why i blog, what i learned about grief

There is this funny disconnect with my blogging, and wanting others to understand me better through reading my thoughts, yet never directly asking anyone significant in my life to do so. The thoughts are just here, I secretly wish people in my life would read it, but a part of me does fear their judgment. A part of me secretly wants them to see the world how I do, yet I already know our values and acceptance of other perspectives are not as flexible as mine. And it's not wrong, it's just different, and I will respect that. So here are my thoughts, for ten years! I should have some one-person celebration lol. 10 year anniversary woot! I've never had one yet.

Another reason for blogging was I guess, due to my former passive aggressive personality traits, I had kept all my emotions inside never addressing them or working towards understanding my true self. Blogging helped me rationalize my maladaptive thought process and the negative emotions that resulted in them, and the negative life experiences (or lack of life experience due to fear) that resulted from that. It's cheap therapy. As long as the person seeks knowledge and appropriately applies it to ones own life without trying to "convert" others into believing things, I think the search for self and peace will be successful. I was a hardheaded preachy savior complex ridden college kid. Some of the preachiness lingers, only because I'm so passionate about learning unmedicated methods of healing, but I admit and accept when I'm being an ass. My partner will remind me when it's time to shut it lol. My past preachiness came from many things: not wanting children to experience unneeded pain from stupid parents (I wanted to fix my past by preventing pain in their lives), having a friend commit suicide and then another die in a car accident months later with no models of coping.

My parents never taught me about grief, mourning or coping with life's events. I don't blame them, and it's taken me years to understand that after a certain age, I can either stay like this and blame others and search for the "whys" I turned out this way, or I can accept it, search for ways of positive growth, and move on with my life a better person. When K died though, I wanted to relive his life, up to the point of suicide. I just learned that this is a very common step loved ones of murder victims and those who comit suicide do. They retrace the steps of murder or suicide thinking that this will bring closure, or a better understanding of the death. A reverand stated that this grief can last a lifetime because instead of addressing the pain, they took the route of revenge or suicide themselves. So, people need to address pain, accept loss and live life fully. It's not feeling guilty to be alive, it's living with people's memories instead of constant wishing they were still here. It's cheesy, but the person who died would want you to be happy, not forgetting them, but be happy.

The video also mentioned how some feel like letting go of the pain means letting go of this relationship with the person who died. Personally, I believe it. I have experienced being comfortable with depression because it was the strongest emotion that linked me to K. Looking back, I wish those Psychologists at the school I was at took me through the steps of grief, told me everyone grieves in their own way and where to go for resources. No one is perfect, I was sad for a friggin long time, but I'm ok now. I shouldn't hold grudges, I'm just hoping others will get the resources they need when tragedies happen. So if you're experiencing loss, finding a support group of nonjudging people is a good step. Family and friends sometimes don't know what to say because they're uncomfortable with the topic, or they don't want to hurt you. Silence doesn't mean they don't care, it just means they don't know what to say. Sometimes we need to tell people what we need. We're not perfect. I hope everyone will learn to cope with loss, and that the world in general will become more open to talking about it. It's less likely for us to be fearful of things we know than things we do not. <3

anger towards other groups

So, a peer is riled up over certain coworkers celebrating a holiday during the workweek. I've been there--especially in an elementary school setting, everyone doubles up on their work load and it can get pretty chaotic. He's asking why can't they celebrate during the weekend. Well, if only all holidays were like that. I mean, we have 'Winter break" where people mislabel it Christmas break, and no one complains about that. I don't know. It's been so long where I've felt anger or identified character traits with an ethnic group, that instead of feeling offended, I'm trying to understand the reasons for why a person could get that upset at a group of people, not just certain individuals. I know it's about generalizing past experiences to similar stimuli (lol people are stimuli), but since I'm not at that stage of life where the anger lingers outwards to others instead of the internal questioning to understand and eliminate the maladaptive behaviors, I would like to be reminded of how the thought process works and 'evolves'.

Why and how could a person be so emotionally damaged that they develop and believe these stereotypes? There are numerous paths to being: there's the genetic factor that is activated by environment, there is the cultural path where certain cultures have such inherent beliefs that stereotypes can be taught as normal ways of seeing the world (and it can go unquestioned an entire life), illusory causation--there's the conditioned views where someone of a certain group mistreats you and over time you believe this to be true, so when it happens again it confirms your belief even though 99.9% of people in that same group have been kind to you in this lifetime. 99.9% yes, I exaggerate. I mean, it can develop in a bajillion methods. Who really knows? I'd like to post a child's and Early Child Development's definition of fair, though.

For children, fair means: Everyone gets the same.
For Human Development and ECE: Everyone gets what he or she needs.

I've truly come to understand this only through working with children with special needs. Some kids will need more time to develop their motor skills if they live in a neighborhood where parks aren't safe to play in, or if parents are in low SES where they need to work constantly so their children have no time to go outside. Other kids will be fine because they have access to more. I think this can be applied to adults with understanding that we're not equal in terms of what is fair. If a religious group has a holiday during the work week, good for them! An extra day off, but sometimes it would be nice to respond instead of reacting to others getting something you wish you had. I understand the calendar year is too short to acknowledge all holidays, but I don't know if most people want to have a day of repent instead of work if it weren't a tradition.

I acknowledge that it's a burden for others to work 150% when coworkers are off, but I would also like to see a movement towards understanding as well.