Don’t Save Your Tears
Tears are words the heart can’t express - Gerard Way
Are you a runner? And by that question I mean do you run from problems? Does the idea of dealing with mess make you want to immediately take off? Clearly by now you can tell this was my life motto. I was a ‘run faster than your problems’ kind of girl. Why deal with this when I can handle it some other time. Save my tears for another day. I have other fun things I would much rather be doing. I even had a soundtrack. First song was Don’t Wanna Think About You by Simple Plan. Yes. I was that committed. But even the best laid plans fail.
When I came to Boston, Massachusetts I had just left a Blood Diamond War in Sierra Leone. With my motto in hand I reinvented myself and pretended like nothing existed. What trauma? Please, I am fine like aged wine! I smiled and laughed like everything was peachy. Like I wasn’t having nightmares. Like I wasn’t jumpy every time I heard a loud sound. Like I wasn’t on the verge of having panic attacks. Why deal with the cause of this when its easier and more fun to run. However what I failed to see was that it catches up with you. Every. Single. Time. Yes. Not the first thing I have tried running from. But it was the biggest.
My best friend ( and future husband unbeknownst to me at the time) was the first to notice that something was not right. Not that I had strange twitches or something. But I was avoiding fireworks on July 4th. I couldn’t look at anything that made me think of Sierra Leone. I would tap my foot nervously in uncomfortable conversations about my past. I was very brief with my responses. He finally just came out and asked me what’s up. It was really hard to lie to Mike. He was the type to stare into your soul and want to heal it. But I sure did fight hard to not let everything out because it scared me. I didn’t know what I had pushed down at this point. Time had gone by. I had really adapted to this new person I had become. Someone who lets nothing bother her at all.
But as you keep filling a balloon with air its bound to burst. And boy did it. A year into my marriage of holding so much in I suddenly was depressed and crying and angry and confused. Just all over the place. I couldn’t understand why. Or what was happening. But it was clearly not good. I couldn’t run any more. I had to face it. I had been through something awful and I needed healing and self care. It was a new journey that took a lot of work and time. I have multiple journals to prove it. But it taught me a huge lesson. Deal with it now. Or else the cleanup later will be nasty. By the time I went through my next tragedy of losing my husband/best friend suddenly to heart failure, I knew I made him proud by processing it in a healthy way. Don’t save those tears. Just let them fall. Let it all come out. Take those steps towards healing and renewal. With love and a support system you will make it through.
