I was typing up from a month ago when I had woken up feeling sad & scared, and was so disappointed that I had lost the good feelings from the day before.\u00a0 I was angry at myself for \u201cwrecking\u201d my own good feelings, as though I had done it deliberately.\u00a0 I tried to understand it as worry about Eleanor\u2019s situation, or as my trauma being triggered.\u00a0 But mostly my attitude was wanting to get rid of it.\u00a0 I could have understood my scared and sad feelings as a message about the whole situation, not just my personal problem.\u00a0 Looking at it that way, I see that my painful feelings were because I care about Eleanor and I\u2019m angry at a society that can\u2019t\/won\u2019t take care of so many people who are having a hard time.\u00a0 If I see it that way, I see that my pain is about a much larger pain in the world, and I start to feel compassion.\u00a0 Compassion, even mixed with sadness and anger \u2014 I was reading somewhere about compassion and anger being the same thing and now I see that anger on another\u2019s behalf is a form of compassion \u2014 even mixed with sadness and anger, compassion is much more satisfying and much bigger than worry about my own personal emotions.\u00a0 I don\u2019t even feel helpless, I see that I\u2019m doing what little I can, I\u2019m not in denial or complacency.\u00a0 My feeling are about how much I care, not about how I keep making the same mistake.\u00a0 What a relief!\u00a0 What an easing and softening of my heart.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been having a fantasy of working with kids \u2014 adolescents \u2014 who are dealing with addiction and suicide.\u00a0 I imagine this is something I could do when I\u2019m in Hanover.\u00a0 I\u2019m aware of my sympathy for and anger about the situation of a young woman who doesn\u2019t see anything worthwhile in her life.\u00a0 Then it occurs to me to wonder about my teenage self, and my efforts to contact her.\u00a0 She thinks the misery she\u2019s going through is her own fault, because she\u2019s a bad person, she\u2019s defective.<\/p>\n
Imagining saying to a teenage girl \u201cNo one takes drugs unless they are trying to numb unbearable pain,\u201d and she bursts into tears.\u00a0 Then I see what to say to my adolescent self: \u201cNo one cuts themselves unless they are trying to numb unbearable pain.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was typing up from a month ago when I had woken up feeling sad & scared, and was so disappointed that I had lost the good feelings from the day before.\u00a0 I was angry at myself for \u201cwrecking\u201d my … Continue reading