break glass in case of emergency
That would be a really good title for a sappy episode of Modern Family, preferably one in an earlier season where the kids are little. I imagine a fire drill. Someone breaks the glass to put out the fire and in a neat conclusion, each family also breaks the proverbial glass during a difficult phase of life and asks each other for help. Phil is unapologetically earnest and stands by your side, Mitch’s sarcasm softens to kindness & tears, and Jay shares a vulnerable anecdote from his childhood & promises that things can be different.
M and I throw each other little life rafts during our storms of personal distress. I'm quick to label most things as misery or pain but M is more judicious with his declarations and worries about overstating harm. He stoically counts himself lucky for the intricate turns of events that led him to the life he lives now.
“I feel like I’m being too dramatic,” he says. My opinion: he definitely is not.
What’s the acceptable level of hurt or the maximum duration we need to endure a misaligned life before we catch a break? When is it appropriate to declare that enough is enough? Surely, the roof caving in should not be the only sign for a change
When we exchange our daily grievances, guilt and shame often follow in their wake. I feel guilty about my lack of emotional regulation; he feels guilty about even voicing the presence of this disillusionment. The guilt is classic and comes from knowing that there are far worse circumstances we could be facing. A cold voice in the back of my head asks why I love to train magnifying glasses on minor inconveniences and suggests it may be because of my overarching incompetence? (Note: Q would patiently call me out on this phrasing in our sessions. “Incompetent at what? Incompetence is a word that should be used in relation to a skill. So, tell me again what you feel incompetent at.” This gives me clarity for a while, but I eventually revert to the cruel and nuance-less critic in my head.)
By morning, we have relegated these feelings to PMS and work stress, and other identifiable patterns and resigned to “it’s what it is.” We are not wrong in our numerous diagnoses but it is a bit disheartening to just go on with our lives, unchanged, fully aware of the little ways in which things could be different, even if the bigger contours of life remain effectively unchanged, ground into place by systems and institutions that dwarf our individual efforts.
While real-life fires are easy to justify breaking the glass for, the fires in our heads are trickier to spot and often stay under the radar. On the one hand, there is unmistakable trauma, one that is unquestioned by society and loudly cleaves life into a before and after, and on the other hand is the everyday hurts and resentments that build up. Some mornings, before we slump out of our beds, we hover in front of the glass box, wondering if today warrants disrupting the flow. It may be years before the alarms go off, if at all they do. We eventually let apathy set in, allowing us to function with minimum impedance.
There is no cut-and-dried solution, but sometimes I wonder if it makes sense to continue living in this thick disorienting haze just because we aren’t yet burnt to a crisp. Periods of lull and tedium and blunt pain are features of life. Apathy and compartmentalization definitely help. It is important to conserve energy and pick our battles. A personal renaissance is not an everyday affair.
Context and comparison can help us reorient ourselves and put our issues into perspective, but sometimes it feels right to sit with these muddy feelings of mismatch and brood. Then throw a tantrum or confront and address them. (I do the former more often than the latter.)
Maybe it does not make sense to break the glass yet, but talking to a trusted someone about the pain that we are guilty to call pain seems like a sustainable antidote to this numbing apathy. Sit down, clear the haze, and extend to each other much-needed life supports, even if it is just a wall of text assuring them that they are not being dramatic or validation that goes, “this is enraging me, too.