the hard truth about coping

People who know me may say otherwise, but lately (as in the last year or so) I’ve been really good at coping. My new thing is, it is what it is. Honestly, terrible things happen (when you end up in the hospital with a blood clot in your lung, only to lose two jobs in the span of 1 month and then get a weeks notice to move your entire life back to a town you don’t like and on the way your car engine blows up), trust me, I know. But lately, I’ve just been letting it roll off my back.

It’s not mine to carry. 

Can you do something about it? If the answer is yes, then you’re going to be okay. If the answer is no, then you’re going to be okay.

This is what I mean, things happen.

Anyways. With all this quarantine, I’ve had a lot, I mean we’ve all had a lot of time to think and reflect on things. I realized I miss the hell out of my friends. I miss getting dressed for a normal day. I miss sleeping on a regular schedule. But I realized one thing and I haven’t really felt right about it ever since. I am terrible at coping.

The thing with me is that I can’t hold grudges. So I let things go really fast. This also happens to be one of my favourite traits, but at the same time, I never do right by myself when people or things hurt me because usually I’ve forgotten about it until the next bad thing comes along. I don’t learn.

And I hate telling people how I feel because it makes me feel vulnerable. What will they do with my personal information? It’s like giving out a social insurance number for me, I don’t. This leads to what I like to call: destructive behaviour. 

And I’m not talking tantrums, or breakdowns, or any of that. In fact, I’m pretty good at keeping my emotions under wraps in front of people. I’m talking about something else.I’ll be folding laundry or something and suddenly I have this explosion go off in my chest. I just pause and stare into the distance for what feels like forever. And it hurts for days. It doesn’t have a name or a face and so I can’t describe it very well, or at all. But it’s there. 

You know what it feels like? It feels like stacking books in a cardboard box. It’s all good and everything fits perfectly, all your favourite books, even ones you’ve read before. Until you try and lift the box and everything falls out the bottom.

It’s not like I’m shoving anything down and suddenly it all comes back up and explodes in my face...no. Instead I add book after book, not realizing the weight of these things. And instead of exploding, everything falls out from underneath me. It’s a different feeling because people can’t see it. I can’t even really see it. I just pick everything back up again, and start the stacking process all over.

What I haven’t been doing is allowing myself to feel things. Like the weight of these books. The tattered edges of the ones I read a million times. The ones I ripped pages out of. The ones I stole. Ones I never even opened. I keep them all with me and I don’t let myself even open them again.

Librarians everywhere are loving this.

Here’s my metaphor for coping:

When someone hurts you, it’s instinct to close the book. Throw it in the box, never look at it again because “I’ve already read it” and carry it with me. The coping part comes when you allow yourself a nostalgic moment to return to the book with a calmer view, and open it, reread it over, close it up, and then decide: is it good enough to be stacked up in my box, or should I leave it for someone else to enjoy?

Boom.

I never did the rereading part. People hurt me, and it rolls off my back, and then it’s over. And I keep all these stupid books that I don’t even like. With all of this alone time, I’ve been rereading. I’ve been going back and reliving the things that hurt me. And I’ve been giving these books away to people who need them now, more than me. Advice, stories, I mean...even other people...all things I’ve passed on now because I no longer need to carry it with me.

That’s not to say I didn’t keep anything.

I still carry stuff I probably shouldn’t. But sometimes that’s just where I feel comfortable, and I like the weight because it makes me feel safe. For the sake of everyone who reads this, I hope you find some time to go back and revisit those old memories, and clean them out if you can. And if you can’t, I hope when you’re done rereading, you find you like it better, given you know the way it ends.