Life is not easy.
As my dear friend put it this past weekend, it’s like a coin with two sides: love and grief. The older I get, and the more I experience, the more I find this to be true. Nothing on this planet is permanent, including our loved ones. The longer we live, the more love and loss we will experience as the people and places and things we love come–and go.
However, it’s one thing to understand this about the human condition — to understand that to live a good life we have to love, knowing that eventually we’ll have to say goodbye — and another thing to handle it gracefully.
People deal with this reality in a myriad of ways. Some people don’t let themselves love at all, because they feel the risk is too great. Others avoid thinking about it at all costs. Others use substances to numb the fear of loss. Still others are ruled by anxiety — they become hyper-vigilant, hyper-prepared, constantly monitoring for risks to their loved ones and trying to ameliorate them. (Hi, it’s me).
In the last two years, I’ve lost my mom, and more recently, my maternal grandmother. Both were people that I never wanted to lose–whose loss was so massive that before losing them, I absolutely could not comprehend what it would mean. I feared losing each of them long before they finally died, and losing each was just as bad as — or worse than — I’d feared.
Life over the last decade has been not easy in other ways too: miscarriages, caring for my mom while she was ill, getting robbed at gunpoint…
At this point in my life, I’ve got some baggage.
As a kid, I always heard people talk about “baggage,” and I knew what they meant: that they carried with them the things that had happened in their past. But because I didn’t have any baggage of my own yet, I didn’t understand how that actually manifested in a person’s life.
Now that I’m here–and now that I have a therapist to help me unpack my baggage–I can see it very clearly. And I find it fascinating to finally be able to see the invisible ways my brain has rewired itself in response to my past.
My brain works a little bit like WebMD when you google anything: I jump right to certain death.
For some reason, over the past decade, my mind has tallied up the various things that have happened and has bypassed all of the absolutely wonderful, lucky things that have happened in its mental calculations of what is likely to happen in the future.
And there have been SO many wonderful things: three beautiful babies, being able to own our own home, our health, jobs that have allowed us to work remotely, time with family and friends. But instead of expecting the best, or even having a balanced expectation out of life–that both good and bad things will happen–it anticipates only the absolute worst thing happening.
This impacts me in both big and little ways. For example, today I tried on a sweater that I’ve been knitting for the last five months. The closer it gets to finished, the more beautiful it becomes. I was admiring it in the mirror, twisting this way and that to watch the way the shadow and sunlight played across the cables, and I found myself thinking, in a wistful way, that it would be so beautiful to wear if I finished it, but that it was so beautiful that likely something terrible would happen to it before I could finish it — a rampant toddler with scissors would find it, or a cat would tear it to shreds, and or dog would chew it, or I’d spill paint on it… Surely, something would come along that would result in this beautiful sweater being ruined before I ever got to wear it.
I feel the same way about big things. I look at me and Jordan’s relationship — at how much I love him and he loves me, and how I genuinely believe that on some level we were meant for each other — and while I might feel incredibly lucky, I also feel terrified. All the ways that we could be parted flash through my mind: cancer, dementia, car accidents, heart attacks. I love him too much to lose him. It is incomprehensible. And yet at the same time, my mind refuses to conjure the possibility that we could both grow old together, and get to spend our entire lives at each other’s sides. That feels far fetched–like the stuff of fairytales. Like what we have is so beautiful, we couldn’t possibly be so lucky.
I’m working on rewiring these thoughts. My therapist has introduced a helpful new phrased into my life: “What else could be true?”
It’s something you can ask yourself in basically any situation–to increase your tolerance toward other people, to soften your thoughts toward yourself, to step your thoughts back from the ledge of doom and gloom.
This was a concept that was initially easiest for me to adapt toward other people. For example, instead of assuming the person tailgating me is an asshole, I can ask, “What else could be true?”
They could be someone on their way to the hospital because their child is about to be born and they’re afraid they might miss it. They could be someone who just found out that they have a terminal illness, and they’re so wrapped up in fear and grief that they can’t think straight. They could be someone who has missed many piano recitals for their daughter, and just absolutely cannot let her down again, but they’re already running late and they’re picturing her disappointed little face, and so of course they’re not driving at their best.
Once we’ve practiced extending that kind of flexibility and tolerance toward other people, then we can work on extending it to ourselves. Which is, I’ve found, far harder, and where the true work begins.
When we make a mistake–or notice that our thoughts toward ourselves have twisted and become unkind or distorted by fear, we can ask, “What else could be true?”
When I think about my sweater, and how it’s so beautiful that I’ll never get to wear it, I can ask myself about the likelihood of getting to wear it vs. never getting to wear it. I can examine my data points: Have I ever knit a sweater that was ruined before I got to wear it? (No). Is it likely to happen this time? (No). (To be clear, I con’t actually spend time worrying about my sweater getting ruined, it was just fascinating to me to notice that thought pop up in my mind as I admired it–and a good example of the little ways an anxious mind can impact your perception of the world).
It’s harder for me to ask myself these questions about the things that really matter to me–like my likelihood of getting to grow old with Jordan. In part, that’s because my data points aren’t great. My parents didn’t get to grow old together–my mom died. Neither did my paternal grandparents–my grandpa died in his 60s. But my maternal grandma and grandpa did get to grow old together–they both died in their 90s. Their love was one of the most solid and beautiful things I’ve ever seen. And Jordan and I also have a shot at that kind of future together–a bigger shot than most people throughout history, thanks to modern medicine.
This type of thinking also can work to help step back from the harsh thoughts I might have toward myself. For example, at L’s first soccer practice, I forgot to bring water for him. When he ran back, thirsty, to ask for water, I had nothing to offer him. We ended up running out to get him water at a local gas station, but I felt absolutely terrible about it. I sat there with all kinds of harsh thoughts running through my mind: What kind of mom forgets to bring water to soccer? Why am I so scattered? And the harshest thought, at its core: Do I even deserve to be a parent, if I can’t remember these kinds of basics? (Answer: I do. I’m a wonderful parent. I’m also a human, and humans make mistakes).
We’ve talked about this incident a lot in therapy, and it’s been fascinating to unpack those thoughts and work to rewire them. What else could’ve been true in that situation? Well, I’d never brought a kid to soccer practice before. I was so worried about getting the outfit and the cleats and the shin guards right, that I hadn’t even thought about some of the other essentials. My sister called while I was prepping everything, and she was in the middle of a difficult rotation where she both was facing impossible tasks (children on hospice) and working overnight and sleeping during the day, so it felt really important to touch base with her.
I’m not writing about this to showcase what a mess I am (and I’ll be frank that it is fairly vulnerable to share these things). But my hope is that by writing about this candidly, it might help other people whose minds work in similar ways–and who are working on unpacking their baggage, too.
We’re all just human, living our hard, beautiful, imperfect lives. I’m still in the beginning stages of unpacking my particular brand of hard, but already, I can feel a little bit of space in my mind when I start to jump to worst conclusions. Sometimes, it’s enough to space to allow me to laugh when I realize that I’m catastrophizing about a sweater. Other times, it’s enough space to help me take a beat, to ask myself what else could be true–and to remember all of the beauty alongside the loss.
Feathery Thoughts 