theotherbed: Wait: Pain Will Become Interesting. Poetry by Galway Kinnell

Sometimes life just sucks. It was, in a way, easy for me when my FT husband was around, because he was the source of my sorrow. It was easy in that I could look at him, or talk to him, and know without a doubt that the things he said and did made my life difficult, if not painful. All things negative became bundled up in him, him, him.

In recovery, of course I spent a lot more time focusing on myself and how my own thoughts and actions contributed to my own unhappiness. And I would get somewhere, and change some of those behaviors and perspectives, but then I'd go home, and he'd do or say something hurtful, and I'd be right back at why was this man such a FT? How could their be so much pathology in one not-so-large human being? Another distraction, taking his inventory.

He's gone, though the antagonism remains, through bank accounts and pointed text messages. But today, last night, I was a mess, running around trying to displace the hurt I was feeling, much like when you injure a limb or a collarbone, and you just can't get comfortable, no matter how hard you try. Yuck; this feels awful. I need some relief!

Seems I've been sinking to fantasy to relieve the pain I'm experiencing. It's an embarrassing fantasy, a cliche, and terribly immature. I'm letting it go, and attempting to stay in reality, starting now. Nobody got hurt by my fantasy, not even me, really. When I apply it to my guiding principle, which is, does it support my recovery, or detract from it, I don't see that much harm was done. But the essence of fantasy is that it is other-focused, whether it's an other situation, an other person, or an other reality. So in that sense, it feeds the other-focused disease called codependency.

Back again to focusing on getting my needs met by what is within, not without. I am my own best resource. But that is perhaps why some people get stuck in recovery, because that is where the pain is--not out there, but in my heart, in my mind, and it is my story, my behavior that makes or breaks the moment, day, week, month or year. So in the spirit of right now, the going is rough and it doesn't feel good to be this low, what came up was the word wait. And my favorite poem just happens to have the same title. This is Wait, by Galway Kinnell:

Wait, for now.
Distrust everything, if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven't they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become lovely again.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again,
their memories are what give them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.
Don't go too early.
You're tired. But everyone's tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a while and listen.
Music of hair,
Music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear,
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

This is the poem I give to people who have lost someone, when they are grieving. Guess I needed to read it, too.

My grief lies all within, And these external manners of lament Are merely shadows to the unseen grief that swells with silence in the tortured soul ~William Shakespeare