Addressing My Elephant

I’d like to start by address­ing the ele­phant in the room:
I’m ashamed to write this post.

Mor­ti­fied, really.

I thought about not writ­ing it at all.
Or writ­ing it but not post­ing it.
But, that felt fake and false and a lit­tle bit like lying.

When I start­ed writ­ing this blog, so many years ago, I com­mit­ted to shar­ing the truth of my life — and that meant not just the good parts or the fun­ny parts. That meant all of it.

So here we are.
Deep breath.

Friends, this year has been hard.
Quite pos­si­bly the hard­est of my 34 years of life.
And I have been rack­ing my brain try­ing to fig­ure out why. I just need­ed to under­stand. I like to fix things. I thought if I could iden­ti­fy what was going on, I could fix it.
Turns out that doesn’t work so well.

Noth­ing has happened.
I don’t have one event or spe­cif­ic life expe­ri­ence to blame.
So I told myself to buck up and get over it. I tried to ignore this gnaw­ing, unfa­mil­iar emo­tion that kept bub­bling to the sur­face, hop­ing that if I wait­ed long enough it would just go away.

It didn’t.
And one day while dri­ving to my 9 mil­lionth appoint­ment, exhaust­ed and twist­ing in pain, it dawned on me like a punch in the gut.
I final­ly understood.

I’m angry.
I’m so very, deeply angry.

I’m angry that I’m 34 years old, child­less and broke.
I’m angry that my hus­band is liv­ing this life because of ME.
I’m angry that my fam­i­ly and my hus­band’s fam­i­ly have the bur­den of… well… me.
I’m furi­ous that when peo­ple ask me what I’ve been up to, wait­ing to hear about hob­bies or trips or projects, my answer is that I’ve spent the past 6 months get­ting rid of a col­lec­tion of blood clots.
(Has­ta la vista Car­los the Clot Sr, Jr. and III… please don’t send any more descendants.)
I’m angry that life has forced me to leave the job and com­mu­ni­ty I loved, and now I work by myself day after day after day. I’m a pack ani­mal, friends. I’m not a lone wolf.
I’m angry that I spend near­ly every last ounce of my ener­gy just get­ting through the monot­o­ny of the day, leav­ing next to noth­ing for any­thing remote­ly look­ing like fun or adventure.

In a few weeks, I’ll watch my hus­band and my friends run a half marathon that I ran years ago, and I’ll cheer my face off. I’ll hand off water bot­tles and yell encour­age­ment and mean every word. But I won’t be run­ning with them, I’ll be stand­ing alone on the side­lines. And I hate that.

More than any­thing, I’m so angry that I’m angry. I’m ashamed to be angry while sur­round­ed by so much good­ness and love and unwa­ver­ing sup­port in my life. I feel like a giant hyp­ocrite to have so much for which I am so incred­i­bly grate­ful, and yet to boil beneath the surface.

I know anger is a very nor­mal and expect­ed part of grief, and I would be lying if I said I hadn’t had flit­ting moments of anger over the years. But I can hon­est­ly say that I’ve nev­er felt like this. This is the part of chron­ic, pro­gres­sive ill­ness that you don’t hear about. Where you work and work and work to be as healthy as human­ly pos­si­ble, and yet the real­iza­tion that you may nev­er do more than sim­ply get through the day for the rest of your life falls over you like the heav­i­est of veils.

Anger makes me uncom­fort­able. It always has.
To say I am con­flict-averse, is to con­firm that the Pope is, in fact, Catholic.

I’m not an angry per­son, I want des­per­ate­ly to jump out of my own skin and sprint from the scene of the jump.
I want to shed this lay­er of lone­ly ugliness.
But I can’t.
I’m stuck here, alone with my anger.
Always, always alone.
And it won’t go away.

I have pon­dered what to do.
I can­not change what is, no mat­ter how des­per­ate­ly I want to.
So what can I change? My attitude?
Can I smi­ley face and stick­er and cup­cake my way out of anger?
No, I don’t think that’s how it works.

PSA: Despite the cur­rent state of affairs in the hot mess that lies beneath my skull, my affin­i­ty for all things cup­cakes and pup­pies and hors­es and avo­ca­dos and moun­tains and The Ellen Show, has not waned. Fear not.

So… what do I do?
If I can­not change my life and I can­not change my atti­tude and I can­not change who I am as a per­son… what hap­pens then?
What do I need to fix?
What CAN I fix?
What if I can’t fix… anything?
What if I’m just… angry?
What then?
Do I just need to be… angry?
Can I be both angry and grate­ful? Can I con­tin­ue to take notice of the mul­ti­tude of good­ness that sur­rounds me, all while steam­ing in frustration?

Maybe, just maybe, if rather than hid­ing from it, if I ride in the front seat of this anger, I’ll dis­cov­er what I have been so des­per­ate­ly search­ing for all along — some­thing to pull me out of the pool and stop tread­ing water. Some­thing to open up a life that is more than “just okay.” I’ve writ­ten about this a lot over the last year, each time con­vinced that I was ready to make and be the change. This anger is a road­block that I didn’t expect, but it is one I must endure, and may just teach me the most mean­ing­ful les­son of all of this — that it’s okay to not be okay.

But…

I’m not there yet.
I’m still angry.
I’m still angry that I’m angry.
I’m still ashamed.
But I’ll per­sist, until some­day I’m not.

I’ll per­sist because at the end of the day, that is my only option.
I believe there is more out there for me — more than just a life of soli­tary monot­o­ny — and maybe I NEED to be both grate­ful and angry in order to move forward.

I can be angry. I can be down­right furi­ous. But, I can persist.

So I will.