Being Happy For Others While Working Through Disappointment – Part II:
If you haven’t read: Being Happy For Others While Working Through Disappoint – Part I, stop now and read it first. This post won’t make as much sense if you don’t have the back story.
So let’s fast forward to the present for Part II.
I have a little brother who is 8 years younger than me. He just turned 30 last year.
I never had an older brother (I do have an older sister but that’s not the same, hence, I’m the middle child and why I’m so fucked up, hahaha – touché) so throughout my life I always tried to be someone he could look up to and do all the things with him that I wished an older brother would have done with me.
Although, I wasn’t always there, dealing with my own personal issues, I did my best. And I’m proud of the job I did.
On Christmas day last year, He and his wife gave us some amazing news. They were 3 months pregnant.
After reading my previous post in Part I, you can probably imagine that under the surface this was a complex announcement to process. And I have to say, that for me, this was one of the most bizarre emotional tornadoes that I have ever experienced.
On the one hand, you are beyond ecstatic for them. And you are, you truly are sensationally happy for them. There is no doubt in my mind on this. Knowing how much of a struggle getting pregnant has been for us, I fully understand how much a of a gift and blessing this is.
But at the same time, the pain twists like a thrusting blade deep down in your gut. Because you can’t help it, you start to question your own internal “why”. Why can other people do it and not me? Why do I feel ashamed with so much disappointment in myself?
Yet, these were only the emotions that I was struggling with. I could only imagine what my wife was experiencing. Everything she had ever wanted was materializing for someone else. And now we’re talking family, this is something we’ll have to deal with head-on. So we swallow our own pain and smile, but it doesn’t lessen the sting.
And I want to clear up a misconception here.
My wife and I are always happy for other couples when they get pregnant. Readers might not believe this, but you aren’t jealous or envious of them. What it does is rekindle a deep atavistic craving inside of you for your own parental instincts. But just because you are struggling with something doesn’t mean you can’t take part in the happiness of others. And you shouldn’t’ be treated special because people are worried about your feelings.
Because we can feel when people don’t know what to do. So just act normal and don’t fake it. It’s almost the same as addiction. Our problems are our own so don’t stigmatize us on top of what we struggle with. This only increases the pain, not lessons it.
But at the same time, I know the news was devastating for her. When the only dream you have ever wanted transpires before your very eyes, yet with a different person. There’s a piercing irony that can’t help but torture your yearning mind.
Especially in my family, because I am one of three and no one has produced grandkids yet for my parents. And this is something that both my wife and I would have loved to be able to provide as the elder couple.
And then on another level, later in the day a greater sadness swept over me. But this was something different than the pregnancy. It was a farther reaching and overwhelming melancholy that I had never felt before. Because it had deep roots.
I sat and thought, long and hard, and then it came to me. I had always thought I would be the first in my family to have a child. I had always thought that I would be able to help my little brother and teach him how to be a father, as I had always done in our lives having experienced everything first.
But now the roles would change. Our identities would be reversed. It would be him advising me. He would be experiencing something for the first time before me. And it was hard to grapple with this realization. Because in my mind that wasn’t how things were supposed to be. This wasn’t how life was supposed to work out. And it hurt. The disappointment and pain were acutely severe.
But who am I to play God? I was so caught up in my emotions that I had lost touch with what mattered and was playing out my selfishness. Because this day wasn’t about me and how I felt. It was about welcoming and celebrating a new life into our family.
So I took a deep breath and let it go. Because you have to learn to live with the present no matter how much you want it to change. There is happiness out there to experience if you can only open your eyes and see it. You have a chance to absorb the happiness from others.
But then everything fell apart…
Only two weeks later, they lost the baby.
And everything tail-spun into a whole new level of an emotional shitstorm. The guilt rides you like a crashing wave pulling you down, not letting you up to breathe. You wonder for a split second if your own pain had something to do with it. But no, you brush aside those self-defeating thoughts. Your own mind becomes your worst enemy as you second guess yourself.
But this isn’t about you. It’s about them. Helping them in any way that you can.
So you do all that you can. You reach out and offer your condolences and love. You mention briefly your own miscarriage and how it made you feel. But you keep it to that. You offer the branch and then wait for the reply if accepted.
Grief is a mysterious emotion that needs to be tamed by the beholder. We all process it differently, so time and space need to be respected.
And these are unique situations that we are put in. But we’ll always be finding ourselves thrown into these challenging and unexpected struggles. Because to live is to feel. And when we experience the spectrum of life, not everything can lead to happiness. There is a flipside to the bright sunshine always waiting for us in the shadows.
Yet even with our disappointment, we work through it as best we can, and partake in the happiness of others. Because we owe it to our family and friends, to celebrate with them when prosperity strikes, regardless of how we feel inside.
Because as disappointed as we may be, we can always learn to be happy for others.
-Q-FI
P.S. So I ask you, how do you practice happiness while working through disappointment?
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