White Flag

Life is full of serendipities. Coincidences. That word doesn’t come across the way it should. “Incidences that coincide”. Not accidents. More like messages that everything around us is ours and aligning somehow, for better or worse.

I was in the grocery store the other day and this song came on. “I won’t go down with this ship…I won’t put my hands up and surrender.”

This past year I’ve been telling myself this, over and over. I am a warrior. No white flag. No surrender.

These words rattled down from my brain into my chest. Something tightened, and then throbbed, and then released. I stood there in the aisle, tears falling down my cheeks.

Surrender.

My husband has been in bed for a week. We don’t know exactly what’s wrong with him (5 negative COVID tests later and you’d think we have confidence that this isn’t the answer, but who knows these days), but it’s been bad. Really bad. Inhalers and steroids and trips to the hospital. And this, with an immunocompromised cancer patient to attend to under the same roof, has been tricky. A bit of a minefield, really.

Life’s been a bit of a minefield for a while, so at least I’m getting better at tip toeing through the quagmire. We adapt and gain skill sets in life in strange ways.

Today he pulled himself out of the wreckage and took himself to the worksite, wheezing and weak, because he doesn’t want to let anybody down anymore (no one else is on site, thankfully, or I’d have nailed him to the floor). There was no talking him out of it. His friend was relying on him. His family, too. I can’t work. There aren’t many options.

And yet there always are. We just don’t give ourselves permission, sometimes, to take them.

Today is a friend’s birthday party at the swimming pool. Lucy was going to go. Violet can’t swim because she still has her Central Line in her chest for treatment and can’t go in the water. She’s a fish, so this has been a major heartbreak during this protocol. Almost two years without water, including showers or deep baths. It’s been rough, but comparatively speaking, it’s one of the more manageable pain points. She had come to grips with missing it, but Lucy has been counting the minutes to finally go swimming with her friends. Today we woke up with sore throats and sniffles. Another heartbreak. Another missed opportunity for fun.

But she surrendered to it with grace. It was amazing, considering she is five and, well, very feisty about her desires. She got it. She’s missed enough things for health reasons that she’s getting used to it. Not the end of the world. There will be other opportunities.

I’m sick, too, and my brother is in town this weekend. We had plans to savour the long weekend – BBQ, go to the car show, do community things that we’ve been missing out on. But now we don’t want to risk passing anything else on.

I am a silver linings kind of gal. Maybe that’s an understatement. In the movie “Mixed Nuts”, Madeline Kahn’s character, Mrs. Munchnik, says to Rita Wilson’s, “You could see the bright side of the plague.”

That’s me. That’s the kind of “toxic positivity” I deliver on a regular basis. Drives my husband mental. But it’s gotten me a through a lot of shit.

And yet, sometimes I know it is denial. Not of what is, but of how I feel about it.

What is is relative. There’s no absolute truth about the “good” or the “bad” about something. It is truly how we interpret it.

But sometimes I don’t let myself interpret things in a way that is honest with where I’m at.

When do we let ourselves go down with the ship? When do we give ourselves permission to feel sick and sorry for ourselves? When is it ok to tell ourselves “this is just shitty”, and let it be. Sit in the pain of it.

I have an extreme aversion to discomfort, and nothing is more uncomfortable than a feeling of disempowerment. Our power is in our attitude, and I’ve always known that. And since we have control over that, I think I should have control over my own pain all the time. If I can help it, I’m getting out of the weeds as fast as possible and back on top.

But there is some unhealthy resistance in that. I have such a hard time sitting still. Quite literally, I can’t stay on the couch for more than five minutes. If we put a movie on, I have a million things in front of me at the same time. Puzzles, projects…distractions. Must keep my mind moving.

Because if it’s still – if I’m still – anxiety creeps in. Pain. Discomfort. And there’s no room for that.

But there is also power in surrendering to pain. To making space for it. Because not everything is sunshine and roses.

My husband grounds me. He reminds me that I don’t have to like everything. That sometimes things are awful and I can admit that. I can surrender to it, because then it can work its way through me and not get silently stuck in the pipes. I can be mad at the asshole that cut me off, or the fact that he forgot to pick up toilet paper, or that our daughter got cancer. I don’t have to put a happy face sticker over top of it all the time.

I can be sick and stay on the couch and not validate that to anyone, even if my kids want to play and he wants a sandwich and there are 10,000 other productive things I could be doing to make our home and our lives and our community better.

Or prove my worthiness. Because I know that’s at the core of that problem. If I am angry and selfish and not “doing things”, I’m not proving myself to the world.

And I know that’s at the core of why my husband is currently slogging away when he should be resting. Because he doesn’t want to fail – he doesn’t want to not be worthy.

We all have that problem to some extent. We get older and its tough not to take notice of how others perceive us. Religions are often founded on the principle that we have certain rules to follow in order to be deemed “good people”. We need to earn our marks on the chart. We need to put in our time and work hard and keep moving, keep validating, keep our chins up.

I know deep down that this isn’t the way it really is. It’s good to feel good, and being kind and honorable and generous feels good. Not because someone tells us it should. And yet we still do so many things for other reasons other than that.

And then people like me shame ourselves for not feeling good all of the time. For not looking on the bright side.

There is always a bright side, and I know that to the core. But it doesn’t mean we always have to be looking at it. We can surrender. We can admit to ourselves when a positive perspective just isn’t available in the moment. And we should. Because otherwise it is denial, and that gets the better of us in the end.

Things aren’t awful at all. We are just sick, and we will get better. We will make the next party, maybe, or not, and it will be fine. But things could be better. We could feel better. We could all be at that party swimming with our friends. We could win the lottery and Matt could take a guilt free day off and we could host a big celebration here for everyone. Maybe we will someday. But today my chest hurts and I’m disappointed. And I’m going to sit on the couch and nurse a little self-pity if I can. Laughter and joy is great, but a little honest sense of defeat is probably good medicine, too.