Willoughby

I don’t have many words these days.

Life goes on, when someone you love dies, and that’s so frustrating. I want the world to stop for a minute. Or at least I want to take a step away from it all for a minute, but unfortunately I still have to get groceries and go to work and say hello back to people. And all those people expect me to be normal or at least decent, but all I want is to not talk to anyone, to not look at anyone, to not care about things like money or drama or events.

Everyone is so sympathetic at first, so many big feelings sent. And then, like the rest of life, those people also go on, because they’re those people, not me, and because they should go on, they have to go on, they just obviously would go on, because why would they stop life to just watch me grieve for days and weeks and months? It only makes sense. Just because my world comes to a screeching halt, doesn’t mean the world comes to a screeching halt. Which is a little whiplashy. So after the first few days, most people have forgotten it, and after the first couple weeks, most who remembered it won’t dare to bring it up.

Why do people think it will hurt too much if they keep bringing up someone you’ve lost? Letting them disappear hurts so much worse. I daydream of moments when a friend would say “How are you doing with all this?” or “Are you okay?” or “I’m so sorry you lost him” or “Do you want to talk about it?” or “What was he like?”

Because I don’t want to be done with him. Ever.

What was he like? He was perfect. And by perfect I mean in a particular way.

He cost a lot of money to take care of in his old age. And when we left for too long in the evenings he would tear up a toilet paper roll or dump the contents of a backpack at the front door, which seemed to be his way of saying “I need to be with you.” His snoring and licking and midnight hijinks made it hard to sleep until I finally bought ear plugs. To record anything for my blog anymore, I had to close myself behind two doors and hope that no footsteps in the hall would make him bark and then deal with his looks of betrayal for a while when I finally opened the doors. And some nights I really didn’t want to take him back outside before bed.

So then what does perfect mean?

Perfect means that I never had to wonder, for even a second. Willoughby loved me. And he just wanted to be with me. And he would always, always be there, wagging his tail, ready to give all the licks and hugs. I napped more when Willoughby was around, because when you’re in the presence of so much love, resting makes sense. It was just love. Acceptance. Friendship. Perfect.

Oh, and he was absolutely hilarious.

I scheduled myself a Monday off work just so that I could bring Willoughby out into the world for one more good adventure day. His tumor was growing and I knew he didn’t have much time. The week before, I had taken him on a walk in the strong wind. He had run and run with the blowing wind accentuating the massive grin plastered on his face. Couldn’t get enough. When we had gotten to the front door, it was abundantly clear he wasn’t ready to leave the great outdoors. So we stood in the wind until the wind became snow and his old man legs started shaking and then finally he sat straight down on the sidewalk and I realized that this was the most important stuff of life so I sat down next to him and we just watched the world and felt the beating snow. And it was our best day. So I scheduled the next Monday to take him to go see all of the world that he could possibly want to see. But he didn’t make it to Monday.

I still feel this need to explain, somehow justify, why Willoughby’s death left me as torn up as it did. I think I’ve said “I know we only had him for about a year” twenty times, and I hate every single time that I have said that. When Willoughby died he was my best friend and he was my wife’s best friend. It doesn’t take long to fall in love with unconditional love. To become attached to it. Wrapped up in it. The last few years haven’t been easy. Honestly, life hasn’t. I had a lucky few light-hearted years in my early 20’s, but I didn’t realize then how much childhood trauma was simmering under the surface. Add a couple concussions that brought so much to the surface and then a pandemic and loss of community and chronic pain and too many more little things that added up so much. For a lot of it, Willoughby kept me going. Life drained me, but then I’d get home and Willoughby’s entire rear half would be violently wagging at the door because he was so damn excited that WE WERE TOGETHER AGAIN! So life was okay. And then he wasn’t there. And life wasn’t okay anymore.

I never really understood the anger part of grief so much. Like, sure anger about mean or abusive people that hurt you or the ones you love. But anger over the loss of such a good, pure, perfect thing? Why would you be angry?

Maybe because it was my lifeline. It was the good thing. It was the only uncontaminated thing. Everything else was up in the air. Now I understand the anger.

