Salt Shakers on Broken Hearts

I have written and deleted three posts so far, and have had about three conversations on this topic in the last week. I've seen quotes, read blogs, and heard comments enough to make me realize I need to tackle this topic for me and maybe for you. Maybe you're hurting, maybe you will one day be in these shoes. Maybe you will know me a bit better after you read this post!

Grief is a lot of different things to me, but what it hasn't been is cathartic, at least not yet. The tears are not helpful. Yet. I don't feel healing. Yet. Grief is a slow, agonizing process, particularly when grieving the losses of more than one significant person in my life. Still trying to navigate the loss of my brother and realizing the relationship with my nephews will be limited at best, realizing I will never see or talk to my dad again, and then losing my brother-in-law, who I was just beginning to feel closer to, which is not easy for me. Pulling the rug out from under me doesn't even come close to describing the shock I find myself in some days when I drag myself out of bed still. There are no words to describe the stillness I feel when I think. Really think.

Add to that a mom and a sister who have found themselves widowed just 2 months of each other, and we just kind of cry to each other and have strange conversations about how everything is breaking at once. Cars, furnaces, freezers, etc... just making it screamingly obvious that they are alone. I am alone in a way too, without my dad, and yet it is hard to bring that up when they have lost their precious husbands. Grief can be isolating even among grievers. We share it, but it comes packaged so differently that we feel guilty for our own feelings sometimes.

We try to rely on outsiders, but when it comes to broken hearts, as I tried to explain to my sister today, "some people are salt shakers. And our hearts are open wounds.  But some people are balm to our spirits, and those are the ones we try to hold onto, but they are few and far between. Grief isn't for the weak. Not everyone can take this journey with us."  We don't want to find out if someone is a salt shaker or a balm, so we don't want to rely on anyone anymore. Grief is private that way.  We honestly can't handle any more hurt than we already have. I don't think a lot of people really get that. The ones that do are angels sent from God, I know.

The way I know this is from being hurt by a friend who I thought would understand and be there for me, since this person was there for me through my brother's loss. I should have known better, but I give people way more chances than I should. I hurt myself in believing in people long after I should give up. When I shared a memory of my dad, this person chose not to respond. When I noticed this person didn't bother to even ask how I was doing, I guess for fear that it would incite an unwanted conversation, I should have known not to engage then too. The signs were all there. Salt shaker. Salt shaker. This person is going to hurt you at the hardest time of your life, and you are allowing it to happen. Stop. Stop. But I wanted so much for this person to care as much as they did when I lost my brother because it helped me get through it so much then. Much like I guess a drug would soothe a pain. We rely too much on people and that's why they let us down. The person who once kept me smiling when all I could do was cry is actually one of few people that makes me cry today. Ironic, maybe, but so predictable as I think back now.

I almost wish this person was reading these words, but it wouldn't change anything anyway.  In trying to confront concerns in the past, I became misunderstood. I became seen as someone who was argumentative, who caused "stress" and became an "obligation" to fulfill. How silly for me to have taken those words to my heart. I let that opinion, based on selfishness (looking clearly now), break my already broken heart. I apologized for things I didn't do, in order to repair a friendship that honestly didn't really exist. Because if it did, I wouldn't have been treated that way in the first place. People who claim to know you and care for you just don't pull that kind of switch.

Because someone who truly calls you a friend would never want to hurt you with those kinds of words. And someone who has also lost a parent sure knows how it feels and would feel honored that I shared a memory of my dad, and would have acknowledged that. Someone who valued my friendship would have asked me right away how I was doing and would have signed their own card and made sure it went to my address and not my in-laws. Seems like a silly thing, but when you really care about someone, you make sure you cross t's and dot i's, am I wrong? I was wrong to expect a person who called me a stressor to actually care about what was going on in my life at all. That's what was wrong. Me. Too much hope, expectation. Giving credit where it's not due. I can see where I could stress someone out who doesn't want to be bothered anymore. Once I filled the original void in that person's life, I was really just in the way!

 I'm just being honest, because that's all there is.  Obviously I'm only sharing part of the story, but I share it as an example of my own failings. My failings to overlook the shortcomings of others, to not give grace, to not forgive, and to not be able to ignore the bad behavior of others. At least at this particular period in my life. I don't feel strong enough to do any of that right now. Grief is messy. It has weakened me, and it has made me angry.

And yet I know God will use all of this. Bad emotions, bad circumstances, unreliable people, tears and all, because I'm sure it has something to do with wanting me to grow. I just can't lie and say I have everything figured out and put in a nice neat box because I don't. I'm dealing with a lot of depression, a lot of disappointment, and it would be a whole lot better and easier if some people would just not be jerks, and God would just be an audible voice right now! That's the honest-to-goodness truth. And if grief has done anything for me, it has given me the ability to say exactly what I feel, because what have I got to lose? I've already lost so much, I don't care if I lose more friends if it's over speaking my truth.
My husband calls that feisty. I've always been a firecracker...