On the Cruel Cycle of Not Dealing With Your Shit

We've all got problems. Every single one of us. Doesn't matter how you were raised, where you live, where you're from, whether you're rich or poor, what race or gender identity or age or religion or social standing. You've got problems. Of course, any one of those things on the aforementioned list can deeply impact, influence, and spur those problems. But none of those things change this pure and simple fact: Problems. You got 'em. I got 'em. We all got 'em.

Biggie's problem was Puffy hogging all the fish-eye lens-time.

Problems are just as varied and unique as the people who have them, but I've found that there are three main kinds:

1. Problems Caused by You
2. Problems Caused by Other People/Factors
3. Problems Caused by You Not Dealing With the First Two Kinds of Problems

(Author's Note: The third kind of problem is still, technically, a problem caused by you, but I find that it presents itself in one's life completely differently than the first kind, and thus, deserves a category all its own. But more on that later.)

My job is often about helping people through their problems. I have worked extremely hard to make each and every process about the person I'm assisting and not about me, and I've also worked extremely hard to make sure I'm not trying to save anybody from their problems. For years, these two things were my pitfalls as a helper, which, if you know anything about me at all, speak to my own problems. My problems are a result of events in my life - events that have shaped and molded who I am, things that I have done to myself, both good and bad, and things that have been done to me, also good and bad. At 27 years old, I am the product of my current and past environments - family, social, work - and I am the product of current and past problems and triumphs. Some of these things are my choice, and some of these things have not been my choice. But I am absolutely a product of it all.

We, as humans, do not exist in vacuums. Us, our problems, and our existences do not exist without context.

For the purposes of this discussion, let's talk about the bad stuff, or, as I like to call it: The Shit That We Carry. The shit that I carry refers to my baggage (specifically addiction, death, heartbreak, being used, being hurt physically, being hurt emotionally, being betrayed, being silenced, being afraid). Baggage, like problems, is something everybody has. Shit, like problems, is something everybody carries. Nobody lives a life devoid of problems, of baggage, of shit. Our world isn't set up like that, and I have learned that it probably won't change. People will do cruel things to themselves, and they will do cruel things to each other.

How much will all this baggage cost to ship internationally?

And this is where the cycle comes in. To over-simplify it: When cruel things are done to us, we do cruel things to ourselves and to others. When we do cruel things to ourselves and others, we are then back in a position to have cruel things done to us. It has been my observation and experience, with myself and with all of the students and addicts and people and friends and family I have watched and lived with and loved over the course of my life, that it can either be incredibly easy to see where the cycle began, what came first, or it can be impossible. But one thing is for sure: It is a cycle. A sad, cruel cycle.

This cycle can look about a thousand different ways, and I have about a thousand different examples. So here's the first one that comes to mind, for your practical application. Imagine this scenario, if you will:

Say you're the kid of an addict, and your parent gets clean after a long time of being completely wrapped up in their addiction. While you love your parent and are proud of their sobriety, you are still reminded of the behavior and the pain and how this addiction and its fallout upheaved your entire life. You end up spending most of your young adulthood waiting for the other shoe to drop - sure, your parent is sober now, but for how long? You may internalize this and learn, as a defense mechanism against the disappointment, betrayal, and anger you feel towards your parent, that it may be easier to simply not trust anybody who is close to you or who could possibly be close to you. This creates a distance between you and them, and you may or may not miss out on the beautiful things they can offer you. But that distance means you can never be disappointed, betrayed, or angered by anybody you love or could love.

Years later, your first relationship ends because your partner leaves you for somebody else. After the initial devastation of it all, you tell yourself that you will never let another person hurt you like that again. So you become extremely wary of people who remind you of your partner. You become guarded. Again, your defense mechanisms kick in. You are reminded of what happens when you allow people to get too close. They hurt you. You begin to assume that all people will hurt you. At least the ones who you let get close or begin to rely on more deeply. And so you stop letting people in close.

You begin to learn that time and distance can dull hurt and pain. "Time and Distance" becomes your primary coping mechanism. You seek opportunities to remove yourself from the places and people that remind you of the cruelty you've experienced at the hands of others, and at the hands of yourself. Eventually, you leave. Time and Distance turn into Avoidance and Denial. You run as far and as fast away from it all as you can. Maybe you end up across the country, with thousands of miles and a couple timezones separating you and your shit. Nobody knows you or your shit there. You find some semblance of healing in the time and distance you've put between the things that have hurt you. For a long time, you are happy. You are even doing work that helps you heal even more, as it begins to shape your understanding of the people who have hurt you, and maybe provide reasons as to why it happened. It also helps you feel in control of things you had not previously been in control of, like your parent's addiction. Which helps. It helps for a really long time.