We gave Willoughby a home to retire in, but I honestly think in a more real way he gave us a home. He gave me a home. He gave my heart a safe place. And he gave me the gift of love. A kind of love that, even when he’s gone, is still just as strong. The kind of love that doesn’t depend on stuff and doesn’t go back and forth. Just complete, unconditional, untiring love.

“There’s nothing you could have done, ” said a soft voice, “Calm down, you will survive.”
~ SYML, DIM

Thursday morning I took Willoughby for a walk. All he wanted was to eat grass. He wasn’t interested in anything else. Sometimes dogs do that when they’re not feeling good in their tummies. I think it was the tumor taking over. That morning, Lyssi and I finally listened to SYML’s new EP, DIM. That night, Willoughby couldn’t stand up. The next morning, after a lonely drive crying in a way I didn’t know I could cry, we said goodbye.

“I want some more time, I can’t give you up.
One lifetime is never enough, so stay with me.
More than a body, you’re more than my heart,
you’re my blood, stay with me, stay with me!”
~ SYML, STAY CLOSE

Whenever I park my car and hop out, I instinctively glance up at the window and watch Willoughby let out an over-excited howl because we get to be together again. Now I keep looking up at the window before remembering that he won’t be there. It’s rough. And I keep imagining some way that we could actually see him again.

“Lay down with me tonight, breathing slow . . . rest now, kiss me goodbye in the morning. I’m with you always.”
~ SYML, DIM

Nora McInerny was right. In her Ted Talk on grief, which is everything I have to say about grief at this point, she shares the very curious fact that when people lose someone who matters so deeply to them, they keep using the present tense to talk about them. Because they’re not really gone. I used to not get that. But after Willoughby died, I kept catching myself talking about him like he was still here. “He’s the best.” “He’s so full of love.” “He’s a senior dog.” “He’s such a good boy!” “He’s our best friend.” “I love Willoughby so much!” “He’s so sweet!” Because he is all of those things. Willoughby’s Willoughby-ness will always be real, and always be beautiful, and always be happy, and always be perfect.

“Though you had to go, I won’t forget your light. . . .
I will protect your light.”
~ SYML, DIM

And I don’t ever want to be done talking about him. Or even talking to him. I still do that. Because he’s the best.

I miss you Willoughby. Maybe one day I’ll be able to write down just how much you mean to me, to us. And maybe I’ll be able to speak about some of the deep truths I learned about life and loss and love and grief and beauty and strength and friendship and hope from you. And just how rough it is to not see you anymore. For now, I don’t have many words.

Cut yourself some slack, it’s just how brains work

Sights, sounds, smells, and all those senses enter the brain through something called the thalamus.

The thalamus passes this mix of sensations in two directions: The amygdala and the frontal cortex.

The amygdala keeps you alive by freaking out about stuff. It quickly checks with the hippocampus to see if the new information might remind us of any yucky stuff that’s happened to us in the past. And if it feels any threat, it goes “Okay, it’s time to stay alive!” And it bombards you with stress chemicals and makes you do things like fight or fly or freeze.

The frontal cortex, on the other hand, thinks a bit more critically. Like “Um that’s just a shadow” or “Not all bosses are as evil as your old boss” or “No stress, zombies aren’t real” or “Actually not everybody who calls your name from another room is about to beat you.” And so it helps you not try to hit everybody or run screaming from the room.

And here’s the fun thing.

The information travels from the thalamus to the amygdala more quickly than to the frontal cortex.

In other words: “Not responding emotionally” is literally impossible.

Your brain is wired to save you from lions and to feel suddenly hurt by your partner when they didn’t mean anything. You literally can’t help freaking out sometimes about things you don’t need to freak out about, especially when it looks or feels or sounds a little bit like something that has hurt you before.

This doesn’t mean you can’t practice and get sort of good at slowing your reactivity so that your frontal cortex has a chance to be like “Um you don’t need to punch them in the face.”

But it does mean that you’re not a bad or defective person just because you get emotional or scared or react sometimes in ways you wish you wouldn’t.

Especially when it’s stuff that brings up your deepest scars.

Your amygdala is just trying to save your life.

