Too Busy to Cry - DTJ

Through the Tears

In my midlife crisis, now long past, I contemplated a career change. Well, multiple career changes. The career change du jour at one time was going into counselling. Like many who contemplate this path I was in counselling. So much in my life had gone wrong all at one. I used to stand in the basement lobby of a neighborhood church which served as a location for multiple 12 step groups from AA to ACOA to Alanon to Over-Eaters Anonymous and try to decide which one on that particular day I needed the most. My extended silences at the beginning of any counselling session centered around having to pick what I needed to talk about most.

I survived that period of my life by being overly busy. In addition to the 12 step meetings, and the counselling sessions, work, and classes in mental health toward the new career. I watched movies in dark theaters until I had them memorized. Star Wars was just out. I will not admit to how many times I watched it. Before the binging days on Netflix. I had to pay for every ticket.

I know about the various stages of grief intimately. I lost a husband, a father, a mother, a cat, a dog, a direction, my perfect childhood belief, and was transferred to a new location by the company I worked for in the middle of it all. Thank god, the theory of Post Traumatic Stress was not yet on the diagnostic books. 

"You seem to do things in bunches," a 12 step friend said one day at the coffee machine while I debated which meeting shortly after my mother died, "Wouldn't it be easier to take one issue at a time?"

"Takes up too much time," I replied, as I toyed with giving up caffeine. 

I did learn a few things through the chaos years of my life.  Grief isn't done just once. Nor is it necessarily in the order the counselling courses state. There is no upper limit on how much you can cry. Mixed with PTSD you can feel like a ping pong ball in one of those demonstrations about the nuclear chain reaction. Been there, done that does not apply to either problem. And very empathetic people shouldn't be in the mental health professions. I was, however, a great inspirational speaker.

And if you stay busy enough you can at least delay the tears until you are alone before your computer, out in the wilderness with your camera or binging Netflix. Busy helps you avoid doomsday predictions from friends and what stupid end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it thing the orange man in the white house just did. But grief and PTSD are patient. And depression can be good for your creative goals.