Floating Along
how to keep the tears tamped down inside
I find it very difficult to cry. The last time I did was over a decade ago when the replacement of our ductwork necessitated ripping out the wall and ceiling in part of our bedroom and back hall, which we had painted a just couple of years earlier. We had so many house projects going on in various stages of completion, and now the one thing we’d finished was being undone. We had lapped ourselves. We were going backwards. And I cried. The kids (now young adults) still talk about this in hushed tones, because it was so rare, and it’s never happened again.
Yes, I tend to walk around with a permanent lump in my throat and pain in my chest when I’m upset. And over these recent years trying to figure out how to help Molly, I’ve often been upset. It’s easier to just let that lump sit there blocking the door to deeper thoughts. It’s too painful to let it sink in. Much easier to let physical discomfort float on top of my emotions, so that I know it’s there but I can still do the things I need to do.
Sometimes I share the stories about Molly’s illness and the intense effects on all of us, and people are horrified. I’m so sorry, they say. It must be so hard.
It is hard, but I tell it as if it’s something I saw in a movie, happening to a stranger - not danger and pain and sadness pounding away day after day. This is real, happening to my kid and my family and me. Sometimes I even laugh and then apologize for laughing. Is it funny? Not unless you’ve been through it.
My therapist once asked me, have you cried about this yet? When are you going to cry? Hopefully never, I said.
I can’t cry or let these emotions really sink in, because what if I can’t stop? What if I collapse into a puddle on the floor and can’t get up to carry on? I can’t just abandon all my responsibilities! Of course, what am I doing to myself by not dealing with this pain? Is it all just festering in my body and poisoning me?
I have written in previous posts about Molly’s path through her teens: not just the diagnoses, but the moods and the behaviors and the impulsivity and the frightening meltdowns. No need to rehash all that here. There have been times that I was sure she would not survive. There have been times that I was afraid she’d take us all down with her.
These days, the graph of her life status is generally trending upward. I’ve mentioned that she lives in a different state and is getting good help. Recently she passed part of her GED and got not one but two jobs. The lump in my throat is barely noticeable most of the time, although it pops right back when she calls in distress (she’s been left in a hotel in Vegas without a phone, for example). I still can’t stop myself from being pulled into her pain. I have physical flashbacks to times when she cornered me during an emotionally violent episode and I thought she was about to attack. The lump in my throat makes itself known again. It’s doing its important job of smothering any attempt by real emotions to break through. Because I’m able to stay steady, I can listen and co-regulate with her, and help her keep moving forward too.