Deep breaths, count to 3, trust the process, your frontal cortex can help you sort it out.

That being said, for some of us these pathways have been screwed up by especially rough experiences. If you feel like you’re always, always being hijacked by overreacty feelings, don’t blame yourself–maybe you’ve just had to work too hard to keep yourself safe in life. It’s not fair, but don’t give up hope. There are some PTSD therapies that can really help to rewire this.

But in general, I think it can really help to understand about ourselves: None of us are “calm, cool, and collected” the instant something happens. Your amygdala will always show up before your frontal cortex. Which means working on nurturing a baseline of safety and taking deep breaths and counting to 3 are all a much better and fairer use of your energy than calling yourself stupid or sensitive or irrational.

You’re just good at staying alive, and sometimes it makes life weird.

That’s just human.

~

For a so-much-deeper-life-changingly-eye-opening exploration of this and other humany topics, read The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.

Good luck with your amygdala. <3

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Letting things float away and trusting they’ll float back if they’re yours

When I finally commit to writing something, I end up scrapping or shelving it more than one out of every ten times.

That ratio has actually been climbing.

It reminds me that the braggable stuff in life is only a part of it.

It feels like some wisdom received from experience, that says: You don’t have to always get it right. You don’t have to always show up. You don’t have to always be on.

And perhaps most importantly, a wisdom that says: You’re allowed to walk away.

“Sunk-Cost Bias” says “You’ve made it this far, you’ve worked this hard, you’ve invested this much–don’t let it go!”

I’ve saved everything artistic from my childhood. Every shitty drawing. Every angsty journal. I’m a human, and I’m addicted to holding on.

For Christmas one year, Lyssi got me a “Buddha Board.” It was a way to learn how to practice the opposite. You draw something unique–something literally once-in-a-lifetime–and in a few seconds it fades away and is gone.

What are you desperately holding onto, something you’ve “committed” to, spent time on, felt dependent on, that you may need to let go?

It’s okay to let go.

It’s okay to scrap things.

It’s okay to shelve things.

It’s okay to “fail” at things.

You’re still here.

Some of the biggest, baddest, coolest, powerfulest posts I’ve written are sitting in that drafts folder and probably always will be. They may have been published if they belonged to someone else, but they belonged to me, and I found that even the loud, shiny ones sometimes just . . . were not truly me.

Even the good stuff, the big stuff, the wow stuff . . . is sometimes the stuff, when you listen deep down, that your heart and body tell you is not yours.

And you can hold on, and just be you-ish.

Or you can let go.

And if there’s something you’re afraid of letting go because, you just don’t know, maybe it’s actually where your real self hides–it will find its way back. You don’t have to delete the drafts and swear them off. Just be able to say, “At least not today . . .”

The you-stuff doesn’t have to be held tightly. You can let go of it and find that it just naturally stays with you.

It’s the stuff you’re holding onto because you know if you didn’t hold on so damn tightly it wouldn’t be there anymore . . . that’s the stuff that maybe it’s time to let go of.

When I first started writing, I had a very business-training-y feel to my posts. “Professional.” Later I peppered in a little emotion and it started to feel perhaps more self-help-esque. Vulnerable periods. Vague, fabley periods. Times where I was pretty sure I was just trying to write like Neil Gaiman (whether or not I succeeded, don’t bother letting me know, if it’s an illusion it’s a happy one). It would even be fair to call a few of my posts “emo.”

Point is–I change.

And you change.

And as we change, stuff that used to just float effortlessly by our side starts to drift away. Sometimes we reach out and desperately cling to it in denial, slowly and subconsciously increasing our level of can’t-keep-this-lie-up until we’re completely lost. But sometimes we listen to the wisdom from deep in our heart, or maybe our gut, that says “let it be what it is, stop clinging.”

And on the other hand as we change, stuff that we once courageously let float away . . . floats back. One day I’m going to finish or maybe re-write that draft about the affect of growing up in a conservative evangelical “reformed” church. Turns out it wasn’t meant to be last September, and it’s still not today, but I think I can sense it drifting toward me again. I guess what I mean to say is, if you’re afraid of letting go of a good thing you have, don’t be afraid. You know you. You’ll let it back in if it belongs with you again.

