Tag: happy
Feeling sad & happy at the same time
Feeling sad & happy at the same time
Is it really possible to feel sad and feel happy at the same time?
When someone dies we will of course feel extremely sad at the loss as we experience the grief on a daily basis and yet, as life moves forwards and we begin to rebuild our lives then conflict can arise as we try to remember the person that has died and how we feel about them and yet feel happy about the way life is moving forwards.
Being able to hold onto the feelings of happiness about the way life is now and sadness at the death a loved one can seem rather tricky, but holding the sadness and happiness, one in each hand can really help. Recognising that both the feelings of sadness and happiness have the same higher purpose of ensuring that you feel loved can be really comforting, there actually isn’t any confusion, they are both there to do the same thing!
Feeling sad for long periods of time can really affect our mental health and mental condition and lead to depression, acknowledging that we can actually feel good at the same time, without punishing ourselves can be a rather difficult trick to learn, but one that can really help.
Beautiful fading pebbles
Beautiful fading pebbles
As with so many of these posts I don’t really know where this one is going. I know there is something inside which needs saying, but I’m not sure exactly what it is or how to say it… So the only thing to do is to start and see where it goes.
As many of you may know Claire absolutely loved the ocean, it was her dream to live by the sea but she died three days after we found a new house just 15 min walk from the beach, she never got to live in it or realise her dream… She is so very nearly made it!
She was also a bit naughty whenever she went to the beach, she used to pick up a pebble, take it home, write on the date and location, then place the pebble in a ‘little shrine to the sea’ in our garden in Hertfordshire. She would very often sit by the shrine, looking at all the pebbles she had collected and remembering the happy times she had spent by the sea. I guess it was her way of anchoring those happy memories, all she had to do was look upon the pebbles and she was back at her favourite beaches around the UK.
When I moved I carefully picked up all of those pebbles and brought them down to Dorset. They’ve been in various places around the garden here but I’ve just built a little planter in the garden as an edible garden and those pebbles have found their way into it.
But those pebbles are beginning to fade.
The writing on them is now almost illegible.
Claire’s touch upon those pebbles is dissipating.
I have a terrible memory, I don’t remember visiting virtually any of the places where she picked up those pebbles… But I do remember her writing on them.
There’s something about the writing fading which seems beautiful. I was tempted to overwrite them to keep the places and dates on them, but that wouldn’t have been Claire’s writing, it would have been mine and so it seemed wrong.
The writing on the pebbles fading is beautiful and yet full of contradictions.
The writing fades but the memories don’t.
The writing fades but Claire’s touch on my life doesn’t.
The writing fades but Claire’s memory doesn’t.
Those beautiful fading pebbles have a meaning, but for now they are keeping it to themselves…
Pain – thank you for your service
Pain – thank you for your service
It’s weird, nowadays I usually have a clear idea of what I’m going to talk about when I sit down to write, it’s been some four years since I felt the need to write for the sake of writing, for the therapy of it rather than because I had something specific to say.
Let’s see where this goes.
I went to a funeral yesterday of a friend, Aleks who died aged 36.
I was incredibly struck by the beauty of the service and celebration after.
She was bright and bubbly. The service was bright and bubbly.
She was quirky and loved life. The service and celebration afterwards was equally as quirky and a celebration of her love of life.
She loved cocktails. I saw many people celebrating her love of cocktails at the celebration after the service also!
I thought I’d come a long way since Claire died and indeed I know I have but yesterday was a reminder that what happened on 17 April 2013 will always be with me.
I guess it served as yet another reminder that this healing process through grief is not necessarily about finding ways to make the pain go away, rather, it’s about finding ways to live with the pain. I genuinely don’t believe we can make that pain go away, that pain is always with us, always there, hiding in the background yet not in a dark and threatening sense.
The pain is there to serve as a reminder of all that we have lost and in that sense the pain is good.
I don’t believe we should shy away from feeling that pain, if it’s there, embrace it, welcome it, acknowledge it for the transient emotion that it is, thank it for its service and then let it go again until the next time.
As there will always be a next time.
The pain will always resurface and when it does we repeat the same process.
This is the new normal, this is the new life, this is the way things are now and probably will always be.
So today, I’m rejoicing in the knowledge that the intense love that Claire and I shared is still there through the pain that I experienced yesterday.
Love and pain at the same time… Another lesson in learning to let go and just experience what is…
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This post is dedicated to Aleks Morris. 15th of January 1982 – 28th of February 2018 and to her family and friends.
Aleks, You made me feel so welcome in my new house when I moved to Dorset 4 years ago. You shared laughter, wine and chocolate with us on many occasions, often quite loudly… I think I never told you I could hear you howling with laughter from over the road with my windows shut!
Thank you Aleks for all you brought to my life in the few years I’ve known you.
Farewell my friend.
This too shall pass
This too shall pass
I feel very strongly that I have turned a corner, a corner of acceptance, not necessarily acceptance of losing Claire but acceptance of the emotions attached to that. I’m still often overwhelmed with the love that I feel for her and then I become overwhelmed with loneliness and loss. I go from high to low in the blink of an eye.
I can wake up one morning and feel good, or I can wake up one morning and feel terrible.
One minute I can be focused on the task in hand and the next my mind can be wondering in 100 different directions.
I’ve reached a point of acceptance of these dichotomous emotions. They are the way things are, and each of them shall pass.
When I’m feeling good it keeps me grounded to know that things can change quite quickly and I will probably feel low again.
When I’m feeling low it keeps me hopeful to know that things can change quite quickly and I will feel happy again.
Whatever happens, however I feel at any given moment… This too shall pass.
That bitter/sweet contrast
That bitter/sweet contrast
I caught up with an old friend yesterday that I haven’t seen for 20 years, we had a lovely home cooked meal together and talked constantly for 9 hours straight. It was so nice to have a 1-2-1 chat with an adult that shares my view on life and understands to some degree what I am going through. Last night I felt human again for the first time in many many months.
And yet this morning I took the dog for a walk to the beach, it was a stormy morning (which I love by the sea) with the waves crashing against the shore line, and I felt so desparately lonely again – worse than before.
It’s as though when I taste the sweetness of happiness the bitterness of loneliness tastes 10 times worse.
It’s that sharp contrast from one state to the next that exacerbates the negative emotions of the negative state, I can certainly see the temptation in withdrawing from any activity that could be positive… it just makes coming back down to earth so much worse! In the case of last night, I spent 9 hours in good company enjoying catching up with the past 20 years – of course we talked a lot about Claire but it was all positive and happy memories. Yet, not 1 hour after I got home, I was in bed in the dark and feeling totally lonely again.
A bi-polar existance is not one I ever imagined having.
With any of my blog posts I make an attempt to learn something new, to take something away from what I have written that I didn’t know before, in that way I can grow and develop and continue discovering the new me… So what can be learned from this?
- These emotions are normal and I’m not a freak.
- I need to incorporate those bipolar experiences into one experience of life. Even as I’m writing I can see that I have compartmentalised the wonderful nine hours I spent yesterday and put them into a ‘happy’ box, which I am then comparing to being back home again which is in the ‘lonely’ box. Of course these two boxes look different, they are at different ends of the spectrum… So I wonder what would happen if they were in the same box! If I didn’t compartmentalise things and give them labels of ‘happy’ or ‘lonely’, and I just accepted them all as an experience of life then they would all be together in one big ‘life’ box and suddenly the bitter/sweet contrast is gone… And that feels so much better… and there I have the learning for today! No need to write any more!