Social Creatures

[HAP]

Dear friends,

We humans are social creatures. We depend on each other for virtually everything: food, clothing, shelter, physical and emotional support. The cruelest punishment we can deliver is not the death penalty but solitary confinement. Isolation destroys us in ways no noose, needle or electric chair can.

This winter I went to the world premier of a play called Social Creatures, a comedy about a world dealing with zombies. The audience—with one exception—found the play very funny and thoroughly enjoyed it. I didn’t—and it has taken me until now to figure out why.

None of the characters in the play knows what causes people to become zombies. They know that regardless of anything else that if one of their group begins to show signs of becoming a zombie the others must kill—or exile--that individual without hesitation. But humans have a tough time doing that to people they know and care about so the group has eliminated any but the most formal kinds of interactions. Even husbands and wives have dispensed with first names—calling each other Mr. and Mrs.

There are few social bonds among humans stronger than family and, arguably, the greatest of those social bonds is between a married couple. They are intimate with each other physically, mentally, and emotionally in ways no one else is. Only the bond of mother and child rivals it—and in a marriage without children the bond between the partners becomes even more intense. They become each other’s world—a world in which virtually every social need is mutually addressed and nourished by the partnership between them.

If that marriage survives for even a few years the couple truly merges into a single physical, emotional and intellectual self that functions nearly to the exclusion of all other social interactions. The couple may have friends, but those friends rarely—if ever—penetrate to the inner sanctum they establish for themselves. The precise turn of a particular smile can speak in a fraction of a second more than a thousand pages of text over the course of hours. Outside of the most intimate marriages no one has the time to develop and understand that kind of communication.

Marriages that last require not only love but a deep and abiding friendship that one rarely sees outside of those kinds of marriages.

But such marriages carry great danger within their structure. If death carries one or the other partner off prematurely the survivor faces difficulties the power of the suddenly dead marriage exacerbates. One moves suddenly from an environment that supplied all of ones social needs to one in which none are sufficiently supplied even in the days immediately after death when society as a whole is at its most giving.

Further, if the marriage has lasted any length of time, ones external individual social skills have likely atrophied to the point of uselessness. Remember, everything you once did as a couple socially you must now find ways to do as an individual—and as simple as that sounds the reality is something entirely other I don’t yet seem to have the words to describe. I sometimes feel like I am back in high school trying to find the courage to ask someone out on a date—except that it applies to every potential form of social interaction with everyone. I don’t want to intrude on people’s lives. I am terrified of dealing with this level of hurt again. Nor do I want to find myself inflicting this kind of pain on anyone else.

But sometimes I think those are only excuses I give myself in order to avoid the even greater awkwardness I feel around other people. I have forgotten how to talk to people other than Jane. I worry about what kinds of things will escape the door of my mouth that I will later regret—that will cause others to feel pain or doubt. Until I can control my own pain I put those around me at risk.

All of which leaves me less social than I need to be in order to relearn those skills that will regain my ability to be a social creature. I languish most days in solitary confinement. I write, true enough, and that is a kind of social interaction, but it is a cold and distant one that lacks the intimacy of touch or even of gesture. While at the best of times my soul may touch another through this medium, it can never be a mutual touch in the moment.

But as a starving man will not turn down a bit of rat or a piece of shoe leather I seize on whatever social interaction I can find.

Some have suggested I work too much on Walking with Jane, Relay For Life, and the other charitable things I undertake. But while a level of altruism is involved in those activities, they feed my need for relatively risk-free social interaction as well. The conversations may be largely about business but there is a breathing human being on the other side of that conversation the sound of whose voice and the look of whose eyes give me a momentary social contact that is worth more than I can say.

We are social creatures, ultimately. While I try to do my yoga—the poses I can still do—and meditate every day, they remain solitary practices. Each aids, to some degree, the healing of this deep wound. But the social piece still eludes me—and that frightens me.

