Dual Core Processor

One thing that dealing with grief has been teaching me is that we have two processes that go on with us all the time. I get to see it show up fairly often, and it's not all that comfortable. I'm doing OK and then the next moment I'm overwhelmed in a swamp of sadness. Or instead I'm sometimes suddenly shaking and jittery and wanting to run or hide. Or sometimes it's finding myself having to fight off being blinded by a consuming rage. It catches me by surprise, and often I'm not sure at first what it was that set it off. Even if I can point to something that might make sense of it, it seems way out of proportion to what it should be.

Yup, there's two things going on. On one level, I'm thinking. On the other level, I'm dealing with feelings. And, to be honest, they both have about equal power to hit me as strongly as each other.

Lots of people I know seem to be of the opinion that thinking is the primary internal function for us. It fits. That's what we're taught. We hear things like “Keep your head” or “Think it over.” We get told that getting an education is the key to success, and education means going to school and learning new ideas and information. Sometimes that learning is assessed by how well we can regurgitate those new bits of information. Give the right definition, connect the date with the event, put the concepts in order. Sometimes it's about applying them, like with math problems. When there's a problem we're supposed to think it over and figure out the right answer. Oh, and be ready to explain it to someone else, which often relies on being able to demonstrate clear, logical thought processes.

Feelings don't get that kind of value or respect. At the same time, they're still used just as strongly in some ways. Just about all advertising is about evoking the feeling that the product or service they're displaying will bring happiness. There's the implication with it that, if we don't have it, we will end up unhappy. Heck, if you think about how much sex is used in advertising, that fits, too. Sex certainly isn't about a rational process. Some feelings are seen to be OK, and others are indications of something being wrong, the person being “less than.” Real men aren't supposed to be afraid. When something bad happens, it's OK, though, for men to get mad and attack the problem. However, a lady isn't supposed to get angry. If someone else is openly sad, people often stand around and don't quite know what to do or how to deal with it. Tongues are either tied or end up tripping as people don't really know what to say, but don't feel comfortable saying nothing. Movies and TV shows repeatedly go back to the idea that falling in love is important and good. For all the good stuff in some of the New Age thinking, there's a lot of it that says that the “bad” feelings (read: “uncomfortable”) are things that should be avoided or shut away...or are signs of a lack of spiritual development.

Guess what, folks. Feelings are just as much a part of who we are as thinking. Just because we're brought up to put more emphasis on thinking doesn't change that. Sometimes strong feelings will end up dragging thinking behind them in their wake. To me, it makes sense to think of them like waves. A small one doesn't really do much to the ability to think, and to choose what to think about. However, a big one—like a sonic boom or a tsunami—will yank whatever's there into its wake. If it's too strong, thinking doesn't really happen until the energy of the wave starts to dissipate. Even if it's only medium strong, sometimes it just pulls the thinking along behind it. And often the assumption is that that's a bad thing.

Don't get me wrong, those experiences are certainly uncomfortable. The times I found myself having to lean against the side of the shower or crumpled up at the bottom of the stairs crying because the sadness roared through me were not fun. The times at work when my frustration erupted like a fireball from an explosion and led to me snapping at people who really didn't deserve it weren't fun. Heh, neither was having to go and apologize afterward. The times where I would be getting ready for a trip and suddenly find myself almost paralyzed with anxiety about the most miniscule or ridiculous things was definitely not fun.

However, there have also been times where going with those emotions have led me to and through things that I don't know I would've looked at or gone to otherwise. She had never told me what she'd want done with her body if she died. I had to go off a best guess based off conversations that only lightly touched on the topic. The place that just felt right to go is hard to get to, with some decent risks of getting hurt if one isn't careful. It wasn't easy, but it's been a decision—based mainly off how it felt—that I haven't experienced any regret about. Plenty of people thought I was horribly mistaken for wanting to read through some of her journal files, that it was just pointless self-torture. It kept feeling like something I needed to do. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have found out how long she'd been depressed and suicidal, or that it had been going on long before we ever met. If I hadn't been willing to go with the nagging feelings of guilt that had come up about whether I'd had anything to do with her suicide, I wouldn't have looked at everything as deeply as I had and come to know that it wasn't about me. Hell, if I hadn't gone with the feeling that I needed to see her body before it was cremated, I probably would've had a lot longer time of having the thoughts come up that maybe it was a mistake, maybe she was still alive....maybe she would come back. Seeing her body, and the shape it was in, was hard, but since then I haven't had those kinds of thoughts come up.

We have both, thinking and feeling. We end up having to learn to deal with both. That doesn't mean trying to figure out how to make one run roughshod over the other at will. It means learning what each one does, how each one works. What each has to offer and where its limits are.

There's just not another way to really get all the way down and out, to find the path that will lead us through the abyss and ready to go on to better times.