Picture Christmas lights. You pull out a messy bundle that you thought you’d carefully wrapped up and put away the previous year. The first step is to plug them in, to see if they all light up. They don’t, of course. So then you have to start untangling them. At long last, after a stupid amount of agonizing minutes, the strand is free of tangles! You finally have a perfectly straight strand of lights. Yes! But where on earth is that one lousy bulb that’s making the whole blasted section short out?! Forget it! Rather than take the time to find the bloody thing, after you’ve just spent way too much time trying to straighten it all out, you just throw the whole strand away. It’s a lost cause.
That’s quite how I feel tonight. Trying to process my emotions right now feels like a lost cause. For the last hour or so, I just sat in silence, thinking. I was going nowhere with that, so I decided to grab my computer and just start writing.
I am doing my best to honor my emotions, to ride the wave and feel them all. On days like today, though, that is almost impossible. I want to bury them so that I can process my world logically. And then leave the emotions shoved in a box, buried deep in my soul. There are just too many to handle right now. And they’re all twisted together.
Like tangled, broken Christmas lights.
Perhaps there’s nothing wrong with honoring that? At least for a moment.
What do I know? I don’t have the answers. I’m just trying to live the best life that I can live, one moment at a time, now that I’m in the “after” portion of the catastrophe that upended my world.
But the truth of the matter is, there’s still a wave that I’m riding. Whether or not I tightly pack my emotions and bury them, they aren’t going away. I guess I just have to try to process them, so let’s take a minute and talk about today.
Today was…well, today was difficult. Those are the only words I have to describe today.
There is so much going on inside of me right now.
My mind is swirling.
My heart is racing. I can actually feel it hammering in my ears.
Today was my daughter’s birthday party to celebrate her 9th birthday. And it was a huge success. There was so much laughter and squealing from the kids, great conversation was taking place as I took a moment to quietly survey the party, and everyone seemed to be enjoying the food and drinks. The decorations were on point, the cake was incredibly decorated, and the bounce house was obviously a huge hit. With help from my parents, my (ex) husband and I threw another great party.
It’s what we do.
Wait…it’s what we did?
*sigh*
Moment. By. Moment.
I can’t live any other way right now.
I get lost when I try to.
I have a dear friend, rather like a soulmate, a sister, who checked in on me late tonight. She experienced probably the most significant loss a person could go through, went through such unimaginable pain, that she knew the significance on my emotions today would have. She could empathize with what exactly celebrating my daughter’s birthday would feel like for me. She just knew that today would be an incredibly difficult one.
So she sent me a message. Affirming me. Loving me. Reminding me that I am a great mom and that today was about making wonderful memories for my daughter. And together, my ex and I did exactly that. I gave nobody any clue that both last night and this morning sucked or that I was having an internal battle because of it – today wasn’t the time for that. Yet, she knew. She doesn’t even live in the same state that I do! And she knew. It was the most meaningful moment of the day for me.
I am well aware that milestones, even little ones, are going to be hard for a while. I’m thinking it is because those milestones are no longer going to occur the way I’d always envisioned them. Even when they seemingly do.
I’m tangled because today was so normal. Too normal. The party was flawless. Anyone who didn’t know what the last 7 weeks has looked like for me, for us, didn’t have any inkling that our marriage was broken. He hosted. I hosted. It’s just what we do. Today’s milestone was successfully – and normally – celebrated. But nothing is normal right now.
So, when everything seems perfectly happy and wonderful and normal, I find myself getting lost. Everything about living “normally” as a family takes monumental intention and discipline. Almost every move, every conversation, even every smile has to be calculated.
I am currently trying to live in a hyper-focused state because I’ve found that when I don’t, I don’t process my reality as well as I could. Everything gets messy and ridiculously tangled.
*Cue the purpose behind writing this tonight…*
But, as I sit here and write, I have to ask: is being hyper-focused a bad thing? Mindset is everything, right? I mean, we all know that. I constantly hear: “Embrace the moment!” Or people say, in some way or another, to enjoy living in a space where the only thing that matters is literally right now: “Live in the now.” “Be present.” Maybe it’s time to trust that the “hyper-focused” attitude is exactly the way I should’ve been living all along.
Huh.
You know, when I first began writing this blog, somewhere a little over 2 hours ago, I was feeling overwhelmed. I even had a physiological response to it, with my heart racing and thumping in my ears. Now, though, I think I’m beginning to get untangled.
And this is exactly why I write.
I am a verbal processor. I either have to talk through things in order to make sense of them, or write about them. I can’t just live inside my head – I get absolutely nowhere with “thinking.”
What about you? Do you have tangled Christmas light moments? Times where you just think to yourself how messed up it all is and it’s so overwhelming that it feels like a lost cause? How do you remind yourself that it’s not?
If you aren’t sure how you process intense emotions and deep thoughts, take a minute to analyze how you’ve worked through problems before. Do you talk about it? Do you journal? Do you mull it over inside your head while you go out for a run? It’s important to know because everyone needs a healthy outlet to help get their head right. Tonight, I went from spiraling down a rabbit hole of confusion to feeling pretty great again. All because I decided to grab my computer and write.
From start to finish, it’s going to take me well over 4 hours to write just this one blog. When I first sat down to write tonight, my thoughts started in the same place as I did with this one, but then went off in a completely different direction. I didn’t like where that was going, so I discarded it and began again. And then I edited this piece like crazy. The whole process helped me understand my thoughts and pinpoint why I was feeling the way I was. I dumped it all onto this beautifully simple blank page. Writing gave me the time to understand what I was thinking and helped me get my mindset back where it needed to be.
Life is confusing. No matter what you’re living through right this moment, your life is sure to take you on a journey. It’s supposed to. There aren’t many things you can count on with certainty, but experiencing ups and downs is a given. We are meant to grow, so we must experience discomfort. Here are some things I’ve learned in the last 7 weeks that continuously help me get through my discomfort, this catastrophe, with grace.
- Choose to see the good in the people around you, because everybody has good in them.
- Don’t worry about what may happen at some point down the road or what you should’ve done yesterday. Process the moments as they come and make sure to do so in a healthy way.
- Count on others for help. We all inherently want to help the members in our community so you aren’t a burden. Don’t think for a second that you are.
- Hyper-focus on the moments. Though, you may be in the middle of stepping in the mess that erupted after it hit the fan, look up. You don’t have to focus on the mess. When you see all that is in front of you, you’ll surely find something to make you smile.
You all do that for me, you know. While trying to side-step the mess that is my current chapter, you all help me look up. You make me smile. I’m grateful to you – for reading my blog, for commenting on it here and on social media, and especially for sharing it with others because you think it might help them process their world just a tiny bit better. You lift me up with your positive messages and with the stories you’ve shared. I know I’m not alone in this journey and I am thankful that I can lean on so many of you. Your presence in my life is a gift and I can only hope that I can be that gift for others, too.
So if you ever need help untangling Christmas lights, both figuratively and literally, I am here for you.
A Graceful Catastrophe 