At the end of Social Creatures all the characters either become zombies or food for zombies. Their rejection of their social nature lies at the heart of their conversion. What for others was comic was, for me, tragic and terrifying. They chose the life I have been forced into—and suffered appalling consequences.

I have no wish to be a zombie—or food for zombies. I am a social creature.

Peace,

Harry

[Wifflesnook]

Oh Harry I just read this and realises that I too am trying to make every social interaction a small compensation for what I have lost. And it's impossible. Others will reply soon, but I just wanted to thank you for pointing this out.

[Cakes01]

I can't read this on my phone-without getting really dizzy i look forward to reading it tonight though.

[marsha]

I know what you're saying, Harry. And as an aside I have to admit I just love The Walking Dead, on AMC. Love it. In the first year, there was a kind of running (sick) joke with my couple of close friends that I could talk for 15 minutes, and that was it. After 60 hours a week in front of the public in my deli, I had nothing left to give. I just wanted to be left alone. I was kind of at a crossroads - I was lonely, but couldn't make small talk. I'm an introvert by nature, but still...

It took a long time for that movie reel to stop going in the back of my head. A close friend here said when she looks back, all she sees is pain. I get that. And what Marty posted about recovery from the recovery, oh, man, I get that, too. What's my point? I can't force it. I can't force myself to get out when I don't want to. But I can when I do want to. The loneliness and pain I've felt thus far are part of my life, as are the human connections I've had, some with laughter, and some with tears, some with close ones, and some with strangers - some are 15 minute conversations, and some with lifelong friends. Human connection is human connection, and a lot of it is with myself. I needed that, and still do. So when are we going to dinner??

[mfh]

Harry, A few things you said hit a chord. Conversation with others that is easiest and most consoling focuses around topics like loss, grief, their loss or mine, helping them, listening to them....and this is just not the me I knew before Bill got sick. I love our book club because we discuss something solid and interesting. I like paint group because most of the time (except tonight when only 3 of us showed and all of us grieving one thing or another so the conversation drifted there). Sometimes a structure, like your charities, provides a safe place for socializing but as you say it is work oriented. I wonder about a book club or a group with a different focus to help you re-develop your skills. But under neath all of this for us is that our focus is on our grief...we ARE grieving and desperate to talk about our pain and our loss and all things grief.

You will never be a zombie...but it may take more time than 3 years to find your way, your new path. Read the piece I posted on the 4th year...it is on the prolonged grief topic. We are recovering from recovery. I think it all goes back to patience...

Peace to your heart,

mary

[HAP]

Dear friends,

Mary, I agree: it always comes back to patience. I liked your post on the fourth year very much--and I really like the concept of recovering from recovery. It explains a great deal of the exhaustion I am trying to work my way through this month.

There is another piece to this I am grappling with: the difference between male and female responses to grief. Women are, I think, more easily communal in the aftermath of loss. Males just don't talk to each other much--and especially not about things of emotional consequence. We see grief as a problem to be solved--and it kills us that we cannot solve it--sometimes literally. I have gradually reached the conclusion that it is, in fact, not a problem to be solved so much as it is a part of living that we have to evolve and adapt to. Nothing I do--or anyone else does--is going to make this better. It is not a problem looking for a solution but a matter of time and growth.

When I take a branch off a tree it leaves a scar. Eventually, from the outside, that scar gradually disappears beneath the bark--but the scar is still there underneath. If, 30 years from now, that tree is cut down and turned into lumber the scar will till be there in the form of a knot. Grief does something similar to the human soul. It leaves us changed in both subtle and unsubtle ways. We do not so much recover from loss as we encapsulate it until it is barely visible to the outside world. Eventually, the pain of the amputation may decrease--but it will always be reflected in who we are, often at a subconscious level, but sometimes at a conscious level as well.

I learned recently that my birth nearly killed my mother. My grandmother, grandfather, and, too a much lesser extent, father were my primary caregivers for the first several months of my life. There was always a distance between me and both my parents that I do not understand when I look at the relationship between other people and their parents. Psychologically, I am sure it had substantial influence on who I became later in my life. But that is sapling damage--damage that we are not really aware of no matter how it may have shaped who we are.

