Feel it All

I grew up in a home where one of the main coping mechanisms modeled for me was going to bed when anything was upsetting. Sleep was avoidance. Naps were a kind of drug against feeling. I adopted this form of coping for must of my teenage and young adult years. Bad day, bad interaction, somebody made me mad, off to bed. Middle of the day, early evening, time didn’t matter. Nothing hurts when you’re sleeping.

When I moved to Walla Walla in 2008 and especially after meeting Bryan, I didn’t use that coping method again. The only time I came close was in early 2014 and Bryan had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. I had been staying at his house at the time because a friend was staying at my cottage so she could do maternity leave coverage for a colleague. After Bryan got home from the hospital, there was an evening around 5 o’clock or so, I went to bed and curled up in the fetal position. Bryan gave me a few minutes, and then he came in and sat on the edge of the bed. “Sweetheart, this isn’t going to fix it.” And so, I took a minute or two, pulled myself together, and got up. And we faced that together.

Here I am without him. And there’s definitely a pull towards numbing and avoidance. But I know that isn’t going to fix it. Instead, I walk and cry. I garden and cry. I send texts, songs, stupid memes and reels, and tell ghastly jokes and laugh and then cry, too. I wish that he could see all that I’ve been doing in the back garden. I wish he would come home, arrange two chairs in the backyard, make tasty evening beverages and then we would look at the garden together, his eyes full of love and pride. But he’s not here. And numbing myself to that fact “isn’t going to fix it.”