Help for the Self-Helpless

Introduction

I am writing this because I am lost. I am crushed. Destroyed. And like so many, I need help coping. I’m fairly creative I guess, but my life has been broken in ways I had never imagined or seen on GOT, much less experienced in all my mid-to-late-40 years of life.

I’m currently struggling through the 13th month of grief and depression — and the general realization that the world I naively assumed I inhabited has turned upside-the-fuck-down — from the irrevocable ending of my marriage, and by association, the most fundamental love, friendship, partnership, family and home I have known for over half of my life. My physical surroundings haven’t changed much, aside from selling our family home of 17 years — the only home my younger two children have known — but for many months now, I recognize almost nothing in my daily perception and state of mind, compared with just a year or so ago.

Disclaimer

Before I go any further, I fully recognize that I am a spoiled, emotional weakling and this is a whiny, wallowing post. Thank you for enduring this much blubbering already. Please feel free to roll eyes and click away at will (nothing to be done about it: rip off the band-aid, appreciate all that you still have and move on is the conclusion I’ve read and heard many times).
Fact is, nobody dear to me has died horribly in the precipitation of these events. Neither I nor any of my loved ones is currently suffering from painful, terminal illnesses. I have suffered no physical violence, no existential danger. I am not living on the street, nor a bombed out subway station. Compared with most humans on Earth, I live a materially comfortable life. I understand I really have no right to spin in my emotional despair, in a world with ongoing war, oppression, disease, starvation, inequality, fires, and famines: I have the good fortune of loving children to raise, a stable career, food, shelter, supportive family and friends, and relatively good health. And I personally know of so many others, including friends and family, who have remained brave and resilient through far worse circumstances.

Self-Pitying, Self-Aware Confession

So, I should fut the shuck up and be grateful for all of that comfort and prosperity, right? Dear reader, I agree. Honestly. I can see it. I can rationalize it. And I do. This is at least the 5th draft of this post, cobbled from several pages of meandering notes and long, droning accounts of my rotten, dead, exploded relationship and a detailed catalogue of my hardships and all the ways she did me wrong. And every word is objectively true! But, to be sure, it never feels worthwhile when I reread it. Need to stop rereading things. I’ll surprise myself if I ever actually click that happy, green ‘Publish’ button.

Defiant Reposte

And yet, I’m still writing it. Why?
Because.
It.
Still.
Fuck-
Ing.
Hurts.
I still need more. Probably precisely because I had so many good things in life buoying and buttressing my mind and my sense of myself and my happiness that are gone forever. Because daily, hourly, minute-ly, everything constantly hurts. So much. Every memory, every observation and inevitable comparison with other humans living their own lives. And based on far better, wiser writing to be found on this platform and elsewhere, I know I’m not the only one who feels and suffers in this way. My therapist agrees. A startlingly large percentage of my friends and family in similar and worse (and some even in better) states of marital disintegration agree.

I’m writing this because I have to acknowledge my pain; because it is real and ubiquitous and it comes for me everywhere. Like, in my sleep, or while driving, or running, or in the grocery store, or gassing up the car, or at a cafe, or watching Netflix, or on the john. Anywhere and everywhere.
Sometimes, a year on, I go for hours without it hitting me. Sometimes minutes. So, in some ways, it is an existential threat, at least to my sanity, which is a dangling thread from which I worry the whole sweater of all that bloated, material comfort could begin to unravel.

I’m writing this because I know I need help. I need tools to cope with this, and to continue to function on a daily, hourly, minute-ly basis. I have kids to support materially and emotionally, and though i slip up and my mood and maybe too much drinking occasionally affect my interactions with them, they truly don’t deserve any of my baggage.
And there’s a ton of advice out there: Articles, blogs, vlogs, books, moms, friends old and new, Netflix series plots. Some of it’s good. Some shitty. Most of it’s far easier said than done. Yet, the reality of an emotional loss like mine (and yours) is still crushing sometimes. And since I’m not the only one hurting, and I have grasped and writhed and latched onto a precious few things that bring some momentary relief, I want to share.

Conclusion to the Intro, preview for the next post

So, I’ll finally get to it. Next post (Sorry, not to tease, but it’s taken me almost a year to get this far, and I am currently traveling with my oldest 2 kids, staying up too late after driving most of the UK south-to-north today).
The purpose of the list in the following post will be to share what I believe are really the helpful bits, for the times when the pain is really raw; and when I, for one, want to tell the rom-com screenplay writers and self-help columnists to fuck off. As a disclaimer: I’ll be sharing my own list of tactics — and frankly some are just cynical, diversionary tricks — that have provided me even the slightest relief during those hard moments that keep coming back.

Sincerely, thanks for reading if you made it here. More soon.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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