Then you lose a student. He dies. He overdoses on drugs in his room in the residence hall you supervise, and you are the one to find him. And suddenly, you are not in control. Turns out, you were never in control in the first place. And your wounds - every single one of them - re-open, violently, and everything, all the hurt and pain and betrayal and baggage is all at the surface again. And you realize that all you've ever really done to heal is push people and places away, deny others and yourself love, and that inability to save your parent, your student, any of your students, or yourself turns into resentment, and then it turns into anger and hate. And now there is rage. It is quiet, pervasive, and destructive.

You become cruel. Mostly to yourself. You continue to deny yourself the space to heal, to deny yourself the love you deserve, even though you put up a real good front. You're going to therapy, you're talking about your pain, but it's all to save face. You know enough about counseling to fool most people into thinking that you're doing well. They marvel at how strong you are. They tell you that you are resilient. You let them think what they want. Meanwhile, you continue to push people away hard and fast. Your cruelty towards others shows itself in a refusal to forgive them for even their smallest trespasses. You are angry, and you are full of hate, and it is twisting itself inside you and becoming who you are. You forget how to give grace, both to yourself and others. You feel like you don't deserve grace or love, anyway, because you couldn't save them...

And then one day, you wake up and you're sick of it. You're sad, alone, and in such pain and full of such hate and rage, you can barely see straight. And you're fortunate enough to have people in your life who are unmoving and who love you enough to tell you that you need to snap out of it and take care of yourself. And so you get real in therapy. You get real in life. You get real with the people around you. You get real with yourself. You give yourself the grace and love you deserve, and you give it to others. And you finally - finally - face the things you've avoided for most of your life: Addiction, trust, fear, love.

You are dealing with your shit.

I am intimately familiar with this example because it is my story. I debated sharing it, debated how to share it. A friend pointed out that I couldn't even tell this story in first person, from my own point of view, and maybe that is an indicator that while I am dealing with my shit, it is a process that I am still moving through. Dealing with your shit is a process, but what I have learned throughout it all is this: In order to start dealing with it, you have to face it. You have to look your shit in its ugly, shitty face, and you have to acknowledge it. You have to acknowledge all of that cruelty and pain, and you have to keep acknowledging it.

And fuck if that's not mind-numbingly difficult. Trust me - if I could have ignored that whole ordeal of my parent uprooting any semblance of security and stability I had, I would. If I could just "get over" the death of one of my favorite students and finding his body, it'd be done and gone. But any time I've tried to ignore something or push it away, I'll be good for awhile before something slaps me upside my head and reminds me that it happened and that, despite how tough and strong I tell myself I am, this occurrence had a significant impact on my life. This is how the cycle perpetuates itself: When the incidents, events, occurrences - things that you've done and things that have been done to you, things you've controlled and things you just haven't - are not faced and dealt with, they find ways to come back and knock you on your ass. Sometimes subtly, in quiet sort of ways, and other times, Your Shit hits you like a locomotive and suddenly you're one of those really gruesome train wrecks we all say we want to watch but never want to be.

All aboard the Hot Mess Express!

Like I said: There are three types of problems. Problems caused by you, problems caused by other people, and problems caused by you not dealing with your problems. There was some stuff there that I couldn't control - stuff that just happened, stuff caused by other people (can't help somebody else's addictions or choices). Then there was some stuff caused by me (I had - and continue to knowingly have - a weakness for men who are literally the most emotionally inept lunatics in their respective geographic regions). And then there were the things that nearly crippled me, which were the direct result of me not dealing - not coping, and seeking to ignore - with what had happened or what I had done. 

So. Confession time: For as much as I want you (whoever you are) to read my thoughts and think that I'm brilliant and incredibly reflective on the human experience, I started writing this piece for very selfish and immature reasons. I was trying to cope with somebody who had been cruel to me because he refused to deal with his own shit. It was particularly hurtful to me for a number of reasons, most of which had to do with trust and how all I really wanted to was to be a friend. This person has been through more than a person should - stuff that's been beyond his control, mostly. But his refusal to face those things has manifested itself into fear and cruelty, especially when people get too close. It's a defense mechanism, to not just push away people so they can't hurt him, but to open fire and make damn sure they don't come back. I unwittingly stumbled into his crosshairs. 

