Like Words Together Reflections from the deep end of Practice.

Weepies

Another day that felt so hard. I'm sticking with therapy hangover and the ongoing stress of living in a pandemic managed by ghouls. This evening everything felt too sharp and made me start to cry.

I really dislike crying. Partially it's due to the fact that I was punished often for crying, for being too dramatic, and called a "cry baby". I was rewarded for masking my emotions and being as inscrutable as possible. This combination makes marriage hard and I've been really digging deep to unlearn these antipatterns, as CK calls them.

The other reason I really loathe crying is that it always turns my mucus production way up. As if my tear ducts sent out a signal to produce all the snot possible. This results in my having terrible sinus pain, complete with slight swelling.

So, it not only feels scary, vulnerable, and fraught with shame, it also physically is miserable. I've never been able to fully appreciate the experience of a "good cry", it never feels cathartic, it feels like I lost a battle and my head hurts.

I realized that I'm feeling a lot of grief about our tenth wedding anniversary next month. As much as I'm thinking of ideas to make it special at home, I'm really sad we can't safely go anywhere.

Home, with chores that never get done, feels like such a task I'm not equal to. I need so many naps and breaks to play video games, that there's never a sense of the house being done. Not even for an hour. Part of me just wants a couple of days away where everything's done and I don't have to see the never ending list of things to fix or clean. I want to not be awakened by Obie yowling at me, as much as his not doing it makes me worry.

I'm also feeling shameful about my grief. We have a beautiful home, a big yard which we're turning back into a secret garden oasis, and plenty of space that we both get solitude. Our financial needs are met thanks to CK's job. She loves her job and finds it very satisfying a year after being there. We, as we approach 10 years of marriage, are doing better than we have in years, the pandemic is good for us in many ways.

With so much positive happening, it feels wrong to be overwhelmed by grief because we can't go on a vacation next month.

I'm trying to do the thing where I approach my hurting, angry self as if it is a student who's having a lousy day. What would I say to that student, how would I remind them that some days we just feel all the grief.