Challenge

People come into our lives and teach us lessons. What may feel like one of the worst times of our life can become, in hindsight, a huge turning point that guides us towards where we need to be. I’m sure many of us have heard these sayings or platitudes, but just because they seem clichéd doesn’t mean they’re without truth.

I wouldn’t wish the tough year I’ve gone through on anyone. However, I also wouldn’t return to the time just before my husband walked out, because that time was confusing and painful and I had lost myself trying to become someone my husband could love. I didn’t know then that he couldn’t love anybody, not in the way I understand love. I was lonely and often felt completely worthless, especially if he had one of his rages that came out of the blue and often for things that seemed so petty to me. I couldn’t understand his level of anger or the twisted logic that got him to that place. He often thought people were laughing at him, or trying to make him look foolish or that I was talking down to him and interfering with his business.

My illness embarrassed him. He didn’t like me to leave tablets lying around where people could see them. It was our business, he said, people didn’t have to know everything. For a while I thought it was just stress or adjusting to all the changes in his life; moving house, getting married, selling his business. It was nothing to do any of these things. He had a general dissatisfaction in life that would surface and leave him unable to cope with other people. He would become argumentative about the slightest thing, sharp and even abusive with other people. Sometimes he would ignore I even existed and would become nothing more than a housemate, unable to communicate or move from his ‘office’ where he would use Facebook to leave controversial statuses or start arguments on other people’s threads. The aggravation tactics would continue with me when he could; if we watched a rugby match he insisted on cheering on the opposing team, he would denigrate my home town or my family hoping for a reaction. At family gatherings he would poke fun at his son’s beliefs and life choices hoping for an argument or at least to make someone else feel bad. He seemed to feed off the anger he created almost like some sort of vampire, but instead of blood he needed anger to feed him.

He finally sniffed out the one thing he could do that would press the destruct button on our relationship. He then did it and walked out of our marriage. That was 18 months ago and since then I have been working out what went wrong and how I made such a bad choice. I am now settled, in my own home, with my animals and have built a great life. I understand my mistake and know how it was related to the state of bereavement I was in.

At the end of the divorce process I went away with my friends to Northumberland for a week. We took the dogs and I visited some of my favourite haunts. I had also set up a meeting with an old friend I hadn’t seen for 18 years. We’d been in touch through the blog and at first I have to admit I had made the mistake of thinking it was a ‘romantic’ meet up. I wasn’t ready for it really and had been increasingly nervous the closer we came to meeting. It turned out that he had no romantic intentions, which was disappointing at first, but it seemed he did want to be friends. We talked all day (so much that I burned dinner) and I felt really challenged by some of his questions. We shared our life stories really and I was surprised at how open we could be with each other. Yet, he did make me nervous, partly because of my mistaken perception of his intentions, but also because he didn’t just sit back and pour his soul out like a lot of people do – especially when they know what I do for a living – he asked questions about me. One of those questions was ‘what is the most interesting thing you’ve done?’ First of all I misconstrued the question and was looking for something exciting. After several years of being ill with MS and my various other diseases, then nursing my husband Jez till he died, then having another disastrous marriage, I didn’t feel I had done anything interesting. Apart from my English lit degree, everything I had done in life was for someone else.

I went away from this meeting feeling upset and a little bit depressed. On one hand I felt a fool for mistaking his interest and needed to question why this was so important to me. Then on the other hand, I needed to think about why I was 40 and had no answer to a simple question about what I had done in life. This was a challenge and I didn’t like it one bit. I don’t think it was intended as a challenge but it took someone who hadn’t seen me for a while to notice that my potential was not being used.

I am not saying I never did anything in life. I had worked in mental health for 15 years and had written a book about my experiences nursing my husband to help others in the same difficult role. What this conversation did was give me permission. My friend told me it was okay to do stuff for myself and also maybe it was my time. Time for me!!! So what have I done with this realisation? I am finishing my counselling qualifications and I am thinking of starting my own business linking my mental health and English literature qualifications. I am working as a writing therapist for a living and making links to other organisations that would like the service. I am signed up to take my qualifications for teaching adults. I have been asked to start book clubs in a couple of different venues and I can honestly say I love every bit of the work I do.  I am rarely bored and I am meeting new people all of the time. I actually feel like I am creating a new life, for me, and this feeling is born out of those difficult times and that challenge.

