No Time for This

Just working out the anger before I go to bed so I have happy dreams instead of angry dreams. This is modified from a free-flowing e-mail to my best friend who has been through so much with me in the past 2 years!
I had another one of those conversations tonight with someone saying how amazed and proud she was of how quickly I landed a good job after being laid off.

This is all very interesting and puzzling to me. Maybe it's because I have the support of good friends and because I feel more mentally healthy than the average "Jane" but to me it just seems like what you DO.

Now that I think about it, though, it would only seem like an accomplishment to your average person. To your average "Driver" (stereotypical Type A) you just figure out what you need to do and then you do it. Even though I suffer from the same self-doubts as anyone else, I also believe that I am a good and capable person and would do a good job at any place that I decided I wanted to work.

It also helps that I seem to have the ability to somehow detach from things that are traumatic. I'm not saying I didn't have to work through the feelings of low self-worth that are common with a lay-off but they, generally, didn't cause me too much despair (other than when I let my former husband momentarily cause me to doubt myself).

It reminded me of 9/11. I think I told you about how I was able to watch it all unfold on TV and not feel, at all, the same impact that it had on everyone else. I had work to do. I was having a baby any day (8 days later as it turned out and I think this was a big part of my ability to detach). There was a huge bike event that weekend and I had to finish the arrangements for our booth. I remember being frustrated that no one seemed to be working that afternoon. My attitude was, "The world goes on. Bad things happen. We can't shut down because something bad happen." Heck I should have been Bush's spokesperson - "Everyone go on with your business and keep spending (money you don't have)"! To me it didn't seem that much different than the terrible things that happen all over the world every minute of every day - I just knew from all my reading of sad memoirs that American had been sheltered until that point. I remember feeling, "Look - we all still have to get up tomorrow morning. We have to eat. We have to go to work." And I'm about to bring a child into this world and I am NOT going to process this on any level.

It's like I figure there is no TIME for wallowing in grief.

Maybe, too, this is why when there are times when I feel I do need to grieve that I have historically wanted to flee and be by myself? It feels shameful for me to allow myself to "go there" and grieve? And maybe I worry that if I grieve I will get angry which I already have recently discovered I like to avoid as an experience?

But as I type I think, I am not an "angry" person - I don't get mad about little things. The things I get angry about might actually be useful anger - like when you get angry at someone for passing out with your kids in their care? Or angry at being treated unfairly? Or angry at injustices in the world?

Well, aren't I just a wealth of words tonight?? I'm not even sure if they are coherent at this point! Hopefully you will be able to pick up what I'm setting down because it is actually making a lot of connections in my brain.

I've stayed up WAY too late tonight!

J~