Bittersweet

Life is always both/and, not either/or

“If we could honor sadness a little more, maybe we could see it—rather than enforced smiles and righteous outrage—as the bridge we need to connect with each other.” ― Susan Cain, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

A friend told me she liked my last post because it was so honest. “Really?” I responded, and hesitated. “Because it wasn’t.”

At least, it wasn’t by the time I posted. The fear was two weeks old, allowing me to end on a positive note. When I was in the thick of it, I couldn’t tell you. I wouldn’t tell you. I needed to sit with it. I shared only once I had mostly moved through it.

But now, I will tell you, in real time: sadness has arrived.

I had planned on keeping this to myself. Instead, this week I was going to write about the Sicily house. But then I heard Susan Cain interviewed on public radio, echoing what I have long known to be true, as Whitman famously wrote: we contain multitudes. If we display only one aspect, the landscape is flat.

Life is not one thing or another, either joy or pain or any other binary force of opposites, it is always both / and. We are complicated creatures, able to hold more than one truth. At any given moment, multiple emotions—all true—are jumbled together inside us.

“Americans prioritize happiness so much that we wrote the pursuit of it into our founding documents, then proceeded to write over thirty thousand books on the subject, as per a recent Amazon search. We’re taught from a very young age to scorn our own tears (“Crybaby!”), then to censure our sorrow for the rest of our lives. In a study of more than seventy thousand people, Harvard psychologist Dr. Susan David found that one-third of us judge ourselves for having “negative” emotions such as sadness and grief.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet

I wouldn’t say I judge myself. Honestly, I think I’ve come to accept myself, sadness and all. But that hasn’t come easily. I suffered through the supervisors who called me too emotional. The friends who commented on my use of the F word. Even those who told me to “take it down a notch” when bubbling with joy. I’ve internalized all this and doubted myself. I tried to change. I learned to dull my energy. And then, I just pulled back, pulled away.

Funny (no, not really, more profoundly disappointing) how some folks tell me that I need to be more vulnerable. They see me as incredibly strong in all situations and chide me for holding back when I’m scared, sad, and confused. (honestly, if you think I’m unbreakable, you’re not paying attention) These same folks, strangely enough, are the first to tell me everything will be okay when I do open up. They are uncomfortable with my dis-ease. They don’t *honestly* want to hear it. Or, they remain fully ensconced in their own… let’s say selves … unable or unwilling to recognize my struggle. The only way they hear me is when I completely fall apart. I have to break down in tears. Sob. Raise my voice. Which I end up doing out of frustration, exasperation. Then they think this display is part of the original pain when in fact it is the hurt of this person—who asked for my vulnerability—not hearing me, not recognizing my soft underbelly and beating heart.

If I judge myself for anything, it’s repeating the pattern and expecting different results. Some relationships are built on me caring about them, me being there for them. They want to do the same for me, but it’s not in their skill set. I need to be better at accepting that.

And be better (more willing) to reveal—with those who have the capacity—more of my emotional rainbow.

If you’re still reading, maybe you can understand.

This week, sadness has come and sat with me like an old friend on my couch. It tells me it’s okay to watch some mindless TV and scroll through Instagram. To go to bed late and require a nap in the afternoon. It gives me permission to be irritable, even to cry. So I do. I’m irritable and I cry.

How long this familiar will stay, I don’t know. But I help it unpack. Wistfulness for the places I haven’t visited while living in Tulsa, including the friends with whom I didn’t spend enough evenings or afternoons. The brunches I didn’t host and the dinners I didn’t share. Disappointment for the things I didn’t accomplish while I had the time (because presumably I’ll have less time when I’m no longer single, no longer living alone). Grief over leaving a place I love: the parks, the neighborhoods, the art district, the fairgrounds. A city that feels cozy, surrounded by so many small towns I didn’t explore. The history, a fraction of which I learned. The humidity which curls my hair and the heat, both preferable to the cold and dryness of Idaho. And of course, my home. My little four-room duplex with hardwood floors, a fireplace mantel, and large bedroom. The many windows looking out at trees. A big backyard enjoyed daily by Mazie. The coziness of this place. My space. A space all my own. Solitude.

All of this is ending soon. All of this I leave behind. It will be replaced by the joy of being with Tom. Beginning a new life. A new space, created together.

Yet right now, unless I am seeing his face on a video call which propels me into gratitude and giddiness and all the goodness to come, it is sadness that stays close, hovering in my house and lying on my couch.

