Day of Mourning 2011 part 1
It's bad for your brain to be sad all the time. The neural pathways get used to being used that way and it affects your moods even if you aren't prone to depression. I can't remember when I started limiting the times my brain was allowed to think about depressing subjects, but it must have been a long time ago since I'm so good at it now that I don't notice.
Hacking your brain only takes discipline at first; once you get used to doing it the brain handles that functionality on its own. Really quite useful. The problem with limiting yourself that way is being careful that you don't stifle all expression of that part of yourself. You need access to mourning to stay human and I needed to be human. So a balance was reached: I could react to specific sad things as events occurred, but reminiscing was consigned to the anniversary of Larry's death.
Before I go spelunking in photos and memorabilia, I'm taking a bath and figuring out whether to add failed relationships to the list of things to mope about once a year. If so, I may have to add a second day to my schedule. Maybe some time in the fall?
I have decided that, really, mourning for the dead and mourning for lost relationships are the same thing, and that I will do both things on both days. I am an adult now. I can take time to feel my feelings in which I am not beholden to other people. I can even take it more often than twice a year, but I don't think I need to. Missing people is painful, but it feels less personal now. It no longer feels like my fault, like I lived when others should have. It no longer feels like injustice that I am here without them. Now that I have combed and separated all the feelings and worked my way through them, only the feeling of loss remains. It's still painful, but not as much.
I don't need reminders around of what I've lost, but I keep them anyway: photos, mementos, knick-knacks. I don't know why I do that. Does it serve a purpose? It bears thinking on. It's not like my memory doesn't trip across moments with Larry, Rhoda, Gramma Schepker, both my grandfathers. Maybe not frequently, and I don't dwell, but it's not like they're forgotten. Maybe I'm paranoid that if I give up the things that remind me that I will forget. That's probably true, because just thinking about it gives me that achey, desperate feeling. I don't want to lose people: not to death, not to failed relationships, and not to my own mind's tendency to mislay things.
Time to go do dishes, I think. Even emo kids have to do the dishes. :T
Hacking your brain only takes discipline at first; once you get used to doing it the brain handles that functionality on its own. Really quite useful. The problem with limiting yourself that way is being careful that you don't stifle all expression of that part of yourself. You need access to mourning to stay human and I needed to be human. So a balance was reached: I could react to specific sad things as events occurred, but reminiscing was consigned to the anniversary of Larry's death.
Before I go spelunking in photos and memorabilia, I'm taking a bath and figuring out whether to add failed relationships to the list of things to mope about once a year. If so, I may have to add a second day to my schedule. Maybe some time in the fall?
I have decided that, really, mourning for the dead and mourning for lost relationships are the same thing, and that I will do both things on both days. I am an adult now. I can take time to feel my feelings in which I am not beholden to other people. I can even take it more often than twice a year, but I don't think I need to. Missing people is painful, but it feels less personal now. It no longer feels like my fault, like I lived when others should have. It no longer feels like injustice that I am here without them. Now that I have combed and separated all the feelings and worked my way through them, only the feeling of loss remains. It's still painful, but not as much.
I don't need reminders around of what I've lost, but I keep them anyway: photos, mementos, knick-knacks. I don't know why I do that. Does it serve a purpose? It bears thinking on. It's not like my memory doesn't trip across moments with Larry, Rhoda, Gramma Schepker, both my grandfathers. Maybe not frequently, and I don't dwell, but it's not like they're forgotten. Maybe I'm paranoid that if I give up the things that remind me that I will forget. That's probably true, because just thinking about it gives me that achey, desperate feeling. I don't want to lose people: not to death, not to failed relationships, and not to my own mind's tendency to mislay things.
Time to go do dishes, I think. Even emo kids have to do the dishes. :T