I sort of love the Drafts folder. It’s a really powerful reminder that life isn’t Instagram. That humans, as magical as they are, aren’t really magical. That you literally will not get it right a thousand times, and it doesn’t matter.

And that you are always, always, always allowed to let the fuck go.

~

:)

As long as they know I’m trying my best

I dedicate this post to my fellow survivors (current or future) of “As-long-as-people-know-I’m-doing-my-best” syndrome.

It’s okay if people don’t think you’re a good person.

It really is.

Some people will. For sure.

In fact, the way this world is set up means that the only way to be the person some people like is to be the person some people hate.

It’s . . . weird.

Life shapes its own unique deep-down needs in each of us. For some of us, our big, ultimate goal was–or is–for people to think we’re good enough, like that we’re . . . doing our best. We know we’re not perfect, of course, but we just need people to think that we tried and are trying to be as perfect as we could or can be.

And it freaks us out, the idea that someone might think we’re up to no good, or that we mean badly, even once in a while, even for one moment of weakness.

So when someone suggests that we’re . . . not getting it right, or even gives us a vibe that they may be of the opinion that we’re off course–making the wrong decisions, not pulling our weight, being embarrassing, whatever it might be–we feel an overwhelming pull to realign with their standard for who we should be. Their thoughts, feelings, views, wishes.

So we don’t live our life. We live “theirs.” All of theirs. Whatever they want us to do. It’s too scary to disappoint.

And then it turns out we never lived our own life.

And that sucks.

I can remember times where I felt like, “I don’t so much mind getting in trouble, as long as they know I didn’t mean to” or “as long as they know I tried my best.” Like the fear wasn’t even the bad things that happen when we do bad things. The fear was people thinking I did bad things on purpose. Times where literally I was like “Oh yeah, no, I’m fine with the punishment, as long as you clarify for everyone that I did-my-best/didn’t-deserve-it/didn’t-know . . .” Or times where I realized I didn’t so much care if I achieved this thing I was working to, I just wanted everyone to think I tried my hardest. . . .

If that’s you–if the gripping, deafening, overwhelming, fire-alarm-ringing-daily-in-your-head is that absolute need for people to think you’re well-meaning . . .

. . . what does that actually do for your life?

. . . and is it really your life?

I wonder, if you traced the roots of that need, where you would find it comes from. And maybe that it’s actually not fair or . . . real.

For a lot of us, it comes from a formative human or humans in our lives that withheld something we really did need–like love, acceptance, comfort, soothing, care, and nourishment of every kind–and then told us we didn’t deserve those things right now because we’re being “stubborn” or “selfish” or . . . you know, all those you’re-not-good-enough words. And we ended up feeling certain that the way to get the things we truly need is by earning them. And since “perfect” was never on the table, “always-trying-my-absolute-best-to-be-perfect-and-never-ever-ever-doing-any-less” will have to do.

And if that’s you . . .

. . . and you’re exhausted . . .

. . . maybe embrace your imperfection for a minute.

Maybe intentionally do something not quite perfect. Like at least one time. Maybe be selfish for a second. Be careless for a second. Be angry for a second. Be undisciplined for a second. Be lazy for a second.

And find that . . . the world didn’t end . . . you’re still here . . . and your real friends still love you . . . and you can still love you.

Nothing good is coming from this crippling addiction to the approval of others–from this need to be seen as “the good one.”

Stop being the perfect one.

Just be the You one.

~

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Does today count?

Does today need a certain quality, a certain worthwhileness, before it really counts?

You know the days that count. When you trekked the windy miles to that mountain peak. When you started that job you’d been studying for and searching for since you were 20. When you cheers’d a glass of wine over a fancy dinner on that last dreamy night of your honeymoon.

Life is made up of so, so many moments. Like literally over 2 billion seconds. Which sounds like a lot and also sounds like not much.

It does go by.

And you can live for the big days.

Or you can live for all of them.

~

Wishing you aliveness today. <3 Throw your email below if you could use a little fuel now and then.