One of the things I've been mentally trying to work through is letting go of my disappointment in people who have not reached out through all of this. Family and friends both. Perhaps social media is to blame. Hearting a post can feel like expressing care, but it is not the same as an actual message or text. Keeping up second hand via other friends or family is also not the same as reaching out to us directly. I try really hard not to keep tabs and to let it go, but I am, unfortunately, a tabs keeper. (It's really good that I did not have social media as a teenager, because all of that angst paired with actually knowing who was hanging out without me would have been absolutely terrible.)
Whenever I find myself slipping into this mindset, I usually hide people on social media for a bit, check in with myself to see if my expectations are unrealistic or if I'm centering myself too much, and ask myself what I would do in their shoes. But there are people who, if the circumstances were flipped, I would have messaged and checked in on. So it does sting to realize that they may not think the same about our relationship.
Most of my disappointment isn't directly mine though. I'm carrying around disappointment for my husband who has less support than I do. It is hard standing by and watching your partner be hurt without being able to do anything about it. I don't have the same expectations or strong emotional investment in the the people he feels let down by, but I still feel that hurt for him.
So, if I still feel disappointed, what do I do with those feelings? The way I see it, I can tell people how I feel, I can hold on to it, or I can try to let it go. I don't want to do the first two, so it's number 3. But, how do I actually let it go? Write angry letters and delete or burn them? Make a blog post about it? Therapy? Redirect my thoughts? What is the mental process here and are there actual steps I can take? And since our situation is ongoing, what do I do with those feelings as the disappointments compound?
It's honestly a process I'm working through. However, I keep coming back to focusing on the positives. I was thinking this morning that I should make sure I'm putting my energy into people who have put energy into us. A community is built on people who show up for others. If people aren't showing up for us, those aren't people I can depend on or invest a lot of my energy into. If people are showing up for us, how can I be better about showing up for them?
I'm afraid I'm not that great at showing up. It's so easy for me to bury myself in my own life and assume that my efforts won't mean much because surely there are other people who can offer support much better than me. Or I think reaching out to a person I haven't spoken to in a while would be weird, so I just won't. In writing this out, I'm realizing that maybe I just need to forgive myself for my past self-centeredness. Maybe in working on doing better for others, I can let go of these negative feelings. I don't know.
Regardless, I've written this before and I'll probably write it again, but I've been continually touched by the people that have shown up and reached out, even in small ways. I have learned a lot about the kind of person I want to be for others and how to model that for my kids. Those are the tabs I am keeping and book marking.
A Song About Processing
Florence and the Machine, "Free"
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