“We’re built to live simultaneously in love and loss, bitter and sweet.”
― Susan Cain, Bittersweet

Do you understand? Can you relate? Have you felt the opposite of what others expected, the clamoring of complex emotions?

A few years ago, the word “empath” became a big deal. Suddenly everyone was an empath. Gotta say, I laugh in agreement with comedian Jackie Kashian when she addresses this head-on:

I think folks embraced the idea of being an empath because there’s not enough room in our culture for feeling pain. Folks are called snowflakes or bleeding liberals just for caring about other people. Toughness is valued more than sensitivity. You’re allowed, perhaps even encouraged, to care about the most current tragedy—provided there are “innocent victims”—and maybe send some money or spend hours watching news reports and, much later, the made-for-TV reenactment. And that, my friends, is often very voyeuristic. But the pain that we live with every day? The sadness and sorrow and injustice that is all around us? The courage and effort it takes in some moments to keep going? It doesn’t get better. No amount of money or recycling or marching in the streets or positive thinking seems to make a dent. It’s overwhelming. It’s penetrating.

This is why I have Mazie and why so many of us have animals for emotional support. This is also why the use of prescribed antidepressants continues to rise (and rise and rise)*. And why more and more folks are self-medicating with marijuana. (Tulsa had 727 licensed cannabis dispensaries in 2021, up from 263 in 2019, and more than 50% of residents have medical marijuana cards.)

I pulled up to the left of a car this morning and the driver looked weathered and older than he probably was. He also looked despondent. I rolled down Mazie’s window and let her pant at him, hoping to make him smile. He stared at her, then looked away. The light changed. As I made my turn and he went forward, the tears came. I don’t know this man’s life or what is causing him pain, but I do know he is in the thick of it, and my heart hurts for him.

This doesn’t make me an empath. This just confirms I’m human.

“Our nervous systems make little distinction between our own pain and the pain of others, it turns out; they react similarly to both.”  ― Susan Cain

When I got home, I pulled out my journal and wrote through the tears. All of it, the truth of it, the depth that comes with convulsions. My journal feels like contraband. If something happens to me, hopefully these things will be tossed without reading. When my friend Dave died, his sister did just that. Dave was a prolific writer, a deep soul who felt everything with intensity. I wished his journals had been saved, for the brilliance and beauty and insights they contained. But his pain, that would have been too much. His pain was not the fullness of him. It’s better for me to remember his smile, his talent, and his complexity, and leave it at that.

And here lies the other truth: in my solitude all these years, I’ve been able to hide. Tom knows me well. He accepts me like no other. He was there through the loss of my mother and held me through my hysterics. He has never told me to “tone it down” or flinched when I cuss (and he’s not a swearer). But does he know how deep the sorrow goes? Will he still love me when I can’t contain it, when I no longer have a cocoon of solitude?

This is the heart of it, the big reveal. Sorrow is not only loss but fear.

Fear that what we lose will never again be found. Friendships, home, belonging. Favorite restaurants and the perfect dog park. Happiness. Contentment. All these things we fear losing when we enter the forest and begin another journey. And this is why we stay in the familiar, even when we are offered more, something with great odds of being better.

Heroes are not born, they become. Heroes are you and me transformed. Leaving behind our old selves, slaying our old way of being, confronting our fears, and moving forward into new possibility.

Tom’s very solid and insightful instruction was to buy flowers. Yellow always make me happy.

We walk the path alone. And this is the thing we forget about marriage or any close relationship: we each have our own journey and our own emotions. But the love of others who bear witness helps. And this is how we go on.

Together and alone. Joy and sorrow. Excitement and fear.

Bittersweet.

* Antidepressant prescriptions increase 35% in six years, Americans are taking antidepressants in astounding numbers according to a Harvard study in 2011 (yes, this was reported thirteen years ago), and the American Psychological Association finds antidepressant use on the rise primarily in women, older adults, and non-Hispanic whites. Do an internet search and you’ll find even more.

PS:

What I do look forward to leaving behind in Tulsa includes the water-damaged ceiling, peeling paint from moisture problems, water bugs that have returned to my apartment, streets that are in awful condition and wrecking my car’s suspension, and way too many extended cab F-150 and RAM trucks that are used not for work but merely as daily vehicles. Yup, I won’t miss this stuff at all.