What makes the loss of a spouse more difficult to deal with is that it is a fully conscious amputation we could do nothing to stop. At this point, we have become active agents in so many aspects of our lives that we have the illusion that we have some degree of control over our success or failure. Jane's death shattered that sense of control for me--as I expect the deaths of each of our spouses did for each of us. Their deaths seem senseless--and yet our human need for order demands those deaths make sense. Death--like love--makes fools of us all.

Jane got angry with me periodically because when she talked about a problem she was having I would suggest ways to fix it. It took me a long time to figure out that she did not want me giving her solutions: she just wanted me to listen so that she could work through the emotions she was feeling. The problem was not that something needed to be fixed but that she needed to deal with what those issue were causing her to feel. Equally, it took her some time to figure out that when I talked about a problem it was not because I needed to work through the emotional content but because I needed to find a solution. The solution would lead to the emotional release she initially thought was the reason I brought up the issue in the first place.

Of course, sometimes we really wanted just the opposite of what we normally did: sometimes she wanted a physical solution and sometimes I just wanted to vent emotions. And we eventually deciphered those things as well. Now, none of that obtains anywhere for me. No one reads me as she did. I read no one as I did her.

But because of my make-up my initial response to loss was to make a plan for how to deal with it. I did the reading, found a physical grief group, found this site, signed on for a grief counseling trial, drank water, eliminated alcohol, ate and exercised regularly and proceeded to try to execute the plan that would lead me out of the morass of sadness, loneliness and grief. It all looked good on paper. But instead of feeling better 29 months into the process I felt I was failing--that at some levels things were getting worse.

Part of it is the exhaustion that comes with recovering from the recovery. The concept makes great sense to me. Part of it is that deep love creates deep loss that cannot be healed in a year--or likely even three. That has led to self-doubt and the question of whether this wound will ever heal. Sometimes I wish I could have the simple faith that lets others find solace in their religious beliefs that seems to bind such wounds so well. But I know that is not an option for me.

Our mantra was always, "Keep moving forward." It is a difficult thing to do when so much joy is buried in the past. It is so easy to slip into that world of memory now and wear it as though it were the present. And there is nothing wrong with remembering--at long last--something other than those last days. But it is an addictive thing as dangerous as any drug if not used in careful moderation. I need to cherish what we had but not let it form a chain that binds me there.

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one," is another thing we hung our hats on. But the one needs, sometimes, to take care of himself so that he can continue to help the many far into the future. I need to remember to take care of me a bit better than I have been doing. There is now no one here to remind me to eat or sleep--and there is not likely to be anyone fulfilling that role any time in the near--or even distant--future.

One of my students wrote a response this week to something I wrote elsewhere. He talked about how young people are told that change comes slowly, and what a delight it was to have been taught by two people who believed in running. I still want to run--but the wounds are deep. For now, I walk because it is all I can do. I have to remember that not so long ago I was crawling--and not so long before that, all I could manage was to plank. But I planked until I could crawl, crawled until I could walk--and will walk until I can run--and I will run again. Jane would expect no less.

Peace,

Harry

[kayc]

Harry, you have been so busy, I don't know when you could have had the time to figure things out for your new life, new normal. Slowing down is good, as you say, crawl then walk...

I have taken a break from "doing" largely since George died, and am just "being", time enough for the doing later. I've "done" all my life! It's taken me time to find myself apart from my spouse, apart from someone's mother, apart from an employee, who I am. I'm still discovering and finding answers for myself. Am not sure what the future holds but I think I'll be okay with it.

[mfh]

Harry, I think the word depleted says volumes to me. In discussing this with my psychoanalyst friend this morning, he reminded me that when we are depleted, we are interpreting our feelings and reality from that point of view and can't see much of anything clearly or as it is because of the lens through which we are seeing life and our feelings.

