Talking Ourselves Forward.

We are moving on Saturday into an apartment for several months (Yes, we can use some help if you're free about 10 a.m. or so!).  

It's a long complicated story, but we've sold our house and aren't yet ready to purchase another.  So we are packing and sorting.  Some of the things will go into storage.  The necessities will go into the rental truck on Saturday.  It's another opportunity to identify what is most necessary for our daily life.  It's also another opportunity to sort through things that should go out the door in one fashion or another.

I have this odd reaction to the whole process.  In my brain, I know this is part of the adventure.  We are moving forward into another chapter--living closer to Brenda's new job and to family members.  It's another step toward having a house together--one that neither of us owned previously.  It is another step in my decade-long quest to live more simply, frugally, and with fewer things.  

That's all good.  And my brain is happy about all of that.

My guts are having a different experience.  I have moments of anxiety, sadness and distress.  I'm running across a few things from the past that might produce a bit of wistfulness.  But that hasn't happened much.  

I think I'm having an experience of sense-memory.  When I have cleaned and sorted and moved in the recent past, for the most part it hasn't been a happy set of experiences.  Instead, I have felt loss.  I have felt like a failure.  I have felt like I was abandoning important things and people.  It wasn't good.

I'm not doing any of those actions now.  But the cleaning and sorting and packing look and feel the same, no matter what the reason.  I have to keep telling myself--my insides--that this is all good.  I have to keep repeating to myself that this is a step forward and that we are accomplishing things that we have hoped for almost from the day we met.  I have to keep persuading myself that it's all good.

This makes me wonder how much sense memory plays into the flashes of grief that we all feel "out of nowhere."  

We are going along, minding our own business.  We do something and suddenly feel awful.  Was that something connected to a loss or trauma in the past?  Probably.  Our bodies remember things that our brains have worked hard to file away and put to sleep.  So I have to facilitate this negotiation between my neocortex and my guts.

Being aware that this is going on helps a great deal.  But it doesn't stop the process.  Brenda has asked me several times if I'm OK.  I am, but I have to keep reminding myself that I am.  I shared with her what I think is going on, and that helped a great deal.  That sharing put some distance between me and the experience of the moment.  It helps to do the packing in smaller doses, increasing in duration and frequency over a few days.  It helps to keep having the brain/bowels negotiation at a low level.  I think it will help to watch a good movie and get distracted a bit.

Most of all, I'm back to good old gratitude.  I know what it's like to lose a large part of my life.  I know what it's like to have to start over.  I know what it's like to feel terrible.  And this life now isn't any of those things.  It's an awesome life with amazing possibilities.  I tell myself that in great detail several times a day.  And I feel much better.

The body remembers and reminds us.  But we don't have to get stuck in the remembering.  We can talk ourselves forward into life.  That's a "choosing hope" kind of skill.