I’m a duck.  I am the daughter of a duck.  The things that bother most people just roll off my back, like water.  Very few things upset me for any length of time and I find it easy to distract myself if they do.   I can compartmentalize my emotions and can shut them down to get shit done when I have to. Usually, when things get overwhelming I can meditate and breathe into my emotions and accept them.  Dealing with negative things in my life has been challenging, but I have always been able to manage the emotions associated with them.  I am having a very hard time doing that right now.

Why?  I have a lot of things going on at the same time for a long time.  I’m not going to go into any deep detail, but suffice it say it’s big stuff.  Sick parent, lose your job, get dumped, run out of money stuff.  Add to this I’m in the process of buying a house. ( I’m buying a house to save money. what???)  Oh, let’s not forget, I work in retail, which is a separate Hell all it’s own.  I am completely overwhelmed.  My usual strategies aren’t working right now. I feel like I have a toddler sitting on my chest. I could literally punch a nun I’m so stressed.

Well, not literally punch a nun.  I’m just feeling very out of control at the moment.  I’ve never been this anxious.  Years ago, I would have just drunk to make this go away.  I was worried and freaked out about so many things when I was young.  It was really easy to have a drink and forget my worries.  I haven’t had a drink in 14 years and have been functioning quite well without it.  I am so not used to being anxious, it’s usually the opposite I have issues with.  I have no healthy historical coping skills to fall back on.  No one gave me the manual for this!!

So, I’m going to keep breathing into it.  Some of it will get better with time. Heartbreak is excruciating but finite. Papa Duck’s health crisis has calmed. I’m doing what I can to fix my financial situation..applying for jobs, buying a house, etc. I just need to stay as present as I can and be with it all. It’s horrible and uncomfortable but it’s where I need to be right now. I think the lesson is to stay and not avoid it. Or, I can go out and find a nun to punch.

Such a cliche’!  How many times do we hear this or utter it?  Usually when we’re giving ourselves an excuse to do something not so good for us. Ice cream?? Sure, life is short!  Another beer?  Life is short.  The phrase exhorts us to seize the moment and enjoy as time is finite and your time for beer may be shorter than you think.  Besides using it as an excuse to imbibe when do we really think about it?

We come to the very real and sobering realization of how tenuous our time is when one of two things happen.  Our most brutal and visceral knowledge we gain when we lose someone we love.  Nothing leaves you wishing for more time and aware of how little there is than someone close to you dying.  Most of us don’t spend the time we have with our families thinking of their ultimate demises.  We push it away as morbid if and when we do.  Sometimes, we’re lucky enough to be saying goodbye to someone who’s lived a long life, but more often than not, it’s a life cut short.  This is when the actual reality of how little time we have settles in.  The absence of time…moments we could have spent together now lost makes that real.

The other is when you, yourself are faced with your own mortality.  Many of us have had brushes with death.  Car accident survived, a cancer scare, other medical emergencies…events like this stop you in your tracks.  Nothing, and I mean, nothing will make you reevaluate your life like death.  I’m sure there are some people who walk away from the experience and just say. “whew, lucky me!” and go on like nothing happened.  Most people I’ve talked to have come away from the experience profoundly changed.  I know I was.

I had a blood clot in my leg that broke apart and a part of it moved into my heart.  My heart stopped for a few seconds before the clots broke up and settled into my lungs.  Don’t believe the “slight pressure in your chest” bullshit about heart attacks.  It literally felt like a horse kicked me in the center of my chest.  So, I am a very very lucky woman.  My heart could have been clogged to badly and never had started again.  My lungs could have been compromised to the point I stopped breathing. ( I was barely able to breathe as it was) The clots in my lungs could have traveled to my brain and I could have had a stroke.  I spent a few days in the hospital and have been recovering from the experience ever since.  Physically, I’m doing quite well.  In every other way, emotionally, spiritually, you name it, I’ve been changed.

Life is so very short.  Think about that.  Think about how few minutes you really have.  Most of you are close to my age, but whatever your age take a realistic look at how many years you may have left.  How many days.  And realize, that’s the best-case scenario.  None of us are guaranteed a single second more.  Now, look at your life.  Take stock and see what’s important to you…who’s important to you. Take a discerning look at what brings you joy and what brings you pain.  How do you want to spend your precious remaining time?  Life is short.  What are you going to do about that?

