dungeon of my own making

The journey to self-pity, can take you unawares, travelled a thought at a time, down the steps into a dungeon of your own making.

I caught myself doing it recently.  It came after a conversation with an acquaintance.  She was telling me how strict her father was, and how much he ensured his family did all he told them.  Her father did indeed sound formidable.

My dad basically ignored us, unless we made too much noise.  He was gruff and disengaged from us.  He left all the parenting to my Mother. He was a good, hardworking bloke; a product of his own upbringing and the social norm of the time. And if he wasn’t the perfect father, I know he did his best.  I worked my way through my upbringing – good and bad – years ago.  His example gave me a lot of strengths, but there’s no doubt his parenting also had a negative impact on me.  It influenced who I married.

So, when she told me about her father, I thought “at least he took an active interest in their welfare. Not like my dad”.  One step down into the dungeon.

She married her husband because he was so unlike her father.  Her husband is a good man and she’s had a happy marriage. I married my husband also because he was so unlike my father.  But, I thought, ”my husband turned out to be cruel, manipulative and selfish. In the marriage lucky dip, she got a good prize;  I got a terrible, terrible one”. Two steps down into the dungeon.

I could have kept going;   comparing myself to someone who is better off than me.  In the past, this is how the thought life would start and I would get resentful, bitter, angry, powerless and unhappy. The impact of my bad marriage would eat away at me. But because I’ve gone down this path before, I’ve learned to recognise the signs.

I could have kept going.  The next thought would have been “Poor me. I didn’t even have Grandfathers as good role models”  The next one would have been “I married a terrible man, and when I finally have a good man in my life – my son – God allows him to die”.

I could embrace all that and trudge down the steps of the “why” and “poor me” dungeon, but I choose not to:

a)              Because I’ve been there before and it’s too easy to get trapped down there, peering out through the tiny dusty windows and wondering why I can’t soar like an eagle; and 

b)              It doesn’t do any good.  It doesn’t change anything.  Once you’ve worked through all the things that have happened;  once you’ve faced them and fixed them if you can; to keep going back over it, is self-destructive.

I had to make the journey into the past. I had to discover why I married my husband  (and to be fair to myself, I don’t think anyone would have picked how bad he would turn out to be).  I had to take the journey and discover who I really am; what makes me tick;  what my innate blueprint is.  I had to look honestly at my life and acknowledge how far below my expectations for it, fell. I had to find and confront all my own weaknesses and in the process, discover many many strengths too.  The expedition to self-awareness can be difficult and confronting.  But it’s also very empowering.

For a while, after I’d looked honestly at my life after my divorce, and counted all the shattered dreams, I could only see negatives, and I started to live in the dungeon.  I got depressed. It was only the realization that my negative thoughts had made me depressed, which gave me the impetus to break the cycle and counteract negative thoughts with positive ones. 

So, for example, when I thought of what the life-long impact of marrying such a man was, I would deliberately think “Thank you I’m not still married to him”.  And when I would think “I didn’t have a Uni education and now I’m trying to be a breadwinner on a Clerk’s wage” I would counter that with “Thank you that I at least have TAFE education and I have a job”.

So, the antidote for self-pity is thankfulness.  This is a Christian principle.  “Give thanks in all circumstances”  is what the bible says. It isn’t easy. I am glad I learned this approach before Ben died. Because in those early days when grief was a savage unabated roaring, I was able to say:

Thank you for Ben’s life;

Thank you that God chose me to be his mum;

Thank you that he turned into such a strong, steadfast, gentle man;

Thank you that we had a good relationship;

Thank you that he loved his sisters and me, and we loved him.

Some of these things are like “negative positives” or at least neutral;  they may seem like hurling lighted matches into a snowstorm.  But when you are dealing with terrible stuff, the tiny positives are bigger than they seem.  Viewed as intellectual thoughts, they probably are small.  But they hold emotional power. They are like toeholds on the sheer cliff of grief. You have to climb this cliff, so you need all the help you can get. 

And thankfulness for seemingly small things, is essential climbing equipment.