People come into your life to teach you something. They are not always there for the purpose you expect, but they have a role. That role might be to comfort you, or to support you but it could also be to question or challenge you. The experience might feel negative at the time, but it can in hindsight be an incredibly valuable experience. My close friends and family love and support me, but would never have been able to say to me what this person said. Maybe they did say it and I just couldn’t hear it. It had to be the right time and the right person. Now I have taken up that challenge and I am running with it.

Leaning Into The Pain

There is a famous saying about difficult and painful emotions; that you can’t go over it or round it, the only way is through it. I understand the saying but have never really had the strength to put it into practice. I thought I was going through it, but have more often than not done anything to avoid truly feeling it. I have always been the same with physical pain too – hoping to render it invisible with pain killers, or putting ice on it, or putting a hot water bottle on it and doing everything in my power to resist. I have more recently been reading up on mindfulness and chronic pain where the exercises suggest not taking action immediately, but rather waiting a moment to experience the pain. Based on the Buddhist belief system some experts quote the idea of resistance actually creating more pain; it is a two arrow theory, where the first arrow is the pain and the second arrow comes from the individual’s resistance. Resistance suggests that by action or thought the individual can eliminate the pain, and then when the pain persists there is the mental pain of feeling powerless and becoming angry. This creates self-loathing feelings and sometimes depression making the struggle with the pain even harder. Put more simply, imagine you are typing at your desk and your shoulders become cramped. Now think about what you do naturally to relieve that cramping and stiffness; you stretch the other way, leaning into the pain to relieve it.

I only learned this in the last couple of years, after 15 years of chronic pain, and it revolutionised the way I cope with my pain. I still take painkillers and try everything sensible that I can to make my life bearable and easier, but I don’t resist the pain. I stop and feel it. I think about it. I feel the ebb and flow of the pain and stretch out my body to change the feelings. I follow the idea that the pain does change and flow; it is rarely intense for long periods of time. I think to myself ‘get through this moment, get through this moment’ and it becomes surprising how many moments I can get through and carry on. This thinking has helped me cope more and do more over the last 12 months. Of course there are going to be moments where my pain and illness require more serious medical attention and times when I cannot accept what is happening to my body. I am human after all, but it has been a technique worth trying.

While walking the dog this morning through my village I wondered at how comfortable I now feel here and how my feelings have settled down after a long period of pain and upheaval. My illness has worsened with new aspects uncovered such as a type 1 Chiari Malformation, a benign vascular tumour and an underactive thyroid to add insult to injury as my GP said. I am still also dealing with the pain following the breakdown of my marriage, the loss of my friend Kathryn, the loss of my cat Moo, and moving house. There has been a lot to process in a short space of time and I am not kidding myself that the grieving is over. Yet I have come to the realisation that I am coping in a different way to how I managed grief previously. After three miscarriages during my first marriage I hated talking about it and clammed up completely. Lost in my own world of pain I desperately tried not to show the extent of how much I was hurting. I hate crying in front of others and don’t like asking for help. Later, when my second husband died, I kept busy to avoid sitting and thinking. I was determined to cope – alone – without letting people who love me in. Now, 6 years later, I sit with another failed marriage behind me and the knowledge that I went about the pain in my life the wrong way – I resisted it. I should have leaned into the pain.

I can honestly say I didn’t know I was coping differently until a few weeks ago. I had realised  that I was enjoying time alone and didn’t seem daunted by the prospect of more time spent this way. I am almost ashamed to say that I think this is the longest period of time I’ve had without a ‘significant other’ since I was 16. Even when longer term relationships broke up it wasn’t long before someone else came along – even if it was only a stop gap, there was someone there. Now I stand alone. No love interest. Nothing romantic on the horizon, but my own dreams and plans are interesting and exciting. I felt a sudden clarity in my thinking just after the New Year and it was probably a combination of the time of year, my new medication settling in without me feeling too many side effects and my pain being manageable, but I did feel like I’d woken from a long coma. I’m not even sure it was the cloud that descended after my recent marriage ended, it could have been a cloud that had been there for many years. I was surprised by just how awake I felt. I had spent a week going to work, seeing friends, studying and writing and making holiday plans. I suddenly realised on one of my long range dog walks that for a significant period of time I had not even thought about the fact that I was on my own. I had accepted the past and acknowledged that the pain from my life experiences will hit me every now and again, but I can deal with it by not resisting. I can lean into the pain and know it won’t engulf me.