It's okay to be happy and it's okay to be sad

Over nine months ago when I got into my first real relationship after Justin died, I had to give myself permission to be happy again. I wrote a blog about letting my grief and joy dance together, like they had any right. Tonight I had to give myself permission to still be sad. 

Except for Covid, 2020 has actually been a pretty good year for me. I have everything I need and am really pretty blessed. 

It’s actually been so good, I sort of stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop. I kind of stopped looking for the next bad thing to happen. Don’t get me wrong working from home with my children here was rough, but overall I have been genuinely happy, in love. 

At counseling last week, I went in thinking things were going to go one way and they actually totally threw me for a loop. 

The week before counseling, I was really struggling with my anxiety. I switched medicines for the first time in 15 years and it was a little bumpy. Now that the dose has been increased I think that it is starting to even out. 

We did a therapy, at this particular appointment, called EMDR. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences. If you want to know more you can read about it here.

During this therapy, I was directed to imagine myself in a calm space, and then told to walk up some stairs. At the top of the stairs was a room. She asked me to describe the room, and then to sit down at the table I described. She told me to invite all the parts of Crystal to the table. 

At first, I was like, for real? This is cheesy and isn't going to work.

She asked me to tell her who was there and up pops an image of me in fourth grade. So, I said the vulnerable part of me is there and she looks like me in fourth grade. Then there were other parts of me: the anxious overwhelmed part, the fun party Crystal, and the confident no holds barred/ fight the power part. The therapist says to me, "where is sad Crystal?" 

Hmmm. I didn't realize she wasn't there. Or that I hadn't invited her. 

Then I said, "She's not here." My therapist said, "why not?" 

"Because I don't want her here. I am tired of her and I have no control over her,” I said. 

I have been fighting sad for three years and almost four months. I have spent a lot of time, wondering if things would make me cry. Not knowing when a song or a movie or a tv show would make me cry. I have felt like I became grief and grief became me. 

I am tired of being sad. I have cried at work, in the car, while doing my taxes, in a bar, in my bathroom, at the doctors office, and in the garden. If I have spent time in a place, I have probably cried there. 

I know I can't just make it stop. I can't not be sad, because being sad and crying is how my body and brain deal with all that was lost in the summer of 2017. 

My therapist asked me to think back to the first time I really felt sad, the sad that made me never want to be sad again. As my brain jumped there on it's own, I literally felt sitting in the counseling office like I did the day after. Going to the funeral home, answering asinine questions, getting the bag of crap out of my dead husbands pockets and then looking into the chapel just enough to know that there really was a body there but not far enough that I could actually see him like that. I needed to know he was there but didn’t want to remember him like that. 

I lost it. All the real of this horrible reality set in and I was on the floor racked with sobs. I almost fell to the floor in the counseling office, remembering how it felt. 

This was the beginning of the trauma that happened that summer, trauma that affects my life daily as well as my children's. I thought that after 3 years and 4 months, after having a boyfriend for 9 months, that I shouldn't still be this sad. I know I’m still sad, but am I still that sad?  I was embarrassed that I couldn't control it, and that it could still knock me to my knees. 

The thing is, because this was trauma, it wasn't filed in my brain correctly. So, every time some trigger opens the sad filing cabinet in my brain, all this mess comes flying out. When my anxiety gets the best of me, then all that mess comes spilling out and I am on that floor again sobbing. I know that I can survive whatever comes my way, but I feel like I will break. You can be pretty broken and still survive. 

I know that I am allowed to be happy. What I don't know is how to balance the two. It's like I figured out how to be happy, but couldn't handle being both so I kept sad Crystal out cause she's not that fun anyway. And just like I had to find space to be happy before, now I have to give space and grace to myself to be sad. 

And I may just have to accept that this sad, softer Crystal is now just as much me as my curly hair is, and has just as much right to come to the table as the confident part does. It’s okay to be sad, and it’s okay to be happy. In this messy broken world we have to keep letting our grief dance with our joy, because it has a right.