my ex-fiancée said she didn’t want to get married after all, I think I took it well. At least, I gave that impression over the phone. She couldn’t see my face.
I posted in another thread that I’m continually being blindsided. Just as things seem to be going well, something comes from out of the clear blue sky to deliver a smackdown.
But what are you going to do? Get over it the best, and as quickly, as you can. ‘Adopt, adapt, and improve.’ I hate it when Bad Things happen to me. I can either wallow in self-pity, or I can force it into a tiny compartment in my mind and forget about it. And if it won’t stay put, then make a joke about it.
Worrying takes a lot of energy. I haven’t that much energy. I’m too lazy to spend the time worrying about things over which I haven’t any control. Yes, I get hurt. Yes, there are things that make me sad. But it’s much easier to let them go as much as I can. Or at least, it’s better to give the impression that they don’t bother me.
Just as it’s not good to stew and mope over things for too long or allow yourself to wallow in self-pity or let grief go on endlessly, it’s also not healthy to shove those things into an emotional closet and close the door. That door WILL come open some day, and it will not be pretty.
There’s a happy medium in there somewhere, and people should allow themselves to fully experience all the stages of grief. I would imagine it’s easier to deal with an expected loss such as that of your mother, and unexpected loss, such as that of your ex-fiancee. Maybe she said that in order to gauge your emotional status after your mother’s death. Maybe in order to assauge her own guilt at having dumped you.
In any case, you sound to me like you’re dealing pretty well. Of course, tomorrow you could climb a tower with a high-powered rifle in hand, for all I know. You’re the best judge as to how you’re doing.
It’s good that you’re open to talking about your situations and how you feel about them, if not IRL at least here.
Of course stuff like that hurts - I can’t even imagine you being cold or unfeeling. The good news is, you bounce. You’re grown-up enough to know that even the most horrible feelings are usually temporary, and that This Too Shall Pass.
I think of you often - you really have had a shit year so far, but every now and then I find a MPSIMS or IMHO post from you that clearly shows your resilience and your coping skills. Hang in there. You know my email if you need to vent.
I wish I could adopt that attitude. I still pine over the girl who broke up with me three years ago. I still resent the fact that I wasn’t able to go to the schools I was accepted to and wanted to go to fifteen years ago, thanks to parental disinterest/lack of guidance. I still…ah, well, you get the idea.
I should just let go of these things. I’m trying to. But it’s hard. And it screws up my life in the meantime.
You all probably know that I shot two scenes in The Worst Movie Ever Made, Zombie! vs. Mardi Gras. (I actually like the film. The critics don’t seem to get the joke. Anyway, the stuff I shot is really good.) One of the running gags is about people shooting guns in the air during Mardi Gras. A few people are killed by falling bullets.
Near the end of the film, a bum is sitting outside of a church, and a guy in a suit comes out. ‘Could you spare a quarter for an old altar boy? I’m a good Catholic,’ says the bum. The man hands the bum a twenty. The bum starts rhapsodising about his good fortune and starts singing the ‘mama mia’ portion of Bohemian Rhapsody. Then there is a whistling sound and a bullet falls on his head and kills him.
Galileo, released from Purgatory on a mission to kill Zombie!, at which he fails, sits nearby contemplating the nature of linear time. Time loops back, and we seee the bum sitting outside the church again and the man coming out of the church. The bum says, ‘Do you ever get that feeling of cosmic inevitability? Give me the twenty bucks.’ After the bum gets the twenty we hear the whistling sound again. ‘Oh, no,’ says the bum. ‘A-gain!’ And the bullet hits him.
As I said, whenever things are going really great for me, I seem to get a smackdown. All I can do is accept it and move on. Things will pick up again. I’ll probably be knocked down again. But it seems that every time I get knocked down (cue Chumbawamba), I learn a little more. I seem to come out just a little bit ahead. Not much, but a little.
You know you’re a Doper when: you fully expect someone to pop in the first few posts to say “You’re probably depressed. You should see a doctor and get some anti-depressants.”
But, seriously, if you feel like you deal well with grief and stress, then you probably do. If you find other areas of your life suffering due to unresolved grief, then you might want to pay attention to that.
Do you think that maybe you don’t emotionally invest in people and that may be why you “deal well” with loss, because maybe you don’t get so attached to them in the first place, because maybe you’re expecting to get hurt? Just curious.
Maybe I’m just cynical, but maybe she’s a little disappointed at Johnny L.A.'s apparent lack of heartbreak at having been dumped by her. She’s not going to say “I broke up with you, why aren’t you still crying yourself to sleep every night?” so instead she gives the backhanded, slightly more cryptic “You seem to get over things quickly.”
She was braced for a verbal attack. Her previous relationships were abusive, and I think she expected me to react the same way and yell at her and call her a bitch. But I’m not that kind of guy.
If she changes her mind again and decides to marry me, I’ll take her back. (Well, within a reasonable amount of time. I’m not going to pine for her. And I won’t beg.) If she doesn’t, then she doesn’t. I’m hoping my car will be restored in time for summer. Then I’ll have a nice little roadster that I can drive around in the pleasant PNW summer. I can pack a picnic and find a nice place to kick back. It would be nice to share a nice drive and share a picnic lunch with someone, or to kayak on the bay, or whatever; but I can have fun on my own.
It sounds like you are a Pragmatist. I’m a lot like that myself; I used to worry that I didn’t feel emotions as strongly as other people, or I was repressing a lot, but I’m starting to realize that I just more-or-less take it as it comes. It’s very Zen, you know.
There’s a school of thought in psychoanalysis where you are expected to gnash your teeth and wail and feel sorry for yourself forever because you didn’t have an A-#1 Childhood, but I think it is slowly moving more towards a more pragmatic attitude; things happen, you feel bad, you deal, you move on. Or, as I like to say, you can feel bad about it, or you can forget about it.
A fair question, but a difficult one for me to answer.
I’ve never been lucky at relationships. On the rare occasions that I was in a relationship, I invested heavily emotionally in them. My first girlfriend left me for another guy. It hurt. But I loved her enough that I wanted her to be happy. I got over it. My next girlfriend and I had a long relationship. I thought she was bi, but she wasn’t. I knew she was seeing other women, and finally I’d had enough. If only she were straight I would have married her; we were that good together. But she wasn’t. Heavy emotional investment there. It was easy to get over her, because though she ‘dumped me for another woman’, I was the one who stopped calling. There were a couple of other encounters without emotional commitments. Not as satisfying as love. Then there was Sandy. I’d really hoped it would work out. I’d built dreams around her. I actually proposed to her. I haven’t entirely given up. There’s still a chance she’ll change her mind. But I’m ready to move on with my life if she doesn’t.
So yes, I do make emotional investments. And that’s saying nothing about my parents.
But…
I’m getting older. Now I’m going to be more careful about emotional investments. I’ve tried, and tried, and tried for a relationship to no avail. I’m tired of trying. I do expect to be hurt. But that’s a very recent thing. If I meet someone and we hit it off, then I’ll be emotionally invested in her. But I’m a bit gunshy, so it will take some effort on her part.
Shayna told me I’d find someone. I said, ‘What are you? Psychic?’ She said that her feelings often turn out to be accurate. She couldn’t give me any phone numbers though. I’ll just do what I do. If anyone wants to come along for the ride, she’ll know where to find me.
So I don’t really have any ‘unresolved grief’. I’m not happy being alone, but I’m not moping either. Moping is boring.
