Dealing with Disappointment

Ask anyone and they’ll tell you I’m terrible at dealing with, well, just about anything. Especially when there are emotions involved.

Perhaps there is a little bit of leeway in trying to describe how I deal with life. When I’m sad or grieving I tend to use humor more than usual. Actually I tend to use humor in a lot of circumstances. Making a joke in the middle of a very serious argument, however, is not always recommended, and rarely does it have the intended effect, but I can’t help it sometimes. That would be like telling a dog not to bark or a cat not to meow. I don’t know if it is possible for me not to inject humor into just about any circumstance, and I have the scars on my tongue from literally having to bite it in order to not say it aloud sometimes.

Now anger and frustration have a fairly odd effect on me. I get the urge to clean. I don’t know if it is a psychological therapy, one where taking something not in order or dirty and making it look all shiny and new, is the reason for it. Of course, I could have gotten it from my stepmother who I’m fairly certain went on cleaning sprees after having to deal with her ex-husband, so maybe this was a learned behavior. Actually, curiously, my dad tends to crack jokes at inopportune times as well so maybe it is part nature and part nurture. Either way, the house gets clean as I take out my anger on the toilet bowl before flushing it down.

However, currently I’m having difficulty figuring just where to place my emotions as they all seem to be jumbled together where our kids are involved. It’s been months since we’ve seen them and while I have slowly been taking reminders of them and putting them out of sight I still can’t figure out just how to deal with such a loss. It has especially been difficult since we were supposed to finally see them again last night and in typical fashion it never happened. I don’t know why I even allow myself to get my hopes up any more. I don’t know why I can’t get past the denial stage that we very possibly will never see them again. I don’t know why I can’t let go. Wait. Yes I do. Because I love those boys more than I ever should have allowed myself to.