Book Club Selection

I’ve been grieving the loss of my dad and trying to cope with the sudden gaping hole his passing left in my life. Even though I’m back in Austin right now, I’m going to be leaving on my bday trip in a few days. Honestly, I really wrestled over whether to even go at all. But one of the things that my dad always encouraged me about was my love of traveling. I think he took a lot of pride in the fact that even though he didn’t travel much, he got a vicarious thrill out of my adventures. So in honor of his memory, I’m going to go to my three Adam Ant concerts and then head up to Canada to spread some of his ashes.

So this weekend, I jacked my back up. Backstory…Eleven years ago, I was in a car wreck – t-boned in my little Ford by a big-ass Suburban. I ended up ripping the muscles from my spine to my hip because I was turning away from the driver’s side window (gotta save the face, you know). Anyway, it was a loooonnnng recovery. I basically had to learn to walk again without dragging one of my feet (although it was fun to wander around moaning like Quasimodo in public and embarrass my friends with me – and is probably one of the many reasons why I don’t have many friends). Five years ago, I ended up really tweaking my back again (at work and I should have made those bastards pay workmen’s comp), and the physical therapy was brutal – because I’m a heckuva lot older and man getting old sucks because you really don’t bounce back like you used to. But I learned a few things that help and I needed to put those into practice this weekend when I felt the familiar pain. One of those things is to lie on my back and elevate my legs to get the pressure off my back so I ended up on the couch with a book (because given the choice over watching TV or reading, a book will win every single time).

But I didn’t realize that the book I picked would be so appropriate for everything that is going on in my life right now. I don’t normally share these types of things because blog notwithstanding, I’m a fairly private person. But as I read, I realized that the words were helping me put into perspective a lot of my grief, sadness, regret, pain, and anger I am dealing with. My dad’s death (and wow, that’s the first time I said that rather than passing) made me feel completely out of control. And for someone who has spent her entire life controlling emotions, these past few weeks have really knocked me on my ass.

And on top of all of that, I went to a funeral for a neighbor in my condo building this weekend. I looked at the last text I had sent him and I felt incredibly guilty that I hadn’t reached out lately to this man (because why not add guilt to the mix of emotions I’ve been carrying around with me). And then I felt bad because I’m over here gimping around and not able to do everything that I planned on doing this past weekend. So all of this stuff was swirling around in my head as I laid on the couch and cracked open a book called The Reality Slap.

I usually hate self-help books. Most of them pander to the Pollyanna viewpoint “just wish a better life into existence” and despite me wishing for the Powerball jackpot, to be at least an inch taller, to suddenly lose the weight that my body stubbornly holds onto, and to have Chris Hemsworth/Adam Ant/or the hot guy that once sat next to me on a plane show up at my front door with flowers – none of that has happened even though I have wished for those things really hard. The other type of self-help book basically says “it’s not your fault you’re a victim and you should demand that others respect your victimhood” and that shit rankles me even more because life and the vast majority of people in it do not give two you-know-whats about your poor-me life. All it does is give people either a sense of entitlement (I am entitled to act a certain way because my life is worse than yours, which is a really f-ed up version of oneupmanship) or a license to avoid life. Look, everyone has something that is fucking them up.

But that doesn’t mean that whatever is fucking you up doesn’t hurt, doesn’t knock the breath out of you, doesn’t mess up your emotions in some giant nasty way. My amelanotic nodular melanoma diagnosis was one of those instances. My dad’s death is another. And this book made me realize that me trying to exert control over something that is basically uncontrollable was doing even more harm than just letting the scary, sobbing mess of whatever I was feeling run its course without sucking me into a whirlpool of hopelessness. That it’s OK to acknowledge the pain I was experiencing and not try to push it down or away. To make room for it, to observe it, and to give myself the same love and caring that I was showing to everyone else.

I’m hoping for most of you, this isn’t some earth shattering revelation. But for a woman who’s spent most of her life trying to just compartmentalize things and be the one that can handle anything that life throws her way, this was a wake-up call that emotions and feelings are just as much my right as everyone else’s. Not to say that I’m going to dive off the deep end and give myself an excuse for unsocial or unethical behavior, but giving myself the space to breathe, to grieve, to try to come to terms with this loss isn’t selfish of me at all. And it’s probably pretty pathetic that it took me this long to come to that realization but better late than never, right?

So, although I usually don’t do the whole product placement thing, I really got a lot of value out of that book. I thought I would share because if one person out there is like me, someone else might get some value out of it as well. I started this blog to talk about dealing with melanoma and trying to help someone else in the same situation – my small and lazy way to give back. And if you’re on this blog, maybe the words and exercises in the book might help you understand that a cancer diagnosis or the death of a beloved daddy causes pain and hurt and fear and a myriad of other emotions but that doesn’t mean you have to control those emotions or be helplessly controlled by them.

The link I gave you goes to a PDF of the first two chapters. It’s a good introduction to what the author covers in the rest. I got the book out of the digital library to read on my Kindle. If money’s tight, look in your local library for it. I hope if you read it, it helps provide a measure of the same relief and acceptance it gave me at this critical point in my grieving process.