Twenty Eight: 11. Endings
Bad shit.
A heart attack & gun violence invited me to my first two funerals. I was four years old.
I remember some stuff from before I left the crib, but my consciousness really kicked into gear with those two funerals. The emotional whiplash made my brain flip some switches early.
I didn’t know what it was like to have something come to an end yet.
Something ending, let alone from death - the ultimate ending, was so hard to understand.
There are things you think & feel when someone you love dies you can’t explain well. Vocabulary at any age can’t help much, let alone when you’re a god damn toddler.
It took 23 years after those funerals, & a whole lot of self sabotage because of those funerals, to learn endings are acceptable, we can all handle endings with practice, & we can find ways to live a life where endings can ultimately be okay. Where endings can be celebrated instead of feared.
But again, this took some time.
Suicide attempts. Prison visits. Mental breakdowns. Divorces. Supernatural bullshit. Job loses. Separations of all sorts were happening at all times growing up. Bad people & bad accidents intercepting good relationships & good events - always. Every few months, some sort of impending ending loomed.
The odds were a coin toss whether we’d dodge a bullet or get annihilated again.
I don’t know if anyone, myself especially, ever found an opportunity long enough to process all of it.
Life starts to get better as you’re older. Or at least it feels better.
You get used to the chaos. All the dark stuff starts to feel normal. If not normal, it’s expected at some point.
You learn all the bad stuff happens to a lot of other people all over the place, too.
We gotta keep rocking & rolling anyways.
So we do.
But, while you’re getting used to the chaos, you’re also making habits out of bad coping mechanisms.
Maybe not you specifically.
I can vouch for myself, though.
Instead of processing & understanding what was happening when I was younger, I got comfortable.
I got comfortable with bad stuff happening. I got comfortable handling bad stuff. I got comfortable moving on from bad stuff. I got comfortable staying confused. I got comfortable running away. I got comfortable never healing.
While convenient for 20+ years, it wasn’t healthy. It actually caused & still causes problems.
Problems getting in the way of good endings.
Not understanding & processing endings, particularly tragic or sudden & unexpected ones, leaves a wake of incomplete things.
Incomplete thoughts. Incomplete feelings. Incomplete actions.
We want things to be complete.
All the best stories are complete.
But we can’t always get what we want.
Incomplete stuff.
In real life.
Outside of our stories.
Is …
Scary.
Being scared of endings - especially the incomplete ones - became a feeling so strong most of my decisions were informed in some way by this fear.
Scared of something? Anticipate it.
Makes the crushing blow feel less crushing.
But anticipating something so scary, without processing & understanding & applying what you learn to yourself, just creates a self fulfilling prophecy.
You stop committing fully to people or things. You get comfortable with tasks & relationships & events never really wrapping up … just fizzling into nothing. You begin to expect or need things to stay incomplete indefinitely. I own all of those behaviours.
If you get used to what’s scary, it starts to feel safe. No matter how terrible.
Something shifted for me a year ago when I started processing & understanding traumas while they were happening.
Still healing from my 24th funeral, chaos compounded.
Family, friends, colleagues … Sicknesses, abuse, threats …
A lot of endings & impending endings back to back to back …
I got tired of coping.
Being comfortable in the bullshit became uncomfortable.
New switches in my brain flipped the more I talked with others & talked with myself & began to process & understand & apply what I was learning to myself.
They’re still flipping.
The chaos me & everyone else around me experienced when I was four finally made sense.
Endings still hurt. But the aren’t tragic.
Endings still happen. But they don’t need to be complete.
Endings are inevitable. But I don’t need to expect them.
I’ve started collecting new tools to accept & celebrate what is, what was, & what will be.
Not at my pace. But at whatever pace things decide to happen in.
Bad habits don’t get rewired overnight.
I feel & write more optimistic now.
But, dudes, my instincts are whatever I did to survive for 20+ years.
I’m excited to work daily at applying my new habits.
Leaning into feeling different & behaving different as endings come & go is key.
It’s going to take a lot more endings.
This is good, though.
Maybe in another 20+ years I’ll something will change this new perspective.
I hope so, to be honest.
Until then, I get to choose more peace & joy in this stuff.
I’ve already got a bunch of great examples from last year,
& I’ve got a bunch of great examples from this year,
of endings being accepted not anticipated,
relationships being committed to not abandoned,
& fear being run to not from.
Good shit.