And I was furious about it. Be cruel to me? Oh, I'll show you cruel. I'll show you crazy and cruel, motherfucker.

In my head, I had this all planned out - it would be a visceral and scathing rant, demanding that people either deal with their shit or leave me the fuck alone because ain't nobody got time for that nonsense. Especially when I'm just trying to be nice. Especially when you tell me that you value our friendship. Especially when you dump a bunch of your bullshit on me and all I do is listen. Especially when you use my compassion against me and act like an immature asshole.

DEEP BREATH. And then halfway through, as I was writing my own story, I realized...how typical. I get hurt, I lash out.  Defense mechanism. I was employing the same tactic my friend had. It felt familiar because I used to do the exact same thing. I was no better, no worse, so who am I to destroy him via sort-of-anonymous blog post? Who am I to think ill of him at all, when he's just doing what I had done for so, so long? Where was my grace now? Zip. Gone.

And what's the point, anyway? I have learned, through all of this dealing and confronting and processing that there are things you can control and there are things you can't. You control you. That's it. You control you, and you can't control anybody else. What he chooses to do and how he chooses to do it have nothing to do with me. I can control my reaction to those things, but that's about it. Because it's not about me. Which is a hard thing to accept, especially because I was hurt and confused. But then I thought about all his problems, and I thought about all of mine, and I thought about just how cruel we really are to ourselves when we don't try to make it better, when we don't face our shit. We push people away, we deny ourselves care, attention, friendship, love. And we deny others ourselves, our true selves, for fear of what they could do, what we have convinced ourselves they will do.

It's not up to me what other people choose for themselves. It's not up to me how other people choose to deal with their problems. If they face them dead on, cool. If takes some longer than others to deal, awesome. If they find another way to cope -  ignoring, drugs, denial, whatever - then that's on them. But what I do know is that hurt people hurt people. And I'm tired of being hurt, and I'm tired of hurting other people.

So, dear, dear reader of this teeny blog in this teeny corner of the World Wide Web, I guess what I'm trying to say is this: When you deal with your shit, you get happy, free, released. When you don't, you're stuck in an infinite loop of crap.

Poo to the infinity!

And sure, maybe it doesn't all go away like, poof! Gone! Magic! If anybody figures out the spell for that one, hit me up. But at least you're dealing on some level, and that's way more than half the battle.

Dealing is easier said than done, right? Because sometimes our shit is so awful, so shitty that we cannot even fathom the fact that it exists, let alone allow ourselves to face it. The last thing I want to do is let this loose as a rant or just preaching and not give a solution - or semblance of one. So here's what I've learned in these 27 years of life. Here are the steps that worked for me:

1. Acknowledge your shit. Acknowledge the problems and the people and the hits you've taken. Let yourself see it, sit in it, and be aware of it. Denying that any of it happened only deepens the hurt. Because denying the bad (and good) is denying a part of who you are. Everybody has the right to be their full selves, and that includes the shitty parts.

2. Express your shit. Talk about it. Write about it. Sign about it. Dance about it. Whatever. Find a way to get your shit out of you and into the universe for people to hear and bare witness to. The power in sharing your story is huge. Because it's yours, and there's nothing to be ashamed of. Let people see you, for better, worse, and everything in-between. I would be willing to put money on the fact that at least one other person in your life with go, "Oh, dang. Me too."

3. Take action against your shit. Do something about it. Go to therapy. Do yoga. Bring flowers to a grave. Tell your mom you forgive her. Sit in your car and scream at the top of your lungs until it's all out of you. Run five miles. Just do something about it to start taking care of yourself. Taking action is taking a step forward.

4. Celebrate the pure and simple fact that you survived your shit. You are a survivor. 'Cause this shit's not easy. Life isn't easy. And you're surviving it. You're actually not doing so bad, so give yourself some grace and take the time to celebrate the fact that you are alive and you are healing and you are dealing. 

So this got long. Longer than I thought it would. And it changed directions away from what I had intended it to head towards. Probably for the best. If you're still with me, I'll end it with this, with some of the sagest advice I've ever received, from an unlikely source, two nights after my student died. These words have have stuck with me, a mantra in the back of my mind: "Learn to live with it, with what's happened. Learn to live with it and don't try to move past it or forget about it. Then you forget everything you learned. So you learn to live with it. You are stronger than you know."

Trust me, my friend. You are stronger than you know.