I suspect you are beyond exhausted....and are, like me, depleted...and that is a whole different way to be. Not much helps...as the article says, normal rest does not restore. It takes time, rest, self care at EVERY level before the depletion diminishes. Without getting dramatic, see this etymology of the word depletion:

"1650s, from Late Latin depletionem (nominative depletio) "blood-letting," noun of action from past participle stem of Latin deplere "to empty," literally "to un-fill," from de- "off, away" (see de-) + plere "to fill" (see pleio-).

I believe in the value of the origins of words and have several books on the subject and believe that even though in our consciousness we are not in touch with a 1650s origin like "blood-letting" is it not in our deep psyche where all knowledge resides? And if so, and our very blood has been let (drained).....so goes our energy, nourishment, oxygen, and that which helps us heal. If that has even a bit of validity, patience in self care is the only route to being filled again.

[HAP]

Blood letting. What a lovely and perfect image for the weakness grief creates. My first real experience with etymology was the discovery that the original meaning of "thrilled" was "to be struck by an arrow." I never looked at "thrilled" the same way again. I doubt i will use the word depleted the same way again.

Harry

[kayc]

For sure! It does help to know a word's origin, but it might ruin it for us too!

[mfh]

One I like a lot is mystery....to see as through one's eyelashes. Cool, eh...not quite clear when we do that.

Another is enthusiasm....in God.

I agree some words can be ruined, Kay

[melina]

Harry - I just read your posts, and I recognize so much of what you've said. Maybe I'm emotionally male since I can't seem to commune with others the way other women seem to be able to.

I had a very distant relationship with my parents, and still feel disconnected from my mother and siblings. It's hard to connect with friends the way I once thought I did.

Not sure how far you are in this process. It will be three years for me in August - so 2 years, 10 months for me.

I also feel both physically and emotionally exhausted, even though I'm trying to take care of myself. I exercise, eat healthy, blah, blah, blah.

I seem to be drained of hope for the time being - but have enough hope left to hope that hope will return. If that makes any sense. Maybe it just takes more time than we thought.

Melina

[HAP]

Dear Melina,

I keep trying to get back to this because I think you bring up some important things here. My own relationship with my parents was also a bit strange. There was always a great deal of respect in both directions, but emotionally we were always distant--and became much more so through my teens, twenties and thirties.

I am nine days from 30 months into this journey. Sometimes, especially lately, I feel I am going backwards. Part of the reason I am going to cut back on Relay For Life after June 22 is the need to get a few hours back a week so I can focus a bit more on my own brain. I am feeling a lot of internal strangeness--not quite conflict but certainly not coming to terms with things the way I would like.

I think Mary put her finger on reality with the piece on "Recovering from Recovery." Like you, I feel exhausted no matter how much rest I manage to get. But much of the time I sleep for six hours and wake up still tired but unable to get back to sleep. That gets old. But at least I am no longer waking up after three hours.

Jane used to say that I was the eternal optimist--that if I walked into and empty stable full of manure I would be convinced there was a pony in there somewhere. I never quite get to hopeless, but there are days I really have had enough. Clearly this is going to take far more time than either Jane or I expected-- a lot more.

Be well, Melina. We've both made progress--just not the amount we'd like.

Peace,

Harry

[mfh]

I think for me, progress means I am ok wherever I am on this journey. It is not linear hence my love for the labyrinth...though it is a path...it is about getting to the center, all but retracing where we were...out to the edge, in towards the center and back out again... but ok to just be on the path. That is what i am working on when I do not feel like I have lost myself, see a self that I wonder about sometimes, and feel I am as crazy (nutty) as a fruitcake. It is like being pulled first right, then left....then up, then down, then around, then inside out....

But when I can be calm and centered which for me demands solitude and stillness -a lot of that, I feel wherever I am is where I need to be...so for me, it is about getting to the calm, to the center of my being...

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

T.S. Eliot

If any of that makes sense...let me know.

[kayc]

Harry,

It makes perfect sense to me. The quote is, I'm sure, spot on.