We talked about the ones who are struggling and my friend asked, “What’s the impact on you?”
“There isn’t any,” I said, and immediately gave the lie to that by tearing up and trying not to snivel my way through an explanation. She was nudging me into not just accepting that there is an impact, an emotional cost, but to voicing it, to admitting out loud, that I get that you don’t get this, and I’m not entirely sure I do, but I know it is something I need and want to do, and – yegods, yes – it is hard.
We who are removed, but still care, we too need our healing days.
What’s the impact on you? I tried to claim that there is none, but of course there is.
A “quick call” just to check they’re ok lasts for two and half hours, late into the evening, and I am awake even later into the night, processing the conversation, the emotion, the energy.
An early morning call interrupts my journalling, and then throws my whole day out of kilter, because of the things that were said and the things that were hinted at, not said, the things that “really need to be said face to face.”
That is not fair: that I have something to say, but will not say it here and now. If it needs to be face-to-face, then it does: so hold it back until then. Do not throw rocks into a pool and walk away without watching to see the impact of the ripples.
The world is bigger than us, and we are not the centre of it. However bad we are feeling, and however rightly-so our current suffering, we could have a thought for what we say. The people who are there for us, are people too.
When I am there for you, because you are there for them, I need you to spare a thought for me, as well.
When you are there for me, because I am whatever I am, I need to spare a thought for you, as well.
Caring is hard. It can drain. It can also do the opposite; it can fill us too full, it can overflow, overwhelm. Whenever we give, we take. What we take in exchange for giving can be beautiful love and gratitude. What we take in exchange for giving can be anger and pain and resentment and toxicity. When we hold the space for people to release, we are often the vessel they release into. When we hold the space for people in need, we are often the source they drink from.
We can give too much. We can receive more that we can hold.
The ultimate protection against all of that is to close our hearts or sever connections.
Sometimes breaking connection is the only solution. It is a last resort, but when you know you cannot help and are giving too much of yourself flogging the proverbial dead horse, it is time to walk away.
However, closing our hearts, hardening our soul, against the impact of those we choose to allow to stay in our lives, is something I do not believe in. Closing our heart, hardening our soul, damages us more than it protects, because it is not something we can do selectively. A closed door, a hardened shell, lets no-one and nothing in. It is as simple as this: we feel or we do not feel. We cannot choose to feel love and not pain.
So then how, when we want to honour the connection, how do we protect ourselves while living up to that promise of I’m here for you?
I don’t know yet. I’m working on it. For now I only know how to take the time to recover from it.
Over the last few days, I’ve learned that it means accepting the need for healing days, abandoning the plans to get stuff done and surrendering to flow.
Over the last few days it has meant reading a few more chapters of a book on alternative approaches to healing the body, some of which make perfect sense to me and others make me want to track down the author and tell her not to be such an irresponsible fool. A reminder to take what works and leave what doesn’t and accept that I don’t know everything about anything, and neither does anybody else. We’re all doing the best we can.
It meant reading poetry. The simplest kind. The words that are unequivocally intended to make you feel better.
It meant re-examining whether I need to buy a new PC, or whether there is another simpler solution to the fact that this one is old and crotchety. It meant knowing that I do not need to make that decision today.
It meant that the walk to the shops and back was enough of bright sunlight and arctic wind. It meant that relinquishing ideas of sitting outside or gardening or long exploring walks came easily enough.
It meant settling in to a volume of Dirk Bogarde’s autobiography, reading about a Provence that had already vanished by the time he was writing about it, decades ago. Whole political shifts have come and gone since then. We became fully a part of Europe and then left again. Big shifts that are mere blinks in the passage of a century, meaningless in the scheme of time.
Reading his books takes me back to that time – how it was for him, how it was for me (I’m a lot younger and never lived in Provence, but I can place myself in those years, against that global backdrop) – and it makes me realise that now is tomorrow’s history and tomorrow’s nostalgia.
It meant going dancing on a Sunday afternoon in a brightly lit hall, with friends and strangers. It meant lots of laughter and eating poorly and understanding that our judgements are all flawed. It meant joy. It meant coming home to write.
The impact is noticing what I have and what I do not have and recognising that there are positives and negatives in both of those.
The impact is having to step outside of myself. And then deeply needing to step back in, into my own centre, to remind myself that their drama is not mine, that caring is not about shouldering someone else’s burden. It is about helping them figure out how to carry it themselves. Giving them places to let it rest now and then but not picking it up and carrying it forward for them. We have enough of our own that we need to tend to.
The impact is that some of my nights and days are stolen from me, that I am pulled away from doing what I had intended, wanted, needed to do – but it is also to remind me that this too will pass.
This day. This backdrop. These choices. This home. These friends. This laughter. This pain. These scrappy bits of paper on my desk. The stones and shells and driftwood scattered around my inland, lowland, home. The pens and the paper. The computers and printers and tvs and stereos and music and books. The wisteria struggling into leaf. The messy garden begging for tending. The unwashed dishes in the kitchen. The long telephone calls about pain and suffering and confusion. The unexpected tears at lunch while I’m trying to figure out why I’m doing it all. The daft notion that someone might read this and take something from it.
All of this will pass.
All of this has meaning, only because it will pass.
I think that is true of us as well. The meaning of us will only become clear, later. All we can do now, is what we can do. So let’s do that – and bear the impact of it as best we can.
