Misery is too heavy to carry alone, so we look to people to carry it for us.
Miserable, I know this feeling when I am sick. I cough and sneeze, my head pounds, my throat feels as if its shards of glass I am swallowing. I don’t even bother trying to breathe through my nose, that is utterly pointless. Being sick makes me miserable and no one can do anything for me when I am, I suffer it alone. Loneliness used to be my misery, except it no longer feels miserable to be lonely. I have either grown used to it when it is here, or I have outgrown the battle against it. But at one time, it was pure misery for me.
I would cling to that misery, that aloneness. I would write poems about it, spend countless hours wallowing in it, latch on to friends like a barnacle to a boat. I got so deep in it that I went as far as to have a broken heart tattooed on my chest and “forever alone” across my stomach. I wanted the world to acknowledge my pain, my misery, and at times I wanted the world to carry it for me.
I would think that it wasn’t fair I was feeling so, I didn’t deserve all the pain, all the longing created by misery. But no matter how I tried to rid myself of it, nothing worked. And looking back at it, I never really did much to let it go either, as I clung to my friends like a barnacle, I made misery the ocean I lived in. One who has lived in something for an extended amount of time subconsciously see’s whatever it is as familiar and comfortable. The saying, “we sit in our shit cause its warm and comfortable” rings true here, just like the saying, “misery loves company”. It’s a love triangle of self-obsession and insanity. You, me, and my misery.
It's in our nature to cling to the familiar, to choose comfort over the latter. No one desires to be in a weird place with nothing they are used to. We want what we know, we want that safety and security, and if painful negative emotions are it, then that is what we gravitate towards.
After countless years of feeling lonely I finally started to accept it when it. I no longer avoid it; I sat with it when it was here and when it left, I let it go. The feeling of loneliness comes and goes when I am experiencing it, sometimes 10, 20 times a day. It’s like a child who is running in and out of the house all day long. It comes in, creates an upheaval and then leaves, only to return 5 minutes later. It’s quite comical if you think about it, the constant coming and going.
We think “how long is this misery going to last?” We see it, feel it, accept it and it goes away, only to come back with fleeting thoughts that push through our minds like a breeze through that house. At some point we hit avoidance, unable to deal with it any longer and that is when the clinging begins, that is when our reliance on our friends and loved ones deepens. Our expectations run high of them; we expect them to be here for us well beyond their needed stay.
There is a grieving process to everything that leaves our lives. A cherished object is lost, a marriage ends, a loved one passes on. We might think what is the “normal” amount of time for grieving? I’m told there is no “normal” amount. My former therapist would say “everyone grieves differently and there is no time limit for it”, that is a very clinical answer, and half true. It’s true that everyone grieves differently, but there is a time limit on it. We need to choose to let things go and move on, and we intuitively know when this time arrives.
But you say, “Jacob, I have done this, I have chosen to let this misery go but it keeps coming back, how do I stop it from coming back?” And I reply, “you don’t stop it, you can’t control it, you can only be with it when it arrives and then let it go.” And you reply, ‘fuck you”.
Telling the closed minded to do something that seems impossible makes them angry, especially something with this much depth. Being told to stop feeling a certain way is infuriating. “You don’t know my pain; you don’t know what this is like” we shout inside. But most everyone on the planet knows how someone else is feeling, most of us have had the same or similar experiences and feelings to match. We are not alone in the misery department, we would like to think we are, that our feelings and experiences are greater than everyone else’s. Our ego wants us to feel different than everyone around us, our obsession with the grandiosity of self is ridiculous. And with this ego, this great sense of self-obsession we cling even harder to the misery and depend that much more on the people around us to carry this ginormous load we have created.
When I got to NA, I was told happiness is a choice and for years following that information received I didn’t believe it. Happiness was not a choice, it was something acquired from people, places and things. Happiness was an outside job, and I saw my outsides as disastrous, so happiness was not a possibility. For years I tried to be happy, only to fall back into the same distorted thinking and obsession of self. It wasn’t until I found spirituality that I was able to choose happiness. It wasn’t until I found the answers to all my questions and accepted those answers. I had come across these answers in the past, but I was too far gone to believe them. I was a sheet flapping in the wind, grounded to nothing, and tethered to insanity.
Through many journals, umpteen hours of meditation, years of therapy, and multiple steps worked, I had finally found acceptance (some of us need to put in more work than others). I found that I can choose happiness just as often as I choose misery, and that it is selfish of me to take my friends down with me when I jump off the cliff. There’s a fear in letting things go, a fear of emptiness, a fear that we will be without this thing or person or charter defect. Openness can be frightening, anyone and anything can come into our hearts and that is scary. But it is better than clinging to what was, what no longer is.
It took me close to 10 years of being clean to let go of all the pain I inflicted while in my disease. It took me all of 5 years to let go of all the feelings associated with my divorce. It took me about a year to recover from the first person I was in love after that divorce. And recently it took me 6 months to let go of the relationship that I saw no end to it's future. I’ve had a couple mementoes disappear over the years, I still look back to those objects and miss them. I still miss my dog, my Harley, my grandfather. But I do not cling to these people or things. The thought comes up, I feel the sadness and then let it go, come back to now, back to what is.
I can tell you I have not felt this amount of happiness in my life for a long time, not since I was on my trip and my vision cleared. My life is not perfect, I’m renting a room from a friend and can’t stay in a relationship to save my life, but I am happy. Whether I’ve big money or little money is of no concern to me, whether I start dating someone or not, these things no longer afflict me.
I’ve this time now, where I wake feeling fortunate to wake, to drink my coffee and eat my oatmeal. I’m growing grayer by the day it seems and that is exciting, I am getting old, I’ve been given the gift of growing old. Not everyone is fortunate enough to live a life as long as mine has been. I’ve a beautiful daughter that I’ve been able to raise and share so many smiles and so much love with. I’ve an ex-wife that means just as much to me as my daughter. I’ve more friends than I count. I can count, I can read, I can walk, I can think and dream and do so much. Why would I choose to cling to something that is no longer here and live in misery over it?
It's easy to sit on the other side of misery and count your blessings. I think it’s preposterous to ask of someone to make a gratitude list when in emotional peril. To go from one extreme to another in such a short amount of time is not possible and actually keeps someone in the misery longer. In avoidance we only leave the situation or feelings to fester and grow. And know there are a few things in my life to be sad over, a few contentious happenings, but none of them warrant me to be miserable over. To sit in the ego of self-obsession, to make everything about me, to put my load upon people I care for.
It's only through continued practice of being in the present moment that we are able to be free of clinging to what was, good or bad. There are so many beautiful and amazing things to be a part of, of every moment, of every day. I do not always see the flowers I pass by or the smiles on people’s faces. I can look someone dead in the face and not even realize they are smiling, I miss so much not being present. I tend to always forget, that everything and everyone I have in my life is God’s property and is only on loan to me for as long as God sees fit.
Comments