You may not know it from reading my venty ass crankyboots blogs, but I’m a happy person.  I get up every day pleased to be alive and having an open mind about how my day will go.  I’m not a positive aspiration “smile when I brush my teeth” kind of gal but generally, I’m pretty content.  I’ve learned not to force myself to be happy.  I get that whole”think yourself happy” theory.  I have friends and family who do their damnedest to never dwell in negative thoughts.  They are happy by sheer force of emotional will.  That used to be me or at least I tried to be.

From my father, I inherited what he calls a “sunny disposition”.  I am definitely a half full person,  There’s always a silver lining if you look hard enough for it.  I never really have dwelled too too much in negativity.  This is my natural state.  Yay for me, right?  Well, sort of.  I got my happy go lucky nature from my Dad but I also inherited from my parents a deep aversion to talking about or dealing with so-called negative emotions.  There were things we didn’t talk about.  If we did talk about them it was with obvious discomfort for the parent involved. Usually, there was a rush to end the conversation as quickly as possible.  Did my parents not care?  I think they did.  But,  neither of them were raised with an emotional vocabulary nor were either of them in touch with themselves emotionally.

Yeah so?  This means you’re happy and didn’t deal with negative emotions. That’s good, isn’t it?  Not so much.  You cannot be happy all the time, no matter how hard you try.  Now, add to this the fact that I wasn’t given emotional tools to deal with this. So, you deny your “bad” thoughts and push them away. Grin through that Colgate, baby!  This can work depending on the emotion and severity.  Sometimes it can’t.  There are things you can push away just to have them come back again.  Not only do they come back, but they come back bigger and stronger.  Your negative emotions will keep trying to get your attention and ignoring them will only work for so long.

So I did what so many other Americans do. I drank. I drank a lot for a long time.  Close to 20 years of near daily drinking.  I could stop from time to time, but I always went back.  There was never a physical addiction to alcohol, but man oh man was there a psychological one. It was my emotional crutch.  It removed those pesky bad thoughts like toothpaste never could.  It worked.  It worked great…until it didn’t.  I don’t have any rock bottom story.  I didn’t wake up in a YWCA shower drunk wearing a chicken outfit or anything like that. (That would be a great story though!) One day, I just stopped drinking.

I was in a new relationship, so it was easy.  I had another person to focus all my energy and attention on.  I was happy.  Again, no one is happy forever and eventually, I had negative emotions creeping in. Drinking wasn’t an option anymore.  A very dear friend of mine introduced me to a therapist she’d worked with in couple’s counseling.  I have been seeing her for years.  With her help and guidance, I’ve been slowly packing my toolbox with the missing emotional tools I’ve needed and never had.  The Buddhist teaching and training I’ve had have only helped me in that regard.   So, what’s my damn point?

Negative emotions and experiences are a natural and normal part of life.  The sun doesn’t shine all the time, neither will you.  People spend so much time and energy denying and pushing away their negative thoughts and emotions.  Denial is a hell of a drug.  The problem with this path is your missing a very real and important part of life.  You’re denying what is an essential part of your journey, of your humanness.  Your dark thoughts are here to teach you something.  They carry a lesson for you. In order to receive that lesson, you need to acknowledge the messenger and spend time with it.  Feel it viscerally…see where it is in your body.  Find where it’s resting and breathe into it.  Having negative thoughts or bad feelings isn’t fatal.  You’ll be okay. (If you feel you need help dealing with negative thoughts or they are overwhelming please get help from someone)

If you can sit with your negative thoughts start really looking at them. Dig into them. Look at them without a value judgment attached. Why do I feel this way?  Where did it come from? Is this something I really believe?  Go deep, one emotion sometimes is just sitting on the surface of a different deeper emotion. Be an archaeologist, your beliefs are what you’re digging through to make a discovery.  You’re digging to discover the truth of who you are.  Who you are is an amalgam of all your experiences. You have learned something from every single thing that’s ever happened to you. Every moment has a lesson. Joy and despair can occur at the very same time. Be unafraid to truly look at who you are.  You are the totality of both light and darkness, and both are beautiful.