Feelings

The topic tonight was grief.

They talked about how important it was to deal with your grief- to feel your feelings and not keep them bottled up.

I heard people say over and over again that they used to think that having feelings and expressing them and talking about them was bad and wrong, but now they realize that it is vital to their survival and the health of their relationships. Man after man talked about finally learning to talk about how they felt. Talking about things over and over again to work them out, and work through the feelings. They said that you had to accept your feelings and share them- that sharing was the key- but then not allow yourself to wallow in them. But that is was important to give yourself permission to feel- to grieve- so that you could move on and feel everything else in life as well.

I did not speak tonight.

But what I was thinking was twofold…

#1. I was thinking that everything that these people were saying was confirming from what I had already decided over the last few days… I had things to grieve over. I lost my marriage and all my expectations of my future. I had to sit day after day and watch the man I love live and sleep with another woman. I lost my job. Then I lost my love… All of these are things that different people brought up as things they had to grieve for. I am not, by far, the only person who thinks that these are grief worthy circumstances… These are all things that I needed to grieve over. 

I have always, always worked through my emotions and confusion by sharing it. I talk. I know I talk too much, and I take too long to tell a story. But people who love me know that I have to work something out- out loud- in order to get over it. It may take me a few days- or longer. I may say some things, and then think about it for a few days, and have some kind of revelation and need to talk about it again to work it out… When all of these things started happening- I had no one to talk to. The only person I really could talk to was him, because he was the only person on earth who knew the whole truth. But he didn’t let me talk. If I was upset about something and needed to vent or talk about it, he saw it as me taking it out on him. If I needed to revisit something that was still on my mind, he said I was re-hashing an argument from days before- that I was holding on to the past on purpose- that I just wanted to feel bad about it… But the truth is, once I have worked something out and I have accepted it and gotten over it- I am over it. There are lots of things that have happened in my past that I don’t think about at all any more. I got over them. I worked through whatever it was, and I am over it.

If I had had the chance to talk things through, I would have been such a different person this last year.

#2. I kept thinking that I wish he was there. Wishing that he could hear the things the men were saying. About how important talking was. How sharing your feelings is the only way to heal. About how hard it was for them to accept that and start doing it, but now they are new, happy, healthy people and how thankful they are that they found the rooms and learned to feel more than just anger.

So often, I wish he would work the program. I wish he would just go, maybe talk to R, and just listen to what they say. He thinks that it doesn’t apply to him. He thinks that he doesn’t have any active alcoholics in his life, so it has nothing to do with him. He only went as a way to support me. But how could he sit thought all of those meetings and not start to see part of what my problem was? How could he not start to understand why I reacted some of the ways that I did, and realize that there was a reason, and that I was trying so very hard to change? He thinks there is no reason for him to go, but- how much better could we have gotten along if he had used anything he had heard in the rooms to deal with me? He might not have an active alcoholic, but he had me- someone who was completely and utterly immersed in it- totally affected by the ‘family disease’ of alcoholism. All of the ways that we learn to treat the alcoholic could also have been put to great use in learning how to treat and deal with me.

Not only could he have learned how to understand me and deal with me better, but he might have finally learned how to accept his feelings and embrace them, and stop feeling ‘flat’ like he says he does. He will never be really truly happy if he refuses to let down that wall and FEEL what there is to be felt in life. It isn’t all good, I know. But most of it is fantastic. Sometimes, even feeling sad can be good.

I wish he could feel great joy, intense passion, and profound sadness openly. I wish he was willing to try. All I ever wanted was for him to be happy. I wish he could feel it.