Taking action...

Life isn’t easy.  In fact, I would argue that life is often pretty damn hard.  I don’t know a single soul who would say, “Oh my goodness, my life is COMPLETELY without stress.  I have NOTHING to worry about.  Every second of my life has been bliss, bliss, bliss!”

Ok, maybe my cats would say that.  Their lives do seem pretty cherry, but I’m talking about humans here.

I’m not saying I never complain.  Of course I do.  I complain a lot.  It feels good to bitch and moan.  Some things I’ve complained about in the past week:

 * The cold

* The cold I have

 * The excessive amount of papers I have to grade

 *  The lack of heat in my classroom

 * Darryl watching football and cheering and/or complaining audibly

* The fact that my washing machine ate some of my new socks

* That my pipes froze on the second floor and I had to take a Whore’s Bath ™ before school on Friday.

And of course, those are just the ones I remember.  I’m sure there are more.

Bad things have gone down in my life, but guess what?  Bad things go down in everyone’s life.  There are different degrees to the badness.  No, I wasn’t beaten by my parents or molested or homeless… but enough yucky things happened to me that you would never (not by a mile) say I lived a charmed life. 

When I got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, I never complained.  What was the purpose?  I could have had a pity-party and thought “whoa is me,” but what would have accomplished?

Bad things happen, but it’s all about how you view them.  If you see the crappy things in life as inconveniences instead of as deal breakers, life will be easier.

When I got my MS diagnosis, I realized my life would indeed be inconvenienced, but I never thought my life would be ruined by my MS diagnosis.  When I was first told it was MS and the neurosurgeon said it was wonderful news, that I wasn’t going to die from this, that I didn’t have to make arrangements for someone to take care of Tiernen, that I was going to be okay, I believed him.  Life would go on.  It WAS going on.  And according to Dr. Shatla, I could live just like this for the next 60 years.

Sometimes we get addicted to sympathy and get caught up in our own crap.  We get addicted to the victim mentality. I actually had my electrician come to my house and offer to build one of those electronic chair lifts.  It freaked the crap out of me because I could walk – I could always walk, that I had never lost the ability to walk, even when I was in full-blown MS exacerbation mode – didn’t seem to make that much of a difference to the electrician.  Someone somewhere had told this guy that MS = wheelchair bound.  Screw that.  That’s victim mentality.

There was a time in my life when I was so depressed, I thought I would go out of my mind.  I went to intense therapy that was unlike therapy (I’ve gone on and off since high school… there’s no shame in that… we all need a safe place to download in a judgment-free arena) I’d ever gone to. 

This therapist gave me one session to fill him in on my backstory.  After that, it was all work.  Think intensive, intensive action-oriented therapy.  He would give me homework of specific goals I had to accomplish each week and I would report back about them.  I used to cry so hard during those sessions that I was too exhausted to cook afterwards, so Tuesdays became pizza night.  Friends (not that I had any other than Carina) knew not to call on Tuesdays because I was a wreck.   

He refused to allow me to spend the session recounting the crap that happened to me in the past.  “What’s the point,” he’d say. “because we can’t fix it, even if we talked about it for the next ten years.”  That really resonated with me.

I went October to March, faithfully, and as hard as they were, they helped.  Think of it as the worst physical therapy ever, except it was for my mind.  But I got better.  And what was the “cure”?

Action.

Action is the cure for depression. Action is the cure for a shitty marriage.  Action is the cure for a shitty work situation.  Action is the cure for a bad friendship.  Action is the cure for a bad body image.  Action is the cure for unhealthy eating habits.  Action is the cure for an uncomfortable living situation.  Action is the cure for stagnancy. 

See, human like homeostasis.  We like things to stay the same, and as sad as this is, we even get used to pain.  Like an oyster, we build protective coatings around our irritants and say, “look, a pearl!” even when the “pearl” is something unhealthy.  We like things to stay the same because we are comfortable with the discomfort…  The discomfort becomes like a familiar friend, as sad as that is.

At the same time, we like to complain about the discomfort, so it’s an unhealthy cycle.  I am in pain – but I don’t want to change because change is scary – the pain I know is better than the change I don’t know – but I’m in pain…  

The only way to break the cycle is to take some sort of action. 

I didn’t say it was easy.  I didn’t say it feels good.  But it is the only way to break the cycle and move forward. 

Here is an example of some action, though painful, I had to take:

I am not close to my mother and haven’t been for more than 20 years.  I have tried countless times over the past nearly 19 years since Tiernen was born, but I usually end up pretty hurt and upset.  My mother didn’t call me for three months after my breast cancer scare last year.  Three months.  At one point she didn’t call me for eight YEARS.  This summer was the final straw when she disappointed Tiernen and ruined her vacation.  Hurting me is one thing, but hurting my kid?  Nope… 

I took action and cut out this toxic woman from my life once and for all.  I wish I could say I was sad, but I’m not.  Some actions hurt, but some actions, well they hurt less than the hurt they inflicted.  I thought I would be devastated, but I had been devastated for so very long, it was worth it. 

Now for the harsh reality:  if you aren’t willing to make changes and take action (not just TALK about them, but actually make them), then you have pretty much lost your RIGHT to complain.

And we all know